Comments on: Australia’s coal industry takes public relations up a notch.

By: Finrod

Finrod — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:38:43 +0000

Since people don’t really want to give up the cheapness of coal power as expressed by monthly electricity bills they won’t take much convincing everything is OK.
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Is coal really cheaper in the long term?

http://channellingthestrongforce.blogspot.com/2008/11/affordable-power-for-future.html

By: John Newlands

John Newlands — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 22:03:25 +0000

Since people don’t really want to give up the cheapness of coal power as expressed by monthly electricity bills they won’t take much convincing everything is OK. Thus the coal industry may be able to prolong this charade for years. I found a succinct summary of coal technology problems here;
http://www.richardheinberg.com/MuseLetter/197
It’s a shame the PM is compromising his election promises by claiming large scale CCS is imminent. The other sticking point in Australia’s case is that 80% of clean black coal production is exported no questions asked. I suggest either the customer guarantees to use CCS or their tonnage is steadily cut, say by 5% a year. Now that would be a real political milestone.

By: Finrod

Finrod — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:56:10 +0000

“The graph on slide #4 is interesting, isn’t it – perhaps I’m misinterpreting it, but are Australia’s National Generators Forum really themselves predicting that nuclear energy will make up about 40% of Australia’s electricity supply by 2050, under a scenario achieving a 50% reduction in anthropogenic CO2 emission rates, over 2005 levels, by 2050?”
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It does look that way, doesn’t it? Perhaps it’s a mistake. This might have been their ’secret’ graph… the one they’re really working from, rather than the one which should have been there for public consumption.

I note that they have the first megawatts being pumped out by nuclear around 2017 or so. This seems to indicate that a policy decision in favour of nuclear power in Australia is anticipated within about 1-2 years. I also note that they see natural gas phased out by 2025. Interesting.

By: Marcel F. Williams

Marcel F. Williams — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:24:43 +0000

So called ‘clean coal’ doesn’t exist no matter how many times they advertise it on television.

The future of clean coal appears to be a bridge to nowhere.
CO2 sequestration into the oceans would add more toxic acidity of the marine environment. And underground CO2 sequestration would in the long run be far more hazardous than the burial of nuclear waste to any future civilizations who happened to drill into one of these huge underground CO2 pockets of suffocating gas.

http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/

By: G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996

G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996 — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:39:41 +0000

I agree that proposals to prevent the dispersal of 30 gigatonnes of CO2 per year are not serious. But there is the inconvenient fact — inconvenient if you want to simplify away the whole idea of CO2 capture and sequestration — that after the entropy increase of CO2 dispersal has occurred, a further entropy increase can be made to occur through its capture on dispersed surfaces of pulverized alkaline earth silicate minerals.

More at, and linked from, here.

By: Ed

Ed — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:24:09 +0000

Nice analysis Luke.

The ad campaign is a marketing stunt to prolong the life of an industry in serious jeopardy. The coal industry is nervous – as well they should be.