Comments by "" (@pwillis1589) on "'Most important information missing' from renewables conversation is 'cost of transition'" video.

Considerable cheaper than replacing a coal plant every 50 years, and what, coal plants don't need maintenance?
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@batmanlives6456 It is good to see some intelligent reasonable discussion on this topic. There is lot of rubbish said on this topic. I'm not, but my wife in in the electricity business.
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In the US almost all their Nuclear powered electricity is government subsidised. It is the only way it can be made affordable to compete. I acknowledge some renewables are currently subsidised but so are fossil fuels. This discussion really needs to be informed.
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@AximandTheCursed Yelling does not make it a fact. Where I live coal in all its form in subsidised by my tax dollars. All the means of transportation from the fuel in the machinery to the railways to the coal loaders have state subsidies to reduce its cost to the consumer. Next before the electricity industry was sold off to private industry it was gold plated with my tax dollars to make it more attractive to private industry to reduce their maintenance costs. Some of there subsidies are open to all industry but others like a desiel fuel rebate are direct fossil fuel subsidies, obviously I can't speak to where you live but these are the facts here. I am not concerned why Nuclear energy is subsidised the fact remains it is and that is the only reason it is affordable.
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@AximandTheCursed Without yelling, the future of nuclear energy is not large fissionable reactors that are not cost efficient it is SMRs, they have some issues but they can be mitigated.
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@AximandTheCursed I assume you understand why large fissionable reactors require regulation. In the real world where I live not only is the construction and regulatory costs prohibitive it is almost politically a fantasy world to even suggest nuclear power is an option. When I mentioned SMRs and some of the limitations you rightly pointed out some of them but one issue that isn't is thorium and liquid salt SMRs are very safe and that factor might get them over the line. If a producer was to order a 100 say and dot them right through a country they can easily power small rural communities cost effectively. Now all we need to deal with is the waste, the most poisonous substance on the planet for 25000 years. What is the obsession with burning stuff? Where I live the free market has already made the decision to invest in renewable energy, no investor in my country will even look at a fossil fuel burning power plant. Forget about CO2 emissions, all they are concerned with is good returns on capital investment. That's capitalism, seems to have done as well the last 150 years, seems a reasonable bet for the future.
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@AximandTheCursed Once again where I live the fossil fuel industry attracts government subsidies 3 to 4 times more than the renewable industry. These include desiel fuel rebates, subsidies to coal transport infrastructure, discount price of coal to coal power plants and gas is so expensive in Australia the government regulates how much energy companies can sell it for. All up it totals $11 billion a year as opposed to $3 billon for renewables, this is common knowledge and is in the public domain. Green energy in the form of hydrogen is more than capable of being used in the heaviest of industries and no CO2 emissions. China is an unique situation in that a very large population has risen very quickly from a low base to high level of affluence. This has come at a great cost to the environment and one which even the Chinese acknowledge and they are taking measures to control their CO2 emissions, but it is not an easy fix. There have been huge uptakes in renewables in China admittedly from a very low base. In the future some nucs will be able to incinerate waste but that technology is not here yet. Finland is a storage facility and lots of people just don't like the idea of one near them. Selfish but true. Yes Australia is predominantly powered by coal, but as an example one state South Australia which was once entirely powered by coal only 15 years ago is now virtually 100% renewable. Yes there is some gas and other bits and pieces, but South Australia still maintains its steel and aluminium smelters. Australia is rapidly taking up renewables, in fact no private investors will put any money into fossil fuels power generation in Australia other than federal and state governments who are building gas plants with tax payers money.
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@AximandTheCursed You can't just continue a discussion by simply ignoring the reality of fossil fuel subsidies that are not in any way shape or form tax offsets, just saying the opposite is not an argument. South Australia has now some of the cheapest electricity in the country, your information is outdated and was from the period of transition . Except for WA all states in Australia use interconnectors it is how the AMEO manage electricity use, they are part of the infrastructure of the electrical market and cost SA no more or less than any other state. As technology increases and the cost of fossil fuels increase the cost of hydrogen will come down in exactly the same way as wind and solar have. The problem of transportation has been solved. I'm not a chemist but somehow it is mixed with ammonia and then extracted at the user end. The world is moving forward coal is just 1930 technology we are smarter than that.
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@George Mann Not to mention the radioactive waste that is the most poisonous substance on the planet. It lasts day and night for 25000 years.
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@bludeuce3855 This is a strawman making your statement fallacious and illogical. No one is suggesting using just wind and solar, there are several other types of renewable electricity generation. The UK 50 years ago was almost entirely coal powered electricity and now there a many days where coal use is nil.
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@paulbarnham8924 Do you know what a strawman arguement is? The irony in your comment was you strawmaned my comment about strawman arguements making your comment totally illogical. I never suggested or argued other fossil fuels were not being used, just that coal wasn't. I am not sure about the UK market, but the US nuclear power industry is heavily subsidised by governments to make it affordable. I don't know about you but I am not overly happy living next door to a nuc waste dump with some of the poisonous substances in the world for the next 25000 years, but to each their own.
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@George Mann Actually it is the reverse if you are capable of going off grid and support yourself you will still be forced to subsidise the poles and wires delivering power to the single mother.
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@George Mann Not were I live. Where I live governments both state and federal subsidise the fossil fuel industry to the tune of $11 billion a year, renewable subsidies are only $3 billion.
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@George Mann SMRs are definitely in the power generation mix, however in reality in the short to mid term, in some societies nuclear is just politically to bigger a stretch. A mix of renewable, batteries, some fossil fuel and SMRs is in reality the short to mid term future.
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@George Mann Not where I live. Yes in rural and remote locations, but in the city even if you don't use the poles and wires you pay for them. It's legislated.
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@George Mann No, not where I live. Coal and gas are already more expensive per megawatt than renewables. There is no point saying nonsense the free market where I live has already decided and no one will invest in fossil fuel power generation. The game is over wind and solar won.
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@George Mann Where I live whole industrial grids are powered by renewables and the steel and aluminium smelters are still running. No need for nuc, coal, or gas. With a little imagination it can be done.
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Because what Paul Murray said was nonsense.
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Good point. SMR are definitely part of the future mix of energy production
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What if that interconnector is from Tasmania where 98% of power is renewable?
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Ask a Texan how reliable fossil fuels and nuclear power is?
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@George Mann What power source was powering Antartica that week? Wind. Why do the wind turbines in the north of Canada produce electricity. As a percentage of power production in Texas renewables are quite small but as a percentage of failure during that cold spell they were less than the fossil and nuc failure. They all failed not through regulation but because of the lack of it. Power companies were not forced to winterise their equipment and didn't because it would eat into profit. As well Texas is not part of the national grid system and as such there is a limited ability to interconnect to others states to draw power from. A minor note the cost to winterise nucs gas and coal is huge. The cost to winterise a wind turbine is relatively cheap, some grafite heating elements added to the blades.
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@George Mann Wind power has reduced the use of half a million litres of oil a year in Antarctica at this stage. Wind power almost exclusively powers Australian research facilities and they even help power the American base. Your details on the failure rates and costs do not match in any way with what I have read or the analysis if have seen. If the cost to winterise a nuc plant is nil and minor for the others then why was it not done in Texas, that makes no sense. Wind power works in the cold, and I never suggested you rely solely on it.
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Sorry that is incorrect desiel is the main energy source at the Australian base, but it is boosted by wind and solar and to the American base, as well renewable use continues to grow.
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@George Mann My recollections of wind power generation in Antarctica were off. What was actually the case was in the week of the collapse of the Texas power grid. The Australian bases in Antarctica were entirely powered by wind and solar. Diesel is however the main source of power, it just wasn't needed that week.
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@George Mann Yes wind and solar has reduced the consumption of diesel use in Antarctica by 500000 litres. Renewable use continues to grow there.
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And what coal, gas, and nuclear plants don't wear out and need maintenance?
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@jaya9753 That's right wind and solar is significantly cheaper on all counts.
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@jaya9753 That must have been soul destroying for you to have wasted your time working on something completely worthless. I will now have to adjust my position and go out and buy that V8 deseil 4x4 and not complain about my tax dollars subsidising the fossil fuel industry. I can only hope my grandkids don't end living next door to a nuclear waste dump.
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@jaya9753 Yep fairly shallow and a deliberate strawman arguement easy to see through, much as the idea that we just keep going burning carbon to our hearts content to make electricity. I lost count on how many strawman arguments you threw in there. I certainly never suggested the cost of manufacturing is carbon free and of course all private industry is in the business of making money. No climate scientist has ever suggested that the warming of the planet by 3 degrees in a relatively short period will destroy the planet, but it will make it unliveable in certain parts. Only uniformed public and media have made this claim. Yes the planet has been warmer however this change in temperature was over millions of years. We absolutely know since the mid 19th century the properties of CO2 and how along with methane and others it is a greenhouse gas. Solar cells are 100% renewable it is just not an economical option at this point in time. We are and have been and continue to bulldoze millions of hectares every year, for food and mining I'm sure the area for solar generation areas can be accommodated, and vast quantities of solar generation is from roof tops anyway. As the the reflection of solar panels you got me there as I have not heard this before but generally speaking solar panels absorb the heat from the sun that's how they make electricity I really don't know how much is reflected back, and I will read into this. The overwhelming opinion of economists and scientists is burning coal is expensive and dirty and there are cheaper cleaner ways to create electricity. We will of course continue to pump a certain amount of carbon into the atmosphere in our manufacturing process but even this can be mitigated to certain extent with the use of green hydrogen, burning coal is just so 19th century thinking. It is 2021.
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@jaya9753 I clearly pointed out the strawman fallacies you said in your comment. There has been considerable resources put into clean coal technology and not a lot of positives have come out, but yes in the future there maybe some positives. I should have been clearer in my point about parts of the planet becoming uninhabitable I meant areas that are now inhabited and will require large scale migration. Unfortunately you have slide over into hasty generalisation fallacies and wild conspiracy theories about climate science that is very hard to respond to logically. Of course if you make money out of making electricity it doesn't matter how, all you are interested in is how cheaply and efficiently you can make hence why fossil fuel companies are, and in particular where I live investing in renewables. That is the free enterprise system. Just commonsense.
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@jaya9753 "Climate scientists are an industry of hundreds of billion dollars a year on its own" is just a straight out hasty generalisation fallacy that implies conspiracy and just makes your argument illogical. As I said before no climate scientist has ever suggested the planet is going to die due to a 1,2, or even 3 degree warming. That is a strawman in the context you said it. Low lying parts of Bangladesh are extremely vulnerable to even a minor increase in sea levels. Next strawman. I never suggested that CO2 levels have not varied in the planets 4.2 billion years, and the geographic history clearly shows sea levels have varied wildly in that 4.2 billion years. The ice core samples from Antarctica the conspiratorially group of climate scientists have taken show the correlation over the last million years of CO2 to temperature and as the CO2 ppm has shot through the roof in the last 150 years matched with the observed rise in temperature they in have theorised humans have caused it. This is not my opinion. Let go of a pen in your hand. That is gravity. That is a scientific theory as well. As close as a fact as we can get, but nothing is certain. I can reference over 20000 scientific peer reviewed papers that all agree humans are causing the climate to change. I understand that won't mean anything to you as you consider they are all in a conspiracy. Me, I live in the real world.
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Geological history not geographic.
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@jaya9753 You have just gone full blown conspiracy theory, the overwhelming science says the planet has warmed and humans did it, and talking about magazine articles about ice age cooling, no peer reviewed scientific papers were ever published saying a ice age was coming. This makes it difficult for me to continue any further when all I am doing is pointing out your fallacious statements. Don't you think if they could the fossil fuel industry with all their resources would get a climate scientist to publish a peer reviewed scientific paper that Anthropological climate change was false. Not one exists.
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@jaya9753 I ended the discussion in my previous comment, and yet to felt compelled to continue with your conspiracy theories and I am the uneducated, and so you ended with an ad hominem fallacy proving the illogical content of your arguement.
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A fairly vacuous comment from Paul Murray, I wonder how he explains the huge jump in electricity prices in coal powered electricity under the Abbot government. I know why but I wonder if he does. Next point fossil fuels in Australia have been enjoying huge government subsidies and tax breaks for years. Two example are the federal diseil fuel rebate and the state payments to coal railways, but there are heaps more. Renewables of course have and do receive subsidies, but if all things are equal renewables come out cheaper, and yes there will be some one off capital costs as some infrastructure is better aligned to suit renewables but once again these costs are much cheaper than building more coal fired plants. Coal will run out, but the wind and sun will always be there. As well renewable infrastructure is all 100% renewable itself, it is just at this stage it is not cost effective, and I am sure some smart entrepreneur will work out how to make it profitable soon enough.
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