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tscmacdonald.bsky.social
Energy & decarbonisation by way of physical chemistry and spin stuff. Sometimes folk music and dance.
249 posts 310 followers 405 following
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Posts 13 Comments 37

The market won't - and can't - save us, as climate transition needs the voluntary destruction of significant market value (=fossil assets). Markets are good tools for local optimisation problems withinin clear boundaries. It's insane to rely on them for the existential challenge of decarbonisation.

submitted 22 hours ago • 0 comments

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02... $2.4b in govt support for the Whyalla steelworks! Including $1.9b in capex support for the new owner (which can surely only be Rio?) - that sure seems like a lot of public underwriting with unclear public benefit for a soon-to-be-sold private asset

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

Valued guest author on @wattclarity.bsky.social, Allan O'Neil has fallen down a rabbit hole in providing us this wonderful explanation: wattclarity.com.au/articles/202... ... why the spot price is *not* simply just the highest-price bid dispatched!

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

Are energy-only markets like the NEM actually more effective at delivering flexible capacity than US-style capacity markets? We hear lots of concern about capacity shortfalls, but capacity is what volatile NEM price signals clearly *can* deliver. New bulk energy supply seems much, much harder!

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Big spend here on on-site gas storage! I'm not sure if local fuel store requirements are avoidable on the grid we're heading towards, but I also don't really see the case for $450m+ of labyrinthine HP gas lines vs a big ol' tank of diesel at likely future capacity factors.

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

The past few weeks have seen some huge industrial policy announcements pass Australia's Federal parliament, including the Future Made in Australia Production Tax Credits and the $2bn green aluminium package. I want to explain why I think these are critical - but also what else is needed.

submitted 19 days ago • 4 comments

reneweconomy.com.au/agl-targets-... An absolutely massive and increasingly undeniable free rider problem here: major energy co's are spending billions on batteries to cash in on volatile market prices, but have near-zero interest in building the new renewables that will supply bulk demand.

submitted 20 days ago • 1 comment

un-AUSTRALIAN

submitted 25 days ago • 2 comments

Rare auspol thought: we're about to enter a campaign where candidates will struggle for attention against a backdrop of daily US chaos and corruption. The ALP should commit to establishing a federal ICAC. No need to mention the US; just talk about corruption every day and ride the wave of salience.

submitted 30 days ago • 1 comment

i am grateful to Trump and especially Musk for making so powerful and visceral a case that wealth taxes — at levels quite confiscatory for a while, to remedy past lassitude — are an absolute necessity, prerequisite to a sustainable democratic society.

submitted 30 days ago • 4 comments

I think countries around the world should levy tariffs specifically on Tesla in response to US tariffs, as well as banning Twitter as a national security threat driving a wedge between our co-dictators may be the most effective thing they can do

submitted 31 days ago • 742 comments

I think it's now clear that local culture is simply not compatible with allowing foreign tech to monopolise entire spheres of human expression. If we value a future where culture is in anyway local - and I think we should - agglomerators like Spotify or Netflix to be shunned and excluded.

submitted 31 days ago • 1 comment

Morning Aussie parochialism thought: it's wild that the Heathrow third runway project has been opposed on climate grounds for years, while Sydney has built an entirely new international airport seemingly without *any* discussion of what this means for decarbonisation.

submitted 31 days ago • 1 comment