Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Aidan Morrison Profile picture
Aidan Morrison
@FootnotesGuy
Researching energy and defence. Physics and data science background. Happy getting into the weeds.
Sep 19 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
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
Sep 8 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
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
Aug 26 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
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/
Jul 29 • 47 tweets • 23 min read
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
Jul 29 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
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
Jul 22 • 18 tweets • 7 min read
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/
Jul 17 • 23 tweets • 8 min read
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/

Jul 16 • 23 tweets • 8 min read
"No, you're wrong, because my friend in high public office assured me in private that I'm right."

This is the "SHaC excuse" for ignoring uncomfortable facts.

Last week @simonahac tried it on @EnergyWrapAU, who patiently and exquisitely dismantled Simon from public sources.
1/ The context is here... AEMO releases some modelling showing that vast proportions of the projected wind and solar being built will be 'constrained'.

I.e. wasted.

Unless utterly implausible amounts of transmission get built. 2/
afr.com/policy/energy-…
Jul 6 • 18 tweets • 7 min read
On Friday I appeared on @SkyNewsAust, and commented Orica accepting a $430million subsidy for a 50MW green hydrogen project.

I've just started running some numbers... I think it looks far, far worse than I thought. 1/

skynews.com.au/opinion/slap-i… The cost difference on consumeable inputs looks like at least $3/kg.

That's with expensive Australian natural gas, and an optimistic take on wholesale electricity, zero costs for network etc. 2/ Image
Jul 4 • 26 tweets • 10 min read
Every week @DavidOsmond8 does this copperplate simulation, demonstrating a net-zero grid is quite achievable and affordable.

Slowly, as energy literacy improves, I think he'll succeed in proving the opposite.

Let's chat through some charts. 1/ First, I admire Dave's persistence, and commend his transparency. He acknowledges the limitation of the copperplate assumption, that any energy from any source can be pooled, and consumed in any place is the biggest.

His defence "ISP's got this" will unravel slowly. 2/
Jul 1 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
So VNI West has had its timetable shifted back a couple of years.

Apparently mostly because it's clear that they can't steamroll the farmers that fast.
1/

…files.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/1017/5124/5871…Image This will be encouraging to the farmers like @MarciaMc10 who have been busy mapping out the community sentiment in the areas where these transmission lines must go. 2/
Jun 3 • 21 tweets • 7 min read
Spicy take: Transgrid's finances are shot.
They're no longer viable as a regulated utility.
Their shareholders are rushing for the exits.
Taxpayers are bailing them out.
Transmission costs will explode. Again.
This should be a scandal.
Quick 🧵 to explain. 1/ The key thing is Transgrid's credit rating. They're meant to be a monopoly utility, with access to low-cost capital.

As the CEO has explained: "If we blow our credit rating up, we can’t continue to invest in anything".

@angelamacd reported this. 2/

afr.com/companies/ener…
May 28 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
A couple of weeks ago I found this stunning chart.
Note the log scale.

That green line "Base Case" shows NSW being crippled by blackouts costing us between 10 and 100 BILLION dollars annually from 2029/30.
1/ Image Also interesting... It appears that no matter what we do, we're heading for an increase in "involuntary load shedding costs" (ie economic destruction due to black-outs). Rising to between $100mil and $1bil in 2028-29.
Not great. 2/ Image
May 28 • 21 tweets • 8 min read
Yesterday this news broke: transmission costs rising, and pushing up power bills.

For those watching closely, this is no news at all, but belated confirmation from official sources of the inevitable. Quick 🧵on the @AEMO_Energy source. 1/

theaustralian.com.au/nation/politic… Two years ago prices were increasing massively. (left chart)
"Unprecedented" we were told.
This year they're increasing even more. But this time (right chart) the costs are almost entirely real, rather than half made up of inflation. 2/ Image
Image
May 27 • 10 tweets • 6 min read
This insane. @abcnews runs a story about all the endangered wildlife from a UNDERGROUND coal mine extension.

Just 17 hectares of land will be cleared.

Ahem...

JUST 17 HECTARES!!!

The poor bats and koalas!!!
1/ Image Of course 17 hectares is NOTHING compared to what's required for wind farms.

The 'direct impacts' to the bats is from 630 hectares of land that will WON'T BE CLEARED, but may gradually subside, over years. 2/ Image
Image
May 22 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
A senior executive at @the_AEMC has just given a speech confirming that doublethink is an essential component of the energy transition.

We all knew this was going to get Orwellian sooner or later! 🫠
1/ Image Victoria is the Executive General Manager, Economics and System Security, for the Australian Energy Market Commission, or AEMC.

That's the organisation that makes the rules for the electricity system.

The full speech was yesterday; read it here. 2/
aemc.gov.au/news-centre/sp…
May 9 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Imagine if Spain's electricity transmission operator published a graph like this a couple years back.

This was actually from the NSW transmission operator, Transgrid, published in 2023.

1/ Image Transgrid spells all the stuff that a few renewabros are still bickering about following the Iberian collapse.

Yes, renewables "need strong source of system security to operate stably".

I wonder if Spain had a document like this. 2/ Image
Image
Apr 29 • 26 tweets • 10 min read
Spanish blackout 🧵.
Conclusion: relying on wind and solar, ie 'inverter based resources' creates a fragile system, lacking the inertia/system strength that synchronous machines (turbines, from coal, gas or nuclear) provide to ride through faults. 1/ yes, it's comical that just a week or so ago they were boasting about milestones reached being 100% renewable powered. Without very carefully addressing the system security implications of attempting that, it's a precarious position to be in. 2/

Apr 23 • 22 tweets • 12 min read
Yesterday I addressed the substance of this absurd piece of propaganda.

Someone is arguing that wind are better for electricity-intensive industry than dispatchable power such as nuclear or coal.

Now I'm going to explore who made that argument.

First, an important foreword. I really dislike identity politics. I'm determined always to address the substance of arguments irrespective of who makes them. Dismissing an argument because you don't like the connections or identities of people making them is a really bad and cowardly thing to do. The antithesis of good debate.

So I just want to say that up-front. None of this is meant to be any judgement of the types of people involved, or a suggestion that they shouldn't participate in the debate. Anyone of any age, gender, sexual orientation, religious conviction, union affiliation, educational background, professional experience can and should do whatever they can to participate in political debate. And I'll be the first to listen to their arguments, and assess them on their merit.

But when the arguments have no merit, and sources are falsely represented as meaning things they don't, long after the true meaning has been pointed out, it's necessary to ask how such arguments are given voice.

And to summarise my conclusion diving down this wormhole, these aren't the captains of industry engineering boffins one would expect to make a "this industry requires this type of electricity" type of argument. Hang tight. The name on the paper is this Renew Australia for All.

"A new movement backed by social services, unions, faith, community and multicultural groups, environment organisations and industry" 2/

renewaustraliaforall.org/who-we-are/Image
Apr 23 • 25 tweets • 9 min read
Buckle up... I think this is the worst energy disinformation of the election campaign.

We have a group arguing that transitioning to nuclear is going to eliminate electricity-intensive industry. Only wind, solar, and batteries can save aluminium. 1/
renewaustraliaforall.org/wp-content/upl…Image Who produced this? I hate identity politics and will always assess the quality of arguments first, regardless of who's making them. But these arguments are so, so bad, I'll return. Let's just say it's not the captains of industry or engineering boffins one would expect. 2/ Image
Apr 8 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
Yet again... Another transmission project, blowing out massively in cost.

Copperstring in QLD's far north is a project that most people never tried to pretend makes economic sense.

It's bizarre that anyone is still behind it. 1/

abc.net.au/news/2025-04-0… Even the original economic justification for Queensland's Energy and Jobs plan, done by EY, excluded copper string from analysis.

And that was back when $6bn was the number being thrown around. 2/