I guess, bring out the popcorn as the forum gows into overdrive and meltdown LOL. As the old further age and the young can start voting and take charge, the HC Politics thread may become a psychology thesis for a current 10 year old doing a doctorate in 12 years time on what happens when the world moves on and the grumpy go conglomerate somewhere and seek to understand why the outside world is so different to their views.
But seriously, before the forum does go into meltdown, climate change activists might need to do some protesting outside the Chinese embassy, because if climate change is real (i.e and by that I mean a man made problem) what everyone else does in the world also amounts to didley squat if the Chinese and Indians don't come onboard. The need to get renewable power solutions in base load options that are reliable, secure and cheap is a key to the low carbon value chain because taking my example above making hydroxide/carbonate, which is you input to battery storage is very very very power intensive.
(This article makes sober reading) Source:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-chinas-co2-emissions-grew-slower-than-expected-in-2018
If renewable technologies, like your batteries are developed overseas - been China - then there is a significant role for LNG exports from Australia because gas has lower CO2 emissions than coal (but again many don't understand that point either especially the fact that probably dirtier coal would be used by the Chinese in their production if they didn't have access to Australian LNG or coal itself, meaning higher than warranted CO2 emissions in the production of say lithium batteries)).
This is a question for the politics forum: how much power is required to convert 6% grade spodumene concentrate, i.e. what our lithium producers currently export to China, to lithium chemicals, been hydroxide, which is the base product of how batteries are subsequently made for your electric vehicles and your home battery storage units. The answer is 11 MWh to 14 MWh. In WA both Tianqi and Albermale are proposing to use gas as the energy source to ensure they have the reliable energy to produce hydroxide from its respective built plants at Kwinana and Kemerton. That is a lot of power required - a typical household in Australia consumes annually 7000 kWh electricity, refer:
https://electricitywizard.com.au/electricity/electricity-cost/how-much-does-electricity-cost/ . 11 MWh, to produce just one tonne of hydroxide, is equivalent to keeping the power on all year round for 1.6 Australian homes. What does 1 tonne of hydroxide give you so you get a guage as to what it is: depending on battery size 17 to 25 EVs. So you need a lot of hydroxide if want battery storage systems and EVs, and that means a lot of gas. Similarly solar panels need a lot of electricity too
So if people want those nice battery storage systems and EVs need to be mindful of the power requirements for them and where that will come.
Population growth is a key issue that climate activists also do not like addressing. If I had to put up any graph, especially if believe in climate change, just map the last two hundred years increasing CO2 levels with the actual increase in population. Would make a sobering graph. If one believes in man made climate change the key point in the last 100 years has been the significant increase in population - without the significant increase in population you wouldn't need the amount of resources and power to meet the population's basic living needs (power, housing, food, resources etc etc). In the climate change debate you don't hear much from any side around population linkages to those graphs is my point - this is aimed at those who believe climate change is real and the traditional links on how climate operates and changes in cycles over thousands of years (i.e. we did have an ice age remember) is broken by too much carbon now been pumped into the atmosphere last 100 years etc etc
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/planet-earth/what-causes-climate-and-climate-change/how-climate-worksThe above is something a lot don't like talking about - reducing Australia's CO2 emissions to 0% will have no impact on global CO2 emissions if China replaces LNG for dirties cal sources.
Am I one of those grumpy people that future 22 year old psychology student in 12 years time will be studying about - who knows but hopefully I am still breathing to drink me VB. And hopefully, renewables do become a reliable and secure and cheap source of energy by then so that the EVs, solar panels and battery storage systems that can lead to transformational change do lead to lowe CO2 emissions in the production of commodities from start to finish (i.e. life cycle) rather than the current focus of at the end of the value chain as against assessing how they are made etc etc.
For a country with significant resources we should be doing better. Yes we cannot compete with Asian economies where labour is the predominant costs in higher valued commodities (like wool to clothing), but we should be doing far better in those industries where labour is not a large cost to production (i.e. like converting spodumene to hydroxide because the predominant cost there is energy and chemicals in the conversion process). As I said for these types of industries - i.e. alumina, steel, hydroxide, the biggest cost component is energy
not labour intensive and renewables do not provide the reliable base load to drive their production.
The laisser faire economics mentality Australian governments of the last 25 to 30 years have enacted on the population has been the key issue, especially at a time our resource industry is becoming more foreign owned. Multinationals will do as they do, with no ties to Australia, unless push comes to shove and government grows some balls in getting more processing done here.
All IMO
