So to what purpose are Carbon Taxes put?
Building Renewables because they don't want nuclear.
"Australia's National Electricity Market and power generators are struggling to come up with a coherent plan "to keep the lights on" due to policy and pricing limitations, according to a major independent study of the sector.
Key points:
New capacity is being driven by construction and deal making rather than what is needed
Black coal has been replacing brown coal while solar and wind is pushing out gas and hydro
Price mechanisms have encouraged 'bare minimum' rather than reliable generators
The report compiled by industry analysts Global-Roam and Greenview Strategic Consulting found the "obsessive focus on fuel types" and an "us and them schism" between fossil fuels and renewable energy posed significant risks to a successful transition to a modern energy market.
The more than 600-page Generator Report Card is a deep dive into the 20 years of the NEM and every generator supplying the market."
"Despite wind and solar dominating the new capacity coming online in the past five years, the aggregate level of coal-fired generation in recent years has remained relatively steady.
Black coal has largely replaced closed brown coal plants, while wind and solar have displaced hydro and gas generation."
"However, the report has identified the new battleground as “anytime/anywhere energy”, or wind and solar, versus “keeping the lights on services”, or traditional synchronised generation from the big fossil fuel utilities.
The declining cost of wind and solar farms has made them the default choices for additional capacity, however the new generation is seldom integrated with “keeping the lights on services”."
"“There is a glimmer of hope there with people putting in batteries, but it still just a ‘toe-in-the-water’ exercise,” Global-Roam’s Paul McArdle said.
“It make sense wind and solar farms should invest in some form of battery storage, but there is still a fair bit of commercial risk without greater incentives [to build them],” he said."
"Changes in ‘bid patterns’ for power are seeing an increasing volatility and a concentration of either extremely low (below $0/MWh) or high (above $300/MWh) prices.
Occasionally “cheap” power may sound good for consumers, but they are bids from price-takers who find it either cheaper to keep plants going, or are happy enough to take whatever price is going — but average prices across the curve keep creeping up."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-31/nem-20-year-report-card-points-to-big-cha...And even the IPCC realises that nuclear has to be part of the solution. -
"Multiple options exist to reduce energy supply sector GHG emissions (robust evidence, high agreement). These include energy efficiency improvements and fugitive emission reductions in fuel extraction as well as in energy conversion, transmission, and distribution systems; fossil fuel switching; and low-GHG energy supply technologies such as renewable energy (RE),
nuclear power, and carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). [7.5, 7.8.1, 7.11]"
"Nuclear energy is a mature low-GHG emission source of baseload power, but its share of global electricity generation has been declining (since 1993). Nuclear energy could make an increasing contribution to low-carbon energy supply, but a variety of barriers and risks exist (robust evidence, high agreement). Its specific emissions are below 100 gCO2eq per kWh on a lifecycle basis and with more than 400 operational nuclear reactors worldwide, nuclear electricity represented 11% of the world’s electricity generation in 2012, down from a high of 17% in 1993. Pricing the externalities of GHG emissions (carbon pricing) could improve the competitiveness of nuclear power plants. [7.2, 7.5.4, 7.8.1, 7.12]"
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_chapter7.pdfSo just how are the carbon (sic) taxes supposed to work if not for generating low GHG emissions?
In other words, the coalition's inaction on carbon pricing is creating market inefficiency, pushing up power prices, and creating uncertainty in the industry.
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