martincjones.com
🇦🇺/🇩🇪 climate change/energy economist and policy wonk; former academic (CEEM) and consumer advocate (CUAC); amateur footballer. Personal views. He/him.
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I can't say I disagree with either of you 🙂 Still noteworthy, though, I think; an unusual dynamic likely to become more frequent.
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"An expected surge in wind power in Victoria [from Saturday] will help ease the situation, with wind generation expected to reach up to 80 per cent of full capacity, many times more than the output over recent days."
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"A second unit at Yallourn returned to service around midnight on Wednesday, but ran for only a few hours before shutting down again...
"A unit at Loy Yang A is also out of action, as is one unit at AGL's Bayswater generator in NSW and four coal units in Queensland."
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"Central to the coal power disruptions is EnergyAustralia's extended shutdown of one unit at Yallourn after the collapse of an air duct from a boiler last Sunday [the 8th] during repair work on a tube leak."
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"aerosol emissions represent something of a wildcard for future warming over the 21st century. Continued rapid reductions in SO2 emissions will contribute to an acceleration in the rate of global warming in the coming years."
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For those interested, you can play the Tower of Hanoi puzzle/game here: www.mathsisfun.com/games/towero... I solved up to six discs to prove to myself I had figured out the algorithm correctly – two discs more than the AI models are able to do, apparently.
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Congrats!
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[End] There is an article on the paper in RenewEconomy, which also has a link to a discussion with RBD on the Energy Insiders podcast reneweconomy.com.au/death-spiral...
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6. The mechanism of transferring gas network liabilities to electricity networks could be used even if gas networks were asked to take a (partial) haircut and/or if gov't offered compensation – in each case, just transfer a smaller amount to the electricity RAB. RBD considers these policy decisions
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5. RBD describes the gas network liabilities being transferred to "relevant" electricity networks – all electricity networks? Just the ones overlapping with gas networks? This is a can of worms he sidesteps as a policy question.
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4.b. RBD also thinks that electricity networks can "make room" for the additional regulatory payment liabilities, because gas electrification means the electricity network fixed costs will "flatten the duck curve" and be shared across more electricity usage.
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4.a. RBD proposes an interim step of creating a new financial instrument (a "delta asset") that, he thinks, will reduce the regulatory payment liabilities as they shift from the gas RAB to the electricity RAB. This is a key idea of the paper.
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4. RBD thinks the gas RAB should be reduced and the electricity RAB should be increased – i.e. regulatory payment liabilities should be transferred from (the decreasing number of) gas consumers to electricity consumers
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3. For the purpose of his paper, RBD assumes network investors won't be asked to take a haircut and governments won't bail the networks out. That leaves consumers to pay.
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Here is my super short, simplified version of Dr Ron Ben-David's (RBD's) paper:
1. The gas transition is assumed
2. This means some portion of the gas regulatory asset base (RAB) would go unpaid under current arrangements and/or we'd have an unjust gas spiral.
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"For years, we heard the objection: “No one wants green homes.” But now the data is clear. Australians want them. They’ll pay more for them. And they’re searching for them in growing numbers."
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"[Sustainable housing] means built with low-emissions materials, low-energy consuming, and meeting or exceeding 7-star NatHERS benchmarks. It also means expanding the ‘missing middle’ of medium-density homes with dual occupancies, townhouses, terraces and smaller apartment buildings."
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"But energy efficiency isn’t the whole story. This month we launched Our Homes Weigh a Tonne, which finds the average new all-electric Australian home generates 185 [tCO2-e] during construction... That same home will emit 24 tonnes over 60 years in operation, and close to zero if powered by solar"
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"As Australia heads to Bonn to lobby to host COP31 in 2026, it does so happy in the knowledge of a new permission space for fossil fuel fatalism emerging globally. And it won’t feel any shame about it until we grow the language to describe it."
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"The climate movement is ill-equipped to deal with a threat that looks like this. The easy binary of deniers vs believers died last decade. Any fantasy of a global moral pact of good intentions is dead. This decade we are realising how much damage and death can be caused openly, without any shame"