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Friday, April 26, 2013

NSW Government lies to electricity consumers

Extract from Media Release by The Hon Chris Hartcher, New South Wales Minister for Resources and Energy, Special Minister of State and Minister for the Central Coast

23 April 2013
"NSW electricity bills will continue to show the cost of Labor’s carbon tax following the release of the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal’s (IPART) draft pricing determination that estimates the carbon tax and green schemes component will increase to $330 for the typical household bill.
...
Energy Minister Chris Hartcher said that with the Government capping network price rises at CPI or below, the carbon tax and green schemes continue to drive up the price of electricity for NSW households.

“IPART estimates that NSW electricity bills would be $171 cheaper from 1 July if Labor scrapped its disastrous carbon tax,” Mr Hartcher said. "
What Mr Hartcher conceals is that personal income tax cuts averaging $520 per year were made to cover the cost of the carbon price. The Federal Coalition has promised to remove these income tax cuts.

Extract from Draft Report - Review of regulated retail prices for electricity 2013 to 2016

23 April 2013
Regulated electricity prices NSW, July 2013
Regulated electricity prices NSW, July 2013

The IPART review of electricity prices shows the carbon price and renewable energy generation has forced down the cost of electricity generation by 2.1 percent. The result is a REDUCTION of 1 percent in NSW electricity bills.

Unfortunately, there are increases of 0.4 percent for Network charges and 3.6 percent for Billling and Marketing charges by NSW electricity retailers.

These are responsible for the increase in NSW power bills of 3 percent on 1 July 2013.

Further deception by the NSW Government


The NSW Government has announced it will place a statement in red on all NSW electricity bills, falsely claiming that  "NSW Govt estimates that the Federal carbon tax and green energy schemes add about $330 a year to a typical 6.5MWh household bill – www.ipart.nsw.gov.au"

Struggling NSW families are missing out on $40 million in electricity rebates. Tony Abbott, the NSW Government and the media spray the public with carbon tax nonsense. The NSW Government is less interested in letting 540,000 families know they are eligible for rebates.

Fewer than a couple of thousand have applied for this money to help with rising power bills.

Find out about the secretive NSW electricity assistance package in the related post -

News blackout on carbon tax relief

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

News blackout on carbon tax relief

What people have to say:
  • Everybody knows about the carbon tax and when it kicked in. Why not this?
  • The NSW and Federal Governments provide certain people and households with rebates on their electricity bills, and other forms of help to meet their electricity costs.
  • The NSW Family Energy Rebate - up to $250 a year in rebates for energy costs.
  • There are 540,000 families out there in New South Wales who are eligible, but only a few thousand have applied.
  • The rebate remains largely a secret while the Australian news media ear-bashes people about the carbon price.
  • This will be a great help to struggling families.
  • We're very much appreciative of Channel 9 (on 16 April 2013) for promoting the scheme (which began on 1 July 2011).

Friday, April 12, 2013

Woodside LNG Project hits energy innovation wall

Mixed reaction as Woodside shelves Kimberley gas hub
ABC Rural, Friday April 12, 2013

RIL selects Phillips 66's E-Gas Technology


The Hindu Business Line | May 22, 2012

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on Tuesday announced it has selected Phillips 66’s E-Gas technology for its planned gasification plants at Jamnagar in Gujarat.
...
The largest gasification project in the world...

The planned gasification plants at Jamnagar will process petroleum coke and coal into synthesis gas utilizing the new technology. The synthesis gas will be used as feedstock for a new chemical complex and will fuel the refinery's existing gas turbine power generation units... (Read more...)

... The E-Gas technology has been utilized in commercial applications since 1987. It incorporates a gasification system design that can be applied with gas and steam turbine combined-cycle power generation to produce electric power, as well as synthesis gas applications for the production of hydrogen, chemicals or substitute natural gas in highly flexible combinations.

It is among the cleanest and most efficient commercial technologies for coal or petroleum coke-based electric power generation and syngas production. It offers high system efficiencies, minimized water consumption and very low emissions...


Using the technology China, India, Pakistan and other countries have acquired, Australia's energy needs can be met with no coal seam gas and half of its existing coal mine output.
  • The cost-savings for Australian industry are substantial. 
  • Australian industry would benefit from increased international competitiveness.


Related articles



Thursday, April 11, 2013

Farm machinery and road transport fuel choices

Three reasons why liquefied natural gas (LNG) and compressed natural gas (CNG) are looking good for fueling farm machinery and road transport. 

1. Tax a trucking disgrace
2. WHO confirms diesel fumes carcinogenic
3. How long could Australia thrive if our oil supplies were cut?

Many Trucking Companies Testing Natural Gas Conversion
Many Trucking Companies Testing Natural Gas Conversion

For more information on using LNG and CNG fuel see the related article -

1. Tax a trucking disgrace

FarmOnline | Thursday April 11, 2013

LIVESTOCK transporters and produce truckers are in the firing line to go broke under the federal government’s carbon tax scheme.

That’s the grim warning about the trucking industry’s future delivered by Australian Trucking Association (ATA) chairman David Simon in an address at the National Press Club in Canberra last week.
...
Mr Simon said the Clean Energy Package was based on the assumption that businesses would respond to the carbon tax by reducing their energy use or switch to renewable energy sources, and that businesses that cannot would be able to increase their prices, subsequently changing their customers’ behaviour.

But neither of these assumptions fit the commercial reality of the trucking industry, he said.

“Trucking businesses only have limited opportunities to reduce their energy use. Switching to renewables is not generally an option,” he said. (Read more ...)

2. WHO confirms diesel fumes carcinogenic

ABC News | The World Today | Lexi Metherell  | Wednesday June 13, 2012

Experts at the World Health Organisation (WHO) say diesel engine exhaust fumes can cause cancer in humans.

They say they belong in the same potentially deadly category as asbestos, arsenic and mustard gas.

After a week-long meeting, the International Agency for Research on Cancer reclassified diesel exhausts from its group of probable carcinogens, to its group of substances that have definite links to cancer. (Read more ...)

3. How long could Australia thrive if our oil supplies were cut?

NRMA Motoring Blog | NRMA Policy Team | March 20, 2013

Australia is the world’s ninth-largest energy producer and there are many renewable and non-renewable energy resources in our country. Despite this, we are heavily dependent on imports of refined petroleum products and crude oil to meet our liquid fuel demand.

With such a spread-out population, Australia relies heavily on road transportation to move goods and services around. Our transport system is more than 95 per cent dependent on oil.

Did you know that if the oil stopped coming, goods and services could dry up in just over a week? (Read more ...)

CARBON TAX SAVING AUSSIE JOBS - LIBERALS STILL IN DENIAL

Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) data shows that the carbon tax has saved Aussie jobs: an average of 20 less companies collapsed each month after the carbon tax began than in the corresponding period a year earlier.

Sophie Mirabella - Not the news

Sophie Mirabella, Shadow Minister for Industry, grabbed wrong ASIC data on company failures and penned a story -

"Carbon tax killing Aussie Jobs - Labor still in denial" | March 18, 2013
...
For the year to 1 March 2013, ASIC has registered a record 10,632 company collapses, almost 900 a month.
...
“Every time a company collapses, Australian jobs are lost,” said Sophie Mirabella, Shadow Minister for Industry, today.

What the data actually shows is that after the carbon price began, ASIC registered only 7,013 company collapses in the 8 months to 1 March 2013.

A year earlier, ASIC registered 7,191 company collapses in the 8 months to 1 March 2012.

The carbon tax has funded personal income tax cuts and clean technology grants to assist business improve efficiency and cut energy bills. This combination - higher disposable incomes for shoppers and lower business costs - has SAVED Aussie jobs AND saved Aussie businesses.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Australian coal industry and politicians argue with renewable straw man

... while China races to an unbeatable low-cost energy lead.

Straw man - a distraction from substantive issues
 Straw man - a distraction from substantive issues 
Governments of New South Wales and Queensland are addicted to royalties from coal mining and coal exports.

Both major Australian political parties in the federal government and opposition identify coal seam gas as a significant new revenue base in a Petroleum Resource Rent Tax.

These factors must be behind the incredibly silly debate within Australia that wastes newspaper columns, radio broadcasts and television news reports on lame energy policies of the Greens, Labor and Liberal parties.

China of course has no need to entertain such time-wasting and pointless debate. It is getting further and further ahead of Australia with expertise in advanced energy generation technology. This is giving China a world's best practice competitive advantage in cheap energy.

Using the technology China has acquired, Australia's energy needs can be met with no coal seam gas and half of its existing coal mine output.
  • The cost-savings for Australian industry are substantial. 
  • The loss of  royalties would create a significant headache for the New South Wales and Queensland state governments. 
  • Australian industry would benefit from increased international competitiveness.

Public debate over renewable energy targets, solar homes and cities, climate science and a carbon price are clever ways to avoid discussion of these facts. The coal royalty revenues of the New South Wales and Queensland State governments remain secure. The Australian Government's prospective revenue from a Petroleum Resource Rent Tax remains safely "in the bag".

Related articles



Friday, April 5, 2013

Earning income from a carbon price - extra information

IN SALAH

Industrial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) in action

In Salah, an industrial-scale CCS project in Algeria has been in operation since 2004. More than three million tonnes of CO₂, separated during gas production, have been securely stored in a deep saline formation. BP, Sonatrach and Statoil, the project operators, aim to store a total of 17 million tonnes over the next 20 years. (Read more...)



Coal industry delaying CO2 cuts for another 15 years

Why is Australia to spend over $1 billion on CarbonNet and take 15 years developing new Carbon Capture technology ----
 ---- when proven technology has existed for decades in the USA?



Santos Booklet "Moomba Carbon Storage project"



Science behind carbon storage validated


Monday, April 1, 2013

Australian media bias on carbon tax

Tony Abbott confronting a journalist asking tough questions

What the Australian Media DID Report


US inaction on carbon tax shows Australia isolated: Tony Abbott 

The Australian From: AAP January 22, 2013 
FEDERAL Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has pointed to the Obama administration's inaction on carbon pricing after the US president said more must be done to address climate change.
...
Asked if the president's speech meant Australia should do more to tackle climate change, Mr Abbott said the US Democratic administration had backed away from an emissions trading scheme.

"The interesting thing is that President Obama's administration has three times, in the last few months, explicitly ruled out a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme," he said.

"Now, all of us are concerned about climate change. All of us want to do the right thing by our planet. We all want to give the planet the benefit of the doubt.

"But we've got to have smart policies, not dumb policies, to do that."
(Read more ...)


Doorstop Interview, Forestville 

Tony Abbott Latest News Sunday, April 7, 2013 
...
QUESTION:

The Prime Minister has recently been praising other countries in Asia with regards to climate change. Do you think that you should leave the carbon tax alone?

TONY ABBOTT:

The carbon tax is damaging our economy. It is not doing any good for the environment.
No other country is imposing a carbon tax on its economy at that scale.
So one of the best things I can do for the families of Australia, one of the best things I can do for the job security of workers, one of the best things I can do to boost our economy and make things like the NDIS more affordable is scrap the carbon tax.

QUESTION:

When is the Coalition going to release its broadband policy?

...
(Read more ...)

This nation's a bit player in game theory of climate change policy 

The Australian Noel Pearson, The Australian, April 20, 2013 
...
Having committed Australian industry to a tax of $23 a tonne, rising to $24.15 on July 1, our country will pay while the rest of the world will not, and there is still no sign other countries will join us.
(Read more ...)

What the Australian Media DIDN'T Report


UK Government action on carbon tax shows Australia is not isolated 

HM Government
March 20, 2013 
The UK Government is acting to give private investors the confidence to invest in the UK’s energy sector.

From April 2013 the carbon price floor announced at Budget 2011 will come into effect, providing a clear and credible long-term signal to support investment in low carbon electricity generation.

[The carbon price floor starts at £16 ($AUD26.79) per tonne in April 2013 and has a target price for carbon of £30 ($AUD50.24) per tonne of carbon dioxide in 2020.]
(Read more ...)

University of Western Australia - Coalition's Direct Action plan may be impractical

HM Government
January 23, 2013 
NEW UWA research looking at the economic impacts of implementing soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration methods into farming practices, is showing that these impacts may prove impractical for farmers.
...
The authors found that while altering certain practices can be used to increase carbon sequestration it is costly and farmers would require high levels of compensation to make it a viable option.

By modeling the cost of these practices researchers estimate the profit lost for each additional tonne of CO2 stored on the model farm was $80.00 which is far more than the initial buying price of $23.00 per tonne under carbon tax legislation.

[It is 10 times more than the $8.00 per tonne estimate relied upon by Tony Abbott for costing the Coalition's Direct Action plan.]
(Read more ...)

Earning income from a carbon price

The notion that carbon dioxide-emitting industries and power stations MUST stop emitting carbon dioxide, regardless of the expense, and pass this increased expense onto customers is a widely held but WRONG belief.

It's easy to find criticisms of a carbon price and emission trading schemes. Reading these criticisms you could easily come to the conclusion that money ends up flying off to governments or foreign countries.

Information on how to earn an income from a carbon price is pretty scarce.

Every cloud has a silver lining and carbon pricing schemes are no different.

Suppose an industry can cheaply collect carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it.
  • It makes a lot of sense to pay this industry to collect as much carbon dioxide as possible. 
  • If it can collect carbon dioxide for, say, half of the cost that would be incurred by a power station to prevent the carbon dioxide being emitted in the first place, then it is obviously cheaper, and more profitable, to collect it later and DON'T BOTHER preventing the carbon dioxide being emitted by the power station.

Collecting carbon dioxide for extra income

A couple of ideas on earning income by collecting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as a byproduct from existing industries are described in the article Negative CO² emissions - Climate protection opens new business areas.

The Rumpke Sanitary Landfill near Cincinnati, Ohio collects landfill gas and upgrades it to pipeline-quality natural gas by separating carbon dioxide. No extra cost is involved. The process uses an XEBEC gas purification system. There is no new technology to be developed and commercialised.
XEBEC’s systems are being used worldwide to effectively remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from landfill, digester or well gas streams
XEBEC’s systems are being used worldwide
to effectively remove carbon dioxide (CO2)
from landfill, digester or well gas streams

Storing carbon dioxide for extra income

Want a new industry that generates $10 billion revenue?
Store one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide at a price of $10 per tonne.
Santos has designed one -


More information -

Earning income from a carbon price - extra information

Old plays won't save coal but a carbon tax could

Attempts to access this story had been unsuccessful throughout April. 
(Error message: Oops! Google Chrome could not find www.kentucky.com)
The original can be accessed (on May 3, 2013): Old plays won't save coal but a carbon tax could

The cached copy is reproduced below -

Published: March 31, 2013 Updated 6 hours ago


Bob Inglis, who directs the Energy and Enterprise Initiative, is a former Republican member of Congress from South Carolina.
Bob Inglis, who directs the Energy and Enterprise Initiative,
is a former Republican member of Congress
from South Carolina.


Coal built our economy but its future is grim — unless we find an alternative to EPA regulation of heat-trapping gases like CO². If we can clean it up, coal can be a useful resource for years to come. If we can't, it will ultimately become much less valuable.

Strange as it may sound, that's why the CEO of one of the world's largest coal companies is in favor of a carbon tax. Marius Kloppers figures that BHP Billiton has hundreds of years of coal in the ground in Australia. The problem is that his biggest customer, China, may tire of breathing dirty air. If they do and if the Chinese innovate around coal, BHP's inventory could be reduced to a 20- or 30-year salable commodity. So BHP wants to push coal up the technology curve.

Some U.S. coal companies are also investing in the long-term viability of America's most abundant energy resource. They're rightly asking for and are conducting research on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). If CCS could be combined with coal gasification technologies, it's possible that water vapor would be the only emission from coal-fired plants. That's a bold future — the kind of future that CEOs like Kloppers want to bring about.

The standard play is to try to slow the inevitable. And nowhere is it more standard than in Washington, D.C. The Environmental Protection Agency is under orders from the Supreme Court to regulate CO² as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. The EPA has drafted CO² regulations for new coal plants. Soon, EPA plans to regulate CO² from existing coal plants. When it does, coal will lose, quickly, to competitors like natural gas. This regulatory scenario gives coal no time to innovate.

The standard line from coal state representatives is, "Let's get together and try to stop those regulations." It's the same play textile states attempted when the rest of the country decided it liked cheaper, imported clothes. It's the same play tobacco states tried when the rest of the county decided to quit subsidizing smoking.
When something becomes inevitable — like the pricing of carbon — there's little to be gained from simply slowing government regulation. Endless litigation and aggressive congressional oversight may delay the onset of regulations but, like textiles and tobacco, the writing's on the wall.

Bluster may provide some cover to elected officials representing coal-dependent constituents, but it won't secure their constituents' future. Coal needs a different series of plays.

For coal, the right kind of CO² tax would be far better than pending CO² regulation. A well-planned and fair carbon tax would give coal time — time to try CCS, time for domestic users of coal-fired power to continue manufacturing here rather than moving production to non-CO² regulated countries, and time to continue exporting coal, tax-free.

The very different play for coal might look like this: Tax carbon upstream at the mine and at the pipeline. Pair that new carbon tax with a dollar-for-dollar reduction in other taxes so we don't grow the government and families have more money to cope with higher energy prices. Repeal Clean Air Act regulations that would be made redundant by the price on carbon. Make the new carbon tax border-adjustable so that it's removed on exports and imposed on imports.

The border-adjustable feature is critical in two ways. First, coal from the U.S. wouldn't be priced out of foreign markets because the U.S. carbon tax would be removed on export. Second, manufacturers who use coal-fired power in the U.S. would have level CO² costs with their foreign competitors. CO² pricing here wouldn't cause them to move their factories to a non-CO²-priced countries because imports would be taxed equally on CO² content.

Sometimes we find that something we've been doing for years has consequences we never envisioned. Years ago, who knew smoking caused cancer? Tobacco companies fought the inevitable conclusion of the research, but they ultimately lost. Now, some of the same people — literally some of the same people — are fighting the inevitable conclusion of chemistry and physics and the effects of greenhouse gasses. They will lose. Coal could lose with them.

Coal states have the opportunity to call the next series of plays. There's something better than "Up the middle, up the middle, up the middle, punt."

Related links:


Ex-GOP rep talks climate change solutions

Bob Inglis’ plan proposes market-based climate change solutions, like fuel taxes and subsidy cuts