Clean Futures – Page 12 – Friends of the Earth Adelaide

Doctors for the Environment call for NEG to be rejected

roman November 24, 2017

A letter on Nov 19th from Doctors for the Environment Australia addressed to State Premiers, Energy and Environment ministers points out the problems with the Government’s National Energy Guarantee (NEG):

The States must continue their strong leadership at the approaching COAG Energy Meeting, totally rejecting the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) because of its egregious denial of action on pollution and global warming and its deleterious effect on Health.

Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) represents hundreds of medical experts across Australia. We are supported by a Nobel laureate, recipients of the Australian of the Year award and many other distinguished health professionals.

DEA is deeply disturbed by the health implications of the Government’s proposed (NEG) plan. As more analysis accumulates it is increasingly evident that the NEG is designed to encourage continued burning of fossil fuels. It is also clear that the NEG will lead to much less investment in decarbonisation of the energy market, leading to more pollution and rising CO2 levels. It is extraordinary that the design proposes no further reduction in CO2 emissions between 2020 and 2030. It thus fails Australia’s commitment to COP 21 in Paris.
— read the full letter at the DEA website

Adelaide FoE Notes, Clean Futures, Renewables

Nuclear Power’s Deepening Crisis

roman October 20, 2017

More disastrous news for the nuclear power industry. In 2017 alone:
– clear signs of a major nuclear slow-down in China – the last remaining hope for the industry.
– the US nuclear power industry is in the middle of a full-blown crisis
– a seriously anti-nuclear government has been elected in South Korea
– Taiwan has reaffirmed a nuclear phase-out by 2025
– the South African nuclear power program was ruled illegal by the High Court and probably won’t be revived
– Switzerland voted in a referendum to phase out nuclear power (while all of Germany’s reactors will be closed by the end of 2022 and all of Belgium’s will be closed by the end of 2025).
– huge problems in the UK and France
– India’s nuclear power program is going nowhere and the government has implicitly acknowledged that plans for French EPR reactors and US AP1000 reactors will likely be shelved
– Japan’s nuclear power program remains in a miserable state
– Russia’s Rosatom has acknowledged that the pipeline for new reactors is fast drying up
Meanwhile, the growth of renewables has been spectacular and will grow even faster over the coming years. Renewables will be producing 3 times as much electricity as nuclear power by 2022.

Jim Green, FoE Australia’s anti-nuclear campaigner, goes into more detail in this recent article for online opinion.

Clean Futures, Old_Notes

New Report shows Underground Coal Gasification too costly and too unreliable

roman October 20, 2017

The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) recently published a report describing how coal-to-gasification technology for electricity-generation purposes remains commercially unviable.

The report — “Using Coal Gasification to Generate Electricity: A Multibillion-Dollar Failure” —concludes that two long-running marquee American Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC), projects, Duke Energy’s Edwardsport plant in Indiana and Southern Company’s Kemper plant in Mississippi, prove the case against such investments.

Read More

Clean Futures, Old_Notes

Electric vehicle charger station opened in Adelaide

robyn September 27, 2017

South Australia’s first “Tesla supercharger” points for electric vehicles opened on 27 October on Franklin St between The Joinery and the new Bus station – “the start of a state-wide charging network the company promised as part of the deal to win the State Government’s “world’s largest battery” tender”.

Tesla’s Elon Musk included 50 charging stations as part of the negotiations to build the battery.

The Indaily report continues here