ZeroEm said:
BobBob said:
Hillhater said:
^^^^ So how does that help in any way towards the “climate crisis” ?
Using brown coal to produce Hydrogen.....huge waste of energy ....and huge production of CO2, just so japan doesnt have to burn coal/oil, leaving Oz to take the CO2 rap !
The words profit and greed spring to mind .
( and they did not even bother to fuel the ship with hydrogen
)
I'm on the fence on this one, they say
"If the partners eventually scale the project up to 225,000 tonnes a year, they plan to make carbon-neutral hydrogen by burying the carbon dioxide released in the process under the seabed offshore Victoria."
I don't see hydrogen production this way much different than all the CO2 being pumped out by China to refine nickel, lithium, copper, cobalt, steel, manganese etc for battery cell production. The biggest reason why these metals are expensive is because of the amount of energy it takes to refine them aside from abundance.
The upside of producing Hydrogen this way vs burning fossil fuel via combustion vehicles is you aren't creating other harmful gases like carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx) , hydrocarbons, particles, volatile organic compounds and sulfur dioxide etc, and having them pumped around in concentration in city areas.
I visited Traralgon about 10 years ago where all of Victoria's major coal mines/power-stations are and it's a lovely town, everything seems quite brand new even though the town has been around for a long time. The shopping district area seemed like it was brand new, I thought it would be a great place to bring up a family.
I went there during the summer and I couldn't smell anything, it all seemed clean and green even though you could see at least one massive coal-power plant in the distance if you stood in the right spot.
When they had the sudden announcement of Hazelwood power-station shutdown I felt bad for the people that lived there at the thought a part of the town would die.
The story of the Hazelwood power-station being suddenly shut down (the power-station owners gave 6months notice) gave a special window into how clueless and crazy state governments are.
The Vic state government were desperate for more money so they came up with a "genius" idea to just triple the royalties tax to mine coal in the area that fed the power-station, they just assumed the power-stations would just blindly accept it.
The gov was so clueless as to what was about trouble they were going to cause there is a seeing Daniel Andrews gov give a tough words threat speech on the TV news saying "if the Hazelwood coal-power station even thinks of raising electricity prices then we will come down on them like a ton of bricks! Don't even think about it!"
Victoria's own mining tax to triple as treasurer gouges brown coal for revenue
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/victorias-own-mining-tax-to-triple-as-treasurer-gouges-brown-coal-for-revenue-20160422-gocymk.html
It was only about 1 month after the announcement to triple the coal royalties tax did the Hazelwood coal-power-station announce they would shutdown FOREVER in 6 months time.
Hazelwood owner 'driven out of town' by Daniel Andrews: Frydenberg
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/hazelwood-owner-driven-out-of-town-by-daniel-andrews-frydenberg-20161104-gsicnq.html
Every time I hear a greeny leftist say "coal gets way more subsidies that green renewable energy" I think about the Hazelwood story where they were literally taxed out of being a viable business, if it wasn't for the sudden tripling of the taxes to mine the coal then they wouldn't have shut down like they did, where are these magical coal subsidies we keep hearing about?
There are a bunch of charts whole sale electricity costs by state like this one below on the web, as soon as the announcement about the shutdown of Hazelwood announced, the cost of wholesale electricity basically doubled, you can see that only mostly wind-powered South Australia were on another level with crazy expensive electricity prices, but after Victoria's Hazelwood shutdown the whole eastern side electricity grid instantly caught up to their dumb price level.
It was clear to me that Hazelwood was largely only really running as a somewhat favor to Victoria and the local towns keeping all those jobs and industry that relied on a lot of electricity going, but the Daniel Andrews government could not have been more clueless about the situation, I think Daniel Andrews government believed their newly installed ~1000MW of wind farms was going to out do the need for Hazelwood, they were so clueless that there are no real words to describe it.
^Before Hazelwood shutdown about $40MW/h AUD in wholesale electricity market and then very abruptly over $100MW/h AFTER Hazelwood shutdown. Simple "supply and demand law" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqeRnxSuLFI people need electricity but not enough supply.
And this is the reason why no one is willing to invest and build any more fossil fuel power-stations in Australia, as it only takes one stupid crazy person in government who gets all their knowledge of the world via ABC broadcast TV to say "hey, lets just triple the tax on coal that feeds the power-stations, it will fix everything".
This is one of the major reasons why the coal-to-hydrogen pilot plant was subsequently created, to save more jobs and towns in the area.