Aidan Morrison Profile picture
Sep 19 7 tweets 3 min read Read on X
It's pretty to easy to see how utterly debased the @CSIRO modelling underpinnning the economic claims regarding the 2035 targets is.

They assume the whole world is committed to Paris targets, ie. Net Zero. They don't have any baseline where that doesn't happen. 1/ Image
That's right, they derive a "global carbon price" commensurate with the world hitting net-zero targets. And apply it to Australia.

(Without saying anywhere in the document what that price is!)
2/ Image
And that price seems to be enough for us to OVERSHOOT the 2030 targets! The Labor plan says we need 82% renewable energy by 2030. Not even Ross Garnaut thinks that's possible.

But CSIRO models us beating that, in all scenarios!
This is absurd. 3/ Image
Yep, this document pays hommage to the utterly implausible state and federal targets... And the nonsense about coal being gone in 2035, despite the coal plant owners not indicating/intending that at all. 4/ Image
And then... off with the fairies.

"one third of emissions reductions come from technologies that are currently in early demonstration or prototype phases."

Including all the ones that that have been stuck there for decades, like green hydrogen and carbon capture!! 5/ Image
No, they weren't typos.

We're going to almost halve cement emissions whilst almost doubling the amount we produce.

What did Darryl Kerrigan say? "Tell 'im he's dreaming."

Steel and aluminium are all green too. 6/ Image
This is galling stuff... the most shameless "assume a can-opener" type assumptions that would make economists blush, adopted by our leading scientific institution.

Withheld from the day of announcements. 7/7

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More from @FootnotesGuy

Sep 8
Late last week the Business Council @BCAcomau released a report prepared by @McKinsey on the 2035 carbon targets, showing that over $500bn capex was required for a 70% target. It was widely interpreted as a call for caution and realism.

But the report is still anchored in a fantasy, assuming that the 2030 targets are achieved first, and net zero by 2050 can be achieved affordably thereafter.

So the call for grounded, well-informed consideration of the 2035 target, amidst the utterly fanciful, unrealistic targets on either side, is plainly absurd.

This is like the captain of a ball sport giving a pep talk warning about how gravity and Newtonian mechanics still dominate the ball's behaviour. But the game is Quidditch, and the balls are animated by magic, and the entire team is riding around on broomsticks.

The Business Council of Australia, in particular the CEO @JAWestacott, need to decide which world they actually claim to inhabit. 1/Image
Here's the spiel announcing the report. Fully committed to net zero by 2050, claiming that can can be "affordably and reliably achieved".

Then pivot to suggesting that only 50% should be targeted for 2035.

This is hard to take seriously, as I'll explain.
2/ Image
For starters, the cautious, realistic scenario that they advocate, for 50% by 2035, just somehow assumes that we get to 43% by 2030 on the way, from 29% in 2022.
3/ Image
Read 16 tweets
Aug 26
We now have the official reason that @CSIRO won't reveal the modelling behind GenCost.

- CSIRO is a "commercial entity"
- The modelling in GenCost was done for CSIRO's "exclusive benefit"
- Revealing the model would put CSIRO at a "considerable commercial disadvantage" 1/ Image
This was in response to a Freedom of Information request @CISOZ put in, inspired by this brilliant take on CSIRO's refusal to disclose their model in this year's publication, despite repeated requests. 2/
We have another FOI document, the founding proposal for GenCost, which contradicts everything that CSIRO has just written in this refusal.

GenCost was a collaboration. Not for CSIRO's exclusive benefit, but the benefit of market actors, governments and regulators. 3/ Image
Read 11 tweets
Jul 29
This is the story of how a fund chaired by former Labor PM Julia Gillard acquired a wind farm project just six days before Labor Energy Minister Chris Bowen underwrote its future revenues with taxpayer money.

Today we've learned Julia's fund is trying to flip it. For a profit.

HMC Capital's 'Energy Transition Fund' rushed to acquire the Neoen Victoria portfolio. They hadn't even raised any money in their fund. They closed with almost a billion dollars worth of borrowed money and IOU's.

Less than a week later, Chris Bowen announced Kentbruck Wind Farm to be successful in the first round of the Capacity Investment Scheme. My rough calculations suggest they will receive something like a billion dollars from taxpayers (and maybe much more) over 15 years.

Sweet deal. A billion dollars of fancy financial monopoly money one week. A billion dollars of promised taxpayer dollars the next.

I want to emphasise that I have no evidence of anything illegal or improper taking place. Rather, I want to point out how odious and repugnant the official, proper, legal business of renewable energy has become.

Yesterday Chris Bowen announced he wanted to supersize the CIS subsidy scheme, yet again.

Today Ross Garnaut seemed to cheer this on, whilst pointing out "There are now virtually no new investment commitments for solar and wind generation that do not have CIS or other Government underwriting,"

What happened to a sense of propriety? Since when do we celebrate people rushing to put their snouts in the trough? Or rushing to fill the trough even higher?

Unlike the UK who publish a 'going rate' for technology subsidies, our renewables are subsidised through a secret tender process. Every project gets to ask for whatever revenue they want to proceed. @AEMO_Energy facilitates a secret beauty pageant, where they award points for things like indigenous participation or community engagement, alongside financial value.

And Chris Bowen makes the final call.

The bids remain secret. There's no cap to the pay-outs. Since AEMO is a private company, there is no scope for an FOI request, and AEMO aren't not subject to parliamentary oversight through Senate Estimates.

So no-one can ever prove an allegation that Bowen has bestowed special favour on a friend's project if that was what he did. But equally, he can never prove that he selected strictly according to merit. We are just expected to trust the black-box of Bowen's subsidies.

So I'm going to say out loud, with full voice, that I hope everyone can agree on:

If this is what the future of 'clean energy' looks like in Australia, it looks absolutely FILTHY.

Any firm that talks about ESG seriously should start taking the "G" a bit more seriously and steer clear of projects that thrust their snouts into Bowen's hopelessly opaque, bottomless trough of government funds.

Or at the very least, purge their boards and senior leadership of all the former Labor staffers, donors, and industry lobbyists who have had a hand in designing the trough, and filling it up.

The reality is that there are no natural profits to be made in generating renewable electricity in Australia.

Every dollar of profit in this industry is really a cheque signed by a politician, with Chris Bowen signing all the biggest cheques, worth untold billions, in the next three years.

It's all legal. It's all official. And it's absolutely obscene.
Mega-thread below.
(It'll come in stages)
1/Image
I'm going to start with the epilogue. This just dropped a few hours ago from the @australian.

HMC is trying trying to sell the portfolio. For a profit. Having done nothing with it, not even settled on it, but landed a massive subsidy. 2/
theaustralian.com.au/business/datar…Image
To be clear, they're just trying to salvage what is really a train-wreck. They couldn't raise the fund. 😱🤭🤣Leaders are fleeing.

Again, I'm not alleging any wrongdoing. This looks more comical and clumsy than coordinated and conniving.
3/
afr.com/companies/ener…Image
Read 47 tweets
Jul 29
First-pass on @CSIRO's GenCost, with the final version for 2024-25 released this morning.

The headline should read that coal is cheapest, and will remain so.

The contortions required to avoid saying that out loud are absurd.

It's coming undone, stitch by stitch. 1/ Image
Between the Draft (with red writing) and the final, there are some adjustments to the integration costs in 2024.

More for raw generated energy.
More spillage.
More synchronous condensers.
More transmission.
Storage similar. 2/ Image
Image
Remember, @AEMO_energy has pointed out that transmission costs have increased 25% to 55% in REAL terms. I can't see CSIRO's cost increases following that trend. 3/ Image
Read 15 tweets
Jul 22
Follow-up. @DavidOsmond8 and @GilesParkinson have bitten back, on Linkedin mostly.

TLDR:
"Of course the wind farm had subsidies... but this particular "stage" of said wind farm was financially islated from the rest of the wind farm, so those subsidies don't count." 1/ Image
Image
First up, I welcome being called out on footnotes. But I still completely reject the idea that the relevant transactions were "subsidy free". For two reasons:

1. Each stage or sub-stage still received subsidies.
2. The subsidies to one stage still benefit the other.
2/
First, let's indulge the idea of financially isolated "stages".

Stage 1A of Goyder was 209MW of wind. The contract that David says was 'subsidy free' was for less than half of that, 100MW.

But that's not enough to close the deal. It took two more years, and another deal. 3/ Image
Read 18 tweets
Jul 17
As promised, there's a plot twist on this question about CIS funding curtailment.

The first 6GW of generation contracts of CIS did get funded for curtailment.

So @simonahac is dead wrong about this blanket claim.

But CIS is changing... maybe? 1/ Image
David Osmond has pointed this out, and I also know that Ben Beattie @EnergyWrapAU also discovered this.

The pro-forma contract for the upcoming round (closed, but not awarded, which is Round 4) removes the provision.

We're all in agreement there. 2/

The critical clause that's changed is 3.9.

The "Notional Quantity" which is the volume on which they get paid the agreed unit price included Force Majeure Events in the Round 1 tender, but that's been removed in the contract for Round 4. 3/ Image
Image
Read 23 tweets

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