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38 comments on National Liquid Fuels Vulnerability Assessment
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38 comments on National Liquid Fuels Vulnerability Assessment
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GAIA Host Collective
Rule number 1 in politics is never hold an enquiry into something where you don't know what the answer is, so I supect the minister is very well aware of Australia's vulnerability. The very title of the assesment has been couched in a negative term (vulnerability) rather than a positive term (outlook). This gives us a hint of what the government is thinking but wants someone else to actually deliver the bad news.
I suspect that Ferguson has read the MacNamara report, taken it all in and then let out a very long but quiet "Shiiiiiiitttt this is bad".
IMHO I think that he needs to get Peak Oil on the agenda early in the governments first term so that we can start the inevitable CTL vs GHG debate. Fergie will be all for CTL as will a number of other key ministers and Rudd will try to project himself above it all and apply a paternalistic even hand.
Linc Energy is well on the way to completing their pilot Underground Coal Gassification process combined with liquids production.
http://www.lincenergy.com.au/
If this technology pans out, we will have no shortage of liquid fuels in Australia by 2015 at the cost of substantial increases in CO2 emissions.
Regarding Nukes and the ALP, a deal was done to allow Uranium mining but reject nuclear reactors for oz. It was a great political move.
From a global perspective, if the CTL technology like Linc's work out, humans will be sorely tempted to increase the CO2 concentration way over 600 PPM.
As it happens I've just about finished a post on CTL in Oz.
Ferguson is very enthusiastic about it - global warming be damned (though both the major initiatives present themselves as "clean coal")...
I'll be very interested to see the post!
I learned a lot of your concentrating solar power article but I think you were rather optimistic on cost especially M&O and the impact of non-sunny days.
Take proponents cost projections with a huge a grain of salt, especially when they're asking for "launch aid" :-)
CTL post is up now - not too many comments so far.
At the end of the day I think CSP has the most potential to provide the bulk of our energy needs in a way that doesn't have a lot of nasty side effects and can be replicated fairly rapidly and across a large swathe of the planet.
I hope Ausra can make it as cheap as they claim - but even if it works out to be in the 7-10 cents per kWh range, I think that is a price worth paying - we just need to get cracking on the efficiency side of things so that as many people as possible find this price affordable.