🤓@ScottMorrisonMP's fossil gas announcement today is a poke in the eye for @ClimateEnvoy and @POTUS.
morrison claims south australia needs the gas for cheap, reliable power.
let's take a little look at SA's use of gas for power generation… 🧵
theguardian.com/australia-news…
over the past 12 months fossil gas provided 37% of south australia's electricity — a higher proportion than any other state.
(SA completely phased out all coal in 2016 and doesn't have any significant hydro resources.)
if we zoom out to the last 2 decades, we can see the important but *reducing* role gas has played in SA's generation mix.
in fact in 2021Q1, south australia used less fossil gas for power generation than in any quarter so far this century…
…and AEMO, the energy market operator, predicts that gas power generation will continue to fall in SA…
aemo.com.au/-/media/files/…
gas is facing significant competition from utility scale renewables, storage, new transmission & the growth of rooftop solar.
…SA gas generators forced on to provide "system security" services will increasingly be replaced by cheaper "synchronous condensers" starting this year.
lastly, it it's noteworthy that SA already has the lowest wholesale electricity prices in the national electricity market… thanks to its high proportion of renewables — 61% of demand, and growing.
aemo.com.au/en/energy-syst…
#australia is not short on fossil gas… we export 3/4 of the gas we pull out of the ground!
@ScottMorrisonMP latest move to subsidise gas — in the week of @POTUS's climate ambition summit — is simply about helping his fossil gas industry mates' export businesses.
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.