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💧simon holmes à court 🕯 Profile picture
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18 Apr, 8 tweets, 5 min read
🤓@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.

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More from @simonahac

💧simon holmes à court 🕯 Profile picture
17 Mar
10 march: #victoria announces deal to subsidise #coal power station to stay operating.

17 march: #victoria introduces legislation to add a ~$5000 tax on electric vehicles.

🚗🔋➡️💸➡️🏭

taxing climate solutions & subsidising coal.

welcome to the upside down. #springst #auspol
$330/year x 15 years = $4,950

the new MG ZS EV costs $43,990 on the road.

ie. #victoria's new #EV tax works out to be about 11%.

…buy an #EV in victoria and pay more in #EV tax than GST.
with #EVs at 0.7% market share and #victoria's transport emissions rising…

now is the *worst* time to slap on an 11% #EV tax.
Read 4 tweets
💧simon holmes à court 🕯 Profile picture
6 Mar
🤓@senbmckenzie facts are important…

while there's an immense amount of energy in all matter — E=mc² and all that — we *don't* have technology to get a lifetime's energy for a person out of a golfball sized lump of uranium.

since we can't rely on @MineralsCouncil, a thread:
if you did want to power an average australian's lifetime energy needs from uranium, what would it take? 🧐

…by a couple of different methods (link at end), i estimate that 2.1GWh would cover all the energy needs of an average australian lifetime, assuming full electrification.
working back from this handy chart from @WorldNuclear, in the best case you'd need 417cc of nuclear fuel (mainly UO₂) for a single australian's lifetime.

but how do you get that? read on…

world-nuclear.org/information-li… Image
Read 15 tweets
💧simon holmes à court 🕯 Profile picture
30 Jan
🧵 my theory is that everybody knows they're being lied to, but few have the time to find out just how. i'm here to help.

here's how @mattjcan🤥 is lying to you:

#1. he says "gas _now_ sets australian electricity prices". the truth is it has for years…
…gas generation in the NEM hit a 15 year low last year, yet it still plays a major role in setting the price.

why? because coal and hydro plants "shadow price" gas.

ie. they set their bids just below the cost of gas to maximise their profits.

see
#2. @mattjcan🤥 tries to make a connection between rising gas prices and blackouts in sydney.

that's just soooo wrong!

these blackouts were due to problems in the distribution network ("poles and wires").

there have been no incidents of load shedding in NSW recently.
Read 8 tweets
💧simon holmes à court 🕯 Profile picture
27 Jan
#nuclear twitter: super niche question, but i'm trying to find out the mass of fuel in a CE 16x16 assembly (such as used by palo verde).

this ancient doc claims the assembly weighs 650kg, but of course, only part is fuel.

osti.gov/servlets/purl/… Image
a nuke expert i consulted provided this estimate based on the spec sheet above:

ie. 551 kg/assembly Image
that estimate looks pretty good… though it ignores the pellet's dimples and chamfers, and the gap between pellet and cladding.

anyone have actual data? 🙏

@energybants @whatisnuclear @6point626 @Gen_Atomic ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
💧simon holmes à court 🕯 Profile picture
15 Dec 20
ok @DaveSharma i promised i'd explain why your tweet is nonsense & why you shouldn't repeat it.

👇here's #australia vs #newzealand relative emissions since 2005:
• australia ⬆️ 6%
• new zealand ⬇️ 3%

(you'll notice that LULUCF is excluded…)
why is LULUCF (land-use, land-use change & forestry) excluded?

1. measurement methodologies aren't standard between countries & frequently change — no robust method to compare countries
2. annual fluctuations are high / noisy

data: PRIMAP-hist v2.1
pik-potsdam.de/paris-reality-…
3. the vast majority of australia's LULUCF variation is driven by changes to QLD land-clearing laws, a function of state political tussles, and nothing to do with commonwealth policy.
4. australia is famous for using LULUCF as a fudge, see @MichaelM_ACT:

medium.com/@MichaelM_ACT/…
Read 8 tweets
💧simon holmes à court 🕯 Profile picture
24 Nov 20
🧵 many #nuclear hopes are riding on small modular reactors.

@NuScale_Power's #SMR is closest to market. customer for pilot plant is a group of utilities, herded by @SmartEnergy1.

in july only 213 of 720MW (30%) was subscribed.
subscriptions have since dropped to 104MW (14%)…
of the 36 towns in #nuscale's pilot project, the "carbon free power project" #CFPP:
• 8 towns have withdrawn entirely
• 24 reduced their share entitlement
• 3 maintained identical entitlement
• 1 joined (token level).

utah.gov/pmn/files/6554…
with the planned 12 module plant undersubscribed, #nuscale is now looking at downsizing to either 4 or 6 modules.

counteracting this fall of subscriptions, nuscale has uprated modules from 60MWe to 77MWe each.

as such, nuscale now has 33% subscriptions for a 4 module plant…
Read 5 tweets

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