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The Greens like them and want to implement them, not just for GHG's. Rudd's CPRS was so heavily modified it looked more like a tax than a trading scheme. Nobody likes to destroy the economy for political expediency, which is what your scheme would do. Even politicians shy away from that. We need to keep this up for half a century or more. People are going to realise if they have an inferior scheme, reject it, and put us back to the drawing board. How much time would that waste?

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Tell me muso, how many hard nosed investors are going to make a ten year investment that relies on subsidies that are likely to be removed at the next election?

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Making the right choice is just as important as making it soon.

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Duh.

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But what has this cost Germany in terms of their overall strategy? Are they still moving ahead? Or are they now going backwards because the public is baulking at the cost of their fanciful schemes?

Equitist wrote on Aug 13^th, 2010 at 11:27am:


Let's discuss this over on Environment if you like. I would suggest that you're talking about a fear of the unknown, like most people in Australia, who don't have a clue about the nuclear industry .

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Smoking carries several thousand times the risk of a properly designed (fail safe) nuclear power station. I'll tell you what the quantified risks are. They are expressed in fatalities per million manhours. Just let me make sure I have the figures right to start with.

freediver wrote on Aug 14^th, 2010 at 4:30pm:


What I'm suggesting is that the subsidies are used to get the projects off the ground, and I'm just talking about sufficient subsidy to put them on a level playing ground with Coal fired power stations.  Once operational, they can take care of themselves.

The biggest financial risk is always in establishing a new project. That's why investors need to be scrutinized carefully to ensure that they are capable of following through and delivering the project before being given a grant.

freediver wrote on Aug 14^th, 2010 at 5:08pm:


The actual costings will depend on the project. It starts to get quite detailed. I'll try to give some broad costings and outcomes first.

Currently the lowest cost option with lowest emissions outcomes (Option 1)  relies on Nuclear plus CCGT (Solar plus natural gas).

Total cumulative capital for this option are of the region of $200 billion by 2050, achieving a drop from a current 200te/a CO2-e emissions (Australia) to 40te/a by 2050.

If we drop nuclear and just go with solar, wind and gas (Option 2), the cumulative costing increases to $500 billion by 2050. The emissions would drop to 100te/a by 2050. This is the most expensive option.

Coal decommissioning needs to start as soon as possible at a rate of 1GWpa for black coal and 0.4GWp.a. for brown coal, resulting in total decommissioning of coal by 2040.

Profits from coal production are expected to peak around $100 billion by 2016. The ALP were proposing a 30% tax on mining profits, so you can see that even for 100% funding of Option 1, it's doable. In terms of timing, we need the first $20 billion by 2020, about $90 billion between 2020 and 2030 and the remaining 90 billion between 2030 and 2050.

The disadvantage of this option is that the supplies of Uranium will run out around 2080, so there will have to be ongoing construction of solar thermal CCGT power stations after that date.

An emission level of 40te/a by 2050 is sustainable as long as the rest of the world  keeps on track.
 

freediver wrote on Aug 14^th, 2010 at 7:11pm:


I'll go with $200 billion over 40 years. I prefer the option with nuclear power.

What would you get for that? Current cost of generating electricity is around $40 per MWhr. Using this technology, we'd expect that to increase to $60 per MWhr by 2050.

That's working to the ABARE assumptions for Energy consumption in Australia to 2030 projected linearly to 2050.
http://daff.gov.au/abare-brs

freediver wrote on Aug 14^th, 2010 at 8:32pm:


No. That's the total cost. My scheme is still a carbon tax, but it's a highly targeted carbon tax.

Well I thought I had. The original CPRS applied across all fossil fuels commensurate with CO2 equivalent. That scheme and any general carbon tax basically means that the government that brings it in shoot themselves in the foot because it costs voters money.

If we substitute a scheme which doesn't cost the end users of electricity, but taxes profits on coal exports instead, there is less pain involved for the general population and it allows us to establish a sustainable electricity generation industry in Australia.

The calculations assume a rise in demand from 280TWhrs /a (TeraWatt hours per annum) in 2010 up to around 550TWhr in 2050.

If the energy demand is reduced during this period, then the costs become progressively less.

The capital injection is required during the first 10 years. Thereafter, the source of revenue dwindles because it depends on phasing out all coal production by 2040. (Brown coal by 2035)

Now in terms of the replacement technology, this is commissioned at the rate of 1 GW per year from 2020 to 2025, then at 1.5 GW per year to 2030, then at 2 GW per year up to 2050.

This has been done before. For example, the French commissioned nuclear power stations at a rate of 3GW per year for a full 20 year period.