The Oil Drum

Although its not highlighted in the policies on their website, the Democrats are well aware of Peak Oil. See http://sa.democrats.org.au/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=ar..., http://www.democrats.org.au/articles/index.htm?article_id=139, http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,21571863-5006301,00.htm... for more info on their position.

Its a pity that everyone's basically written off the Democrats as a spent force. From what I've seen, they have a far more realistic grasp of Peak Oil issues than any of the other parties.

Anyway, in mid October I contacted both the Coalition and Labor via the feedback mechanisms on their websites, asking about their renewable energy policies and their planning (if any) for peak oil.

I didn't receive a response from the Coalition, but Labor sent me the following:-

Labor believes Australia's abundance of clean energy resources such as wave, wind, solar and geothermal are crucial to meeting the challenge of climate change. A strong and well-supported renewable energy sector will help reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions, grow jobs and support
an innovative clean energy export industry.

ALP Campaign Information Services

Also taking a holistic (homogenous) approach to energy is naiive and deluded. Please Mr Howard, tell me how nuclear power is going to run my car?

I think keeping electricity in your house is far more important than trying to maintain the car culture that got us here in the first place.
John Howard's got this one right.

I went and saw my local Coalition MP - he did not know what "Peak Oil" was - he'd never heard of it. I explained it, his eyes widened as the implication sunk in.

The Coalition response was totally pathetic, that Labor didn't reply is worrying. I will vote Greens - they really do have their head around this issue as well as others.

Peak Oil will kick Australia's economy in the guts - mining, tourism and transport. We need to start investing in a Solar-Electric near future.

He's not the only high profile environmentalist supporting the Coalition these days;

Greens astounded as Flannery backs Turnbull

In The Age newspaper today the Australian of the Year says he would vote for Mr Turnbull, and that Federal Parliament needs more people like him to tackle climate change.

Strange times indeed...

Ahh, cheers Saturn.

I just googled up the CCC website and the extent of their Peak Oil policy appears to be a link to ASPO Australia and this one line about Peak oil in their FAQ section:

Q. Is Peak Oil real?

A. Climate Change Coalition believes Peak Oil is real. Worldwide oil production is unlikely to exceed 85 million barrels per day by any significant amount.

http://climatechangecoalition.com.au/home.html

but he’s just another baby boomer flake trying madly to preserve the un-preservable.

Well said SaturnV the Dr has joined the CCC as a political pansy and would wilt like a flower in the face of any real pressure from from the Biz end of town. The CCC are really a bunch of Al Goreites tryibg to cash in on green energy.

Karl Sven Woytek Sas Konkovitch Matthew Kruszelnicki.

The major political parties have sold voters a furphy by claiming clean coal technology will be a reality in Australia one day, a well-known scientist says.

Scientific commentator and broadcaster Karl Kruszelnicki, who is running for the Senate on the Climate Change Coalition ticket, today said clean coal technology was physically impossible.

Dr Kruszelnicki said the major parties were lying to the Australian people when they claimed carbon dioxide could be removed from the burning of coal and then compressed and stored underground or underwater.

He said this would require one cubic kilometre of compressed carbon dioxide to be stored every day.

"That is the volume of compressed carbon dioxide that we have to get rid of - not every 10 years, not every year, but every single day," Dr Kruszelnicki said.

"It's just not technologically possible.

I guess that Australia will use proven, off the shelf, commercially available technology like wind, solar, nuclear, and sodium sulfur batteries.
Unproven technologies are just going to have to wait their turn.

I'll just deal with the question of reducing our reliance on coal for electricity; dealing with using something other than oil would make this comment excessively long.

My home uses 5.8kWhr a day, about 4 of which is our fridge. I'm here in Melbourne, we use no AC or heating at all. We just turn on the fan and have a cold drink, or put on a jumper and have a hot drink. We have an electric blanket for cool nights. We have TV, two computers, a stereo, and they all see a decent amount of use. We use CFLs, turn off apliances when not in use, etc.

The average Australian, says the ABS, used 20.9GJ of energy in their house. 48.7% of this was electrical energy, and since there are 3.6MJ in 1kWhr, this makes 2830kWhr, or 7.75kWhr a day. So our two person household, we'd expect to use 15.5kWhr daily. In fact as I said we use 5.8kWhr. So we're using 37% of average.

So I think it's trvially simple for the average Australian household to use 50% less electrical energy without in any way compromising their lifestyle or causing themselves discomfort. I think voluntary conservation can work.

People respond to the calls made on them by leadership. In recent years there's been advertising about reducing domestic water use, and some pretty mild restrictions. It says here that

Household water use decreased by 8 per cent from 2278 gigalitres in 2000-01 to 2108 gigalitres in 2004-05. Sixteen per cent of households were reusing or recycling household water, representing a significant increase from 11 per cent in 2000–01.

Since in 2001 we apparently had 18.97 million people, and in 2005 we had 20.19 million, a 6.4% increase in population, we've gone from using 120kl each to 104kl, a decline of 9%.

In our own home we use 27kl each annually, simply by short showers, using laundry and bath water on the garden, and so on. Of course many people will do nothing - I've an acquaintance fresh from Germany who has 40 minute showers, after all (using in one shower what one of we two uses in a week) - but others will do more, so that it balances out, and we come up with an overall reduction. So with more encouragement in advertising we could see a reduction of about 18-25% overall, I think. Let's be conservative and call it 20%.

Now, if we can do it with water, I don't see why we can't do it with electricity. When we had the natural gas blowout ten years ago, people responded well to the public pleas not to use the gas still in the pipes. If they'll put up with significant inconvenience for a couple of weeks, they'll put up with mild reductions forever, I think. But there have been no such calls. This surprises me. Recently we had the coal mine at the Yallourn power station get flooded, it's only at about 1/4 of its 1,500MW capacity - and that's about 1/4 of the state's baseload power, so it's significant. Since we got a couple of 30+C days, I thought there might be calls for us to show some restraint with AC and such to avoid any blackouts, but nope.

Going on the water experience, though, I think that a 20% reduction in per capita household electricity use is quite achieveable. Commerce and industry would have to follow. Commerce can manage it - about half of commercial buildings leave their machinery, lights and airconditioning on when no-one's there at night, wasting 1/3 of their power overall. If we could get them to stop that, it's 17% of commercial power use saved immediately without effort. So they only need to find another 3% of savings to match what households can do.

Thus, voluntary conservation can give us 20% electricity consumption drop, which means a 20% reduction in consumption of coal in Australia (almost all coal used is by power stations).

I agree that "unproven technology", such as geosequestration of CO2, won't give us any reductions - or at least, we shouldn't rely on it. Let's use proven technology, like wind power. Denmark, which has had wind power since the 1970s, in 2005 produced 18.5% of its total electricity from wind turbines. In 1996, the Danes set themselves the target of getting 40% their energy from wind by 2030. So basically from now until 2030 they'll be adding 1% of their total electricity consumption in wind power.

Now, producing wind power does involve some carbon emissions, from mining the ore for the metal for it, the crane raising it into position, even down to the concrete base. This gives the energy payback period of two to three months for new designs, and a year for old designs. But we'll assume that we Aussies produce the things more sloppily than the Danes of thirty years ago, and have a payback period of two years. This gives us CO2-equivalent emissions of 0.04kg/kwWhr for wind power, as against 1.21kg CO2e/kWhr for black coal (though most Aussie coal-fired power comes from brown coal, which is worse - but let's present it as pessimistically as we can for renewables!) So wind has 3% the emissions of coal over its lifetime. And so converting 18.5% to 40% of our electricity from being got from coal to wind will actually only reduce emissions by 18-39%.

And so we have,
Conservation, 20%
Conversion to wind, 18-39%

leaving somewhere between 12% to find elsewhere, or 9% more reductions in emissions than the 50% you describe.

I think I've spoken about it enough, so suffice to say that between solar and geothermal and wave and biomass, I think the prospects of a 50% reduction in coal-burning, using proven technology and voluntary conservation, are pretty good.

If our conservation of electricity is only as fast as that of water has been (9% in 4 years), then the 20% reduction can be hit in 9 years. Assuming building renewable energy is the same rate as the Danes, 1% of total supply annually, then the 18.5% can be hit by 2026, and the 30% substitution mark, or overall 50% reduction, can be hit by 2037. A 20% conservation and 40% substitution, or overall 60% reduction in coal use, could be hit by 2047. The most ambitious target is that of the Greens, 30% greenhouse gas reduction by 2020 and 80% by 2050. In terms of electricity generation, my plan would exceed theirs (32% vs 20%) in 2020, but fall short in 2050 (62% vs 80%). My plan would vastly exceed that of all the other parties'.

When you said you didn't think the reductions could happen "quickly", you didn't say how long "quickly" was. As I've shown, it's quite feasible to achieve very significant reductions in emissions from electricity generation by conservation (20% by 2016) and substitution (1% annually) using proven technologies. I don't know if you count that as "quickly" or not.

Of course here I'm only talking about emissions from electricity generation, but that is after all what you said you were sceptical we could reduce by 50%; to deal with everything that produces emissions would be the subject of an article, not a comment on an article. Suffice to say that it stands to reason that if we can do it with electrical generation, we should be able to do it in other areas of the economy - again, using proven technology.

Australian greens appear to be supporting more work on second generation biofuels. This is in contrast to US greens who are aiming to move away from combustion based technology entirely. But, I think that you are making a mistake to think that they are suggesting that second generation biofuels are an immediate answer. They are supporting expanded research.

Greens everywhere tend to be interested in prosperity. So, the Australian greens are urging roads to rails (proven technology) as a way to make everyone's life easier and better. Getting people where they need to go faster and in greater comfort is a good thing. It also addresses the issues of peak oil and pollution.

Chris

elwoodelmore--
Blair was the poodle--
Howard was the lap dog, which Bush gave a pet to when ever energy or GW came up and the Lap Dog barked the BushCo party line.
He will be missed by the Neothugs.