Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla | Hacker News Reader

Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla

bloomberg.com

246 pointsJumpCrisscross247 comments

Australia also has a remarkable tax incentive that lets you buy EVs basically tax free (fringe benefits tax exemption for novated leases, in bureaucratese). Basically, instead of paying $70k for a Tesla post-tax, you can get it deducted directly from your paycheck for around $45k pretax. The exact math depends on your income, and perversely enough the subsidy increases the more you earn and the higher your taxes, but it has definitely been effective at turbocharging EV sales in a country that was otherwise a comparative laggard (only 3.8% of new sales in 2022, before the incentive kicked in).

> perversely enough the subsidy increases the more you earn and the higher your taxes

Isn't this because those who are going to buy EVs today (which are premium if not luxury vehicle prices) are those who have more money to do so? There is not yet a widely available entry level priced EV that is broadly popular.

no, its because in a higher tax braket you pay more tax

its the sane in britain - if you earn $200,000 income-tax-free means 50% off, but if you earn $20,000. it means like 5% off

Also in Uk id you want to buy a e car, you get a grant of a few grand, if you want an e motorbike you get like $300, and if you want an ebike, the most wco friwndly option, you fuck right off

Should it be a refund (instead of a tax break)?

I'm leaning towards the refund since it effectively gives everyone the "same final price"

Probably, but this is Australia we are talking about. It's a literal boomer welfare state.

Ok maybe a little bit of hyperbole but not that far off the mark, fiscal policy in Australia is dominated by preferential treatment for the boomer generations finances.

Ideally we would provide incentives in the form of a refund for all vehicles below a net carbon value per km (so including plugin hybrids, etc) that are priced below a given value, say $40k AUD or something, whatever is actually affordable mid-range car (not sure about specific numbers).

The idea is that hybrids are probably going to be at a disadvantage unless they are insanely efficient, BEVs will need to bring prices down to qualify for the incentive and generally speaking we end up with drastically more efficient -and- cheaper cars as a result.

However it's also not a great look if all the boomers are buying 911s instead of Model S/X etc so may as well drop the luxury car tax for full BEV vehicles so gas guzzlers are at a disadvantage across the spectrum.

In Norway we simply removed all taxes from battery EVs. Last year 80% of new cars sold were pure EVs. The plan is to ban new ICE car sales in 2025 but the law has not been passed yet as far as I know. But because the market is already so dominated by BEVs there is probably no need to rush.

Not for the goal in the UK. The UK doesn't have a tax break for buying electric cars as regular people at home, it's for companies. The important tax break more specifically is around providing them to workers under what's called a "salary sacrifice" scheme where you forgo some of your income in return for a benefit in kind. The BIK rate for EVs is very low, meaning they're almost tax free. This is targeting people who get new cars under hire agreements, drive them for a few years then get a new one - the goal is to increase the second hand market.

also

> its the sane in britain - if you earn $200,000 income-tax-free means 50% off, but if you earn $20,000. it means like 5% off

For SS schemes the person earning £20k would be paying a marginal rate of 32%. Most people earning more than this have a marginal rate of 42%, then frankly the figures get complicated to explain but it's a very small minority of people that hit those levels.

> *"The UK doesn't have a tax break for buying electric cars as regular people at home"

Not exactly true. Besides company car tax (BIK) benefits, electric vehicles are exempt from vehicle excise duty, which can save up to £4000 over the first 5 years of vehicle ownership. They are also exempt from congestion charges, low emission zone charges, etc, which can save thousands more. There's also no fuel duty on charging an EV, you only pay 5% VAT on electricity if charging at home, many local councils offer discounted parking and/or charging, and there is a grant available that pays 75% of the cost of installing a home charger.

> and if you want an ebike, the most wco friwndly option, you fuck right off

The most eco friendly option is still a bike. Not an ebike.

is something not used the most eco friendly option?

What is and isn't used comes down to the person, so it's pretty hard to factor in. Certainly in my city most bikes I see people out and abouton are not electric.

Depends. If you ride a lot, ebikes are actually more eco-friendly, because electricity is more carbon friendly to produce than the extra calories you'd eat.

There's an interesting blog post about this topic: https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/blog/climate-impacts-biking-v...

Your theory is worth discussing.

While in an absolute instant sense energy use might win for the machine, you probably forgot to factor in the lifetime cost of the production of the machine's components. I do not blame you as such a task seems exhaustively daunting, and we only ignore it for the people because who would be heartless enough to think that way? (probably insurance agents, lawyers, and such...)

There are also pros and cons to the different elements. Exercise on a bike might have a hard to measure benefit compared to an e-bike. On the other hand adoption pressures and increased hygiene needs are more positive and negative side effects.

According to this article, ebikes do produce fewer carbon emissions than conventional bikes overall, while considering manufacturing costs:

https://www.bikeradar.com/features/long-reads/cycling-enviro...

Judging by people's waistlines they're already eating the extra needed for the cycling, they're just not cycling.

According to COVID-19 and Obesity: The 2021 Atlas[1], the figures for the UK are:

- 63.7% of adults are overweight i.e. BMI >25kg/m2 (2016)

- 27.8% of adults are obese i.e. BMI >30kg/m2 (2016)

[1] https://www.worldobesity.org/resources/resource-library/covi...

Obese people won't get on a bike, though, because it's too big of a step. An ebike is a decent gateway into weight loss.

Exercise is for health, diet is for weight loss. The overlap exists but is minimal. Exercise activity hermogenesis (often known as EAT, ironically) is usually estimated to be around 5% of total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).

I wouldn't be surprised if the obese people in question started to exercise and actually increased their food intake to match.

That's assuming you'd just eat less, instead of eating the same and burning it off at the gym. Or getting fat.

An ebike ridden 10,000 km a year beats a bike ridden 2000 though.

How are you making that comparison?

Do you mean an ebike ridden 2,000 km for errands and 8,000 km for fun; vs. the 2,000 km for the bike, for errands, but no biking for fun? That is, are you implying that the ebike is a lot more fun than a regular bike?

Or are you comparing 10,000 km on an ebike; vs. a bike ridden 2,00 km and some other personal vehicle used for 8,000 km? That is, are you implying that a human-powered bike means people will overall use worse forms of transport?

Or do you mean something else?

I think the implication is that commuting longer distances (20km+) is doable on an e-bike.

My commute is 10km (300m uphill) on a regular bike, but I have access to a shower. If I didn't, I don't think I could do it on a regular bike.

In general, it's able to displace longer trips (other than biking for fun) than a non-electric bike.

> In general, it's able to displace longer trips (other than biking for fun) than a non-electric bike.

Exactly.

Since converting to an e-bike, I am using it 4x as much. Especially in the summer, it changes from a sweaty trip to a pleasant one. Those tips would normally be public transport.

10K sounds a bit ambitious, but myself and a friend are on track to exceed 3K.

This whole discussion is splitting hairs -> out of a single electric car, you can make 150 ebikes.

A good ebike battery is 0.5 KWh, a an electric car is ~80 KWh. An electric car might weigh 1500 KG and an ebike like 15.

So really it seems the conclusion should be that the ebikes are overpriced and they should cost $500 if their productions was automated like production of cars is.

I think they mean that you could end up using an ebike in situations where normally you’d use a car or some other form of transportation.

What confuses me is the leadup is about getting an ebike, vs. an ecar or emotorbike. Not about getting both a(n e)bike AND some other more ecologically damaging form of transport.

10k km a year on a bike means riding it for more than an hour every workday. Not a lot of people willing to do that, i think. If that were truly the breakeven distance (i know you didn't really say that) ebikes would be screwed in terms of ecological impact.

That’s half an hour to work, half an hour back. Not outlandish, if you compare normal commutes.

Assuming 250 work days (50 weeks * 5 days), that's 40km/day.

I don't think most people bike at 40km/hour.

Across a year, that averages to 27.4 km per day, biking each and every day.

If done in an hour, that's rather faster than my average biking speed of about 16 kph.

I said more than an hour. I think an hour on a bike is something most people can stomach easily, but it gets annoying fast once you go above that.

I did 50 minutes each way in LA, from Santa Monica to El Segundo. I loved it, except for the parts with cars.

>>and if you want an ebike, the most wco friwndly option, you fuck right off

That's absolutely not correct, the tax subsidy for buying bikes and ebikes in this country is bonkers and better than pretty much anywhere else. If you have any job you can always buy any bike(including an ebike) through the cycle to work scheme meaning it's deducted from your salary pre-tax (meaning that effectively it's a deduction from your own income tax).

Exactly, with no benefit in kind (unlike an EV which attracts 2% at the moment and increases by 1%/year from 2025).

> That's absolutely not correct, the tax subsidy for buying bikes and ebikes in this country is bonkers and better than pretty much anywhere else.

Have you actually tried using it? Four problems:

1 - The bicycle belongs to your employer, and when it's ownership is formally transferred to you, you have to pay tax on it.

2 - The 'cycle Scheme' is implemented separately by each major bike shop running their own scheme, Halfords runs Cycle2Work, Evans runs Ride to work. Your employer signs up to one or the other. If you are on Cycle2Work you can't but from Halfords

3 - If you want something that's not in Halfords, like a specific seat you like or a Bafang Conversion kit, then you have to go to independent shops that are 'in network'. Halfords charges 15% commission, and Evans charges 10%

4 - Employers set random limits, for example my employer does not allow over 1K spend, so you can't buy a decent ebike

I have. We have an ebike that was £2200 brand new, and it was effectively a 100% tax deduction. And yes there are some restrictions around it but they are easy to work with. I have no comment about employers setting their own limits, that's just dumb.

Props to you, I also use the scheme but I had to get a bicycle one year, then wait, and get motor next year and install it myself. Because of the limit.

Most people would not even realise that there are little shops besides halfords on the scheme, and attempt DIY.

Basically I think it would be much simpler, and cheaper to administer if we did away with all the employer nonsence and just removed all taxes from bicycles, like VAT.

> the subsidy increases the more you earn and the higher your taxes

What's the name of this law called that does this? Seems like quite the oversight.

It's not a law, it's math. Anything that comes out of pretax income is a bigger incentive (dollar-wise) for those who have a higher tax rate.

math is law! :)

That is true for a lot of government schemes that work with credits , you need to have taxable income to benefit from tax credits , so higher income means more benefits up to a point

> What's the name of this law

It's a consequence of progressive tax rates.

Last year in the United States, for example, no matter how large your salary was, a single person's income tax rate for the first $10,000 of salary you earned was 10%.

The portion of your salary above that $10,000 is taxed at a higher rate, and as you cross salary amount thresholds (called tax brackets) the tax rate keeps getting increasing for the amount above that threshold.

By the time you get up above the $540,000, the portion of your salary above that $540,000 is taxed at the maximum 37% rate.

So if you purchase a big ticket item that is deducted from your salary before they figure out how much taxes you owe, high earners can save quite a bit.

In the US, this is accurate for other clean energy incentives, but EVs get a $7500 tax credit rather than a tax deduction so the benefit doesn’t depend on tax rate.

The credit is not available for incomes over $150k (single) or $300k (married filing jointly), but the credit is also non-refundable, which means it can only reduce your tax to zero. If your total tax is < $7500, you don’t get the rest back as a refund. This means that, for example, married couples earning less than ~$95k don’t get the full credit.

It is Salary Sacrifice, where an employer agrees to swap salary for some non-cash reward. Employee gets less cash and the benefit (eg. a car). Employer pays Fringe Benefits tax on the benefit, employee doesn't pay tax on the salary they sacrificed. The trick is that there is no fringe benefits tax on electric cars, in one of the few ways Australia is actually promoting them.

https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/Fringe-benefits-tax/Salary-s...

So people in the highest tax bracket can get cheap luxury cars, and everyone else left out in the cold while we wait for government to incentivize affordable electric vehicles on the market. You can still count on one hand the number non-luxury electric car models on the market (<$70,000 AUD). Cheapest is still $50,000 AUD ($33k USD)

For people living in cities/towns, how much of an option is it to go car-less? Is it more like, say, Dutch cities, or more like in the US?

Anyway, whenever I hear talk of promoting EVs without mass transit being mentioned together with it, my instinct is to assume it's some sort of an upwards-transfer-of-wealth scheme in which richer people get subsidized.

It's not quite as extreme as the US, in the city center you can manage okay without, but it's mostly not an option.

You can manage fantastically, not merely okay, without a car in Sydney and Melbourne’s city and inner suburbs. Most people I knew who lived in those areas did not own a car and were better for it.

Fair, I lived in East Melbourne for a couple of years and having a car was entirely unnecessary.

You're right, and I hate it for that reason.

However there are not many other levers to be pulled, and any price reduction in what are expensive vehicles will benefit the wealthy.

The obvious alternative (make ice vehicles more expensive) will actively hurt the poorer car owners more.

I honestly don't see obvious better ways to drive ev uptake

You can increase the tax on the cars wealthy people drive like in the UK we have an annual road tax that varies from not much on a 1L economy car and is like £500 a year on large engined vehicles.

We need more and cheaper models of EV vehicles on the market. Like there are in other countries. Without this you are correct, as the only cars on the market are only affordable by the wealthy.

Over here we are being told that something simple like stricter fuel emissions standards would cause manufacturers to release many more models of EV cars, and that would include more affordable models as well as driving down the costs (we are paying $36,000 USD for a Nissan Leaf, which is only $28,000 USD in USA and 'as low as $20,000' on their web site). Manufacturers still have a lot of capacity for producing cars they are unable to sell in many places, and Australia is a dumping ground. And manufacturers say it will remain so without incentives. Or perhaps if they are forced by new manufacturers such as ACE or BYD, if they are accepted by the market.

It's not really a subsidy, just you don't pay income tax on it as salary sacrifice.

Ideally there's be no income tax or VAT at all, and we'd tax wealth/land/property instead so this would be a non-issue.

Money being collected and then paid back is not required for the government to be subsidising something. It is sufficient that's the revenue collection be foregone.

If you pay income tax on everything else, then a carveout for a specific item is a subsidy.

To play devil's advocate: this puts higher-quality EVs within reach for more people. Some might go all out on a very expensive EV, but presumably most will just want bang for their buck. In turn, plenty of these vehicles will enter the second hand market, starting from a few years down the line.

Back to reality: such effects smell like trickle down economics to me. They may work, provided the rules stay the same. Around here, the govt eradicated the subsidies on hybrids right before the first generation lease hybrids were about to enter 2nd hand market. So we collectively sponsored a bunch of well-off consultants getting fancy cars that were, after the leases ended, all exported :s.

It sounds good in theory. Poor people don't buy new cars, they buy used cars. It's hard to lower the price of used cars by subsidizing them since they are in fixed supply. If you subsidize them the demand increases. The increased demand raises the price, neutering the subsidy.

The way to lower the price of used cars is to subsidize new cars and then waiting 3-10 years. But that doesn't work well either, because pricing is global, and because the demand split for EV/ICE changes every year.

> Back to reality: such effects smell like trickle down economics to me

These feel like scaling down costs rather than trickle down economics. Almost every home good or vehicle, electronic devices, computer parts were super expensive when they came out. The initial presumably rich people fund the factories that eventually mass produced them by buying these super expensive goods which lowered the prices to where the middle class can afford them. It also allows companies to iron out initial issues with production and usability before mass producing items.

Government subsidies and incentives drive this process faster and make it more likely to not die out by trying to ensure that the companies can survive when upfront costs are very high before the first few goods can even ship to the few people that can afford them. Trickle down economics is something quite different.

Do you have a link to this tax incentive? When did it come in?

Here it is from the ATO: https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/Fringe-benefits-tax/Types-of...

It came into effect a few months ago, but was back dated to 1 July 2022.

I think the original comment is misleading. As far as I can tell you need your employer to buy the EV for you; and then they don't have to pay Fringe Benefits Tax on it. This might benefit people who get a "company car" but I don't know of anyone who has gotten a fringe benefit as large as a car from their employer before. I don't doubt it happens but I doubt it helps anyone except employees and employers who could comfortably afford the tax to begin with. I'm not a tax expert so I could be completely misunderstanding this though.

It’s common – you accept a reduced salary in exchange for the fringe benefit. It works particularly well for FBT-exempt employers like charities and state health departments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary_packaging

It also requires the vehicle to NOT be subject to Luxury Car Tax ... which many longer range EVs are.

No, it's very common and there are companies that exist to provide this as a service, just look up "novated lease".

Have you got any info on this? Last I heard EVs were getting made even more expensive due to the luxury car tax. (Which, yes you get a partial discount on for EVs, but even still, a reduced additional tax is still an additional tax)

A tesla base model is 60k, which is just below the luxury tax. If you purchase this car, you'll get all the ev tax benefits without the luxury tax downsides.

In Austria we have much the same but luxury car limit has been 40k since like 2 decades. Which is an utter joke in 2023 because you can buy like 3 EVs under 40k list price.

We do? Isn't this only a thing for corporate vehicles?

Yes sorry but the company can very favorably provide the vehicle to employees without the employee getting taxed on the benefit at all. If you look at the new car market at relevant price points most potential buyers (self employed and people with generous salaries) have access to the scheme.

Shame the infrastructure is so lacking, and the Victorian government have a road tax specifically for EVs

Well, they ain't paying tax for fuel, roads have to be fixed for something...

Fuel excises do not get allocated directly to some kind of "road budget", they go into general revene. Almost all of it can be accounted for in corresponding fuel tax credits, three quarters of which go to mining companies. From memory the difference in 2019 census was like 100mil, so 7.8billion came in from fuel excise, 7.7billion went back out in fuel tax credits.

In essence, everyone pays for federal roads, road user or not, and municipalities pay for local roads. Except for larger state funded projects, which often receive federal assistance. Fuel taxes are a trivial component to infrastructure upkeep, is my understanding.

Another myth is that vehicle registration pays for roads, vehicle registration goes entirely to running the vehicle registration apparatus, that's all.

> “Fuel taxes are a trivial component to infrastructure upkeep, is my understanding.”

If that’s true, Australia needs to think about raising its fuel/vehicle taxes!

In the UK, the opposite is true: direct fuel and vehicle taxes raise 3-4X more revenue than is spent on roads annually[1]

[1] In 2021/22, £11.8 billion was spent on UK local and national roads, vs £28 billion raised from fuel duty and £7.1 billion from vehicle excise duty.

In 2021-22, fuel tax raised $18.2 billion, of which $6.89 billion (38%) was returned as fuel tax credits. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_depart...

Oh I was way off, I doubt 2019 was much different. I'll adjust my parent comment.

The point is that people using are paying that. We dont have fuel tax credit here (Poland) so

> 7.8billion came in from fuel excise, 7.7billion went back out in fuel tax credits.

just seems like pointless excercise in bureaucracy...

The Dutch tax incentives were quite attractive, especially on lease cars, but it's been (being) dialed way back because it's costing the government too much income.

Imagine if all those public money could be spent on improving public transportation instead of in some rich pockets

Where is this fairy country Australia? Living at the western fringe of Greater Melbourne, any charging infrastructure is invisible here, I'm not sure it exists. And $45k or $70k alike both look incredibly expensive to me, I would never find a reason to justify such a purchase. Perhaps going to consider a second-hand deal when the price is below $10k and age is over 10 years, provided the longevity of the battery would look good for the next 10 years and there are "wagon" options on the market.

Honestly cannot understand who are those subsidies for. Recently I witnessed a few times a scene on a parking lot, which appeared to me as a group of overjoyed young people congratulating their happy mate about acquisition of a new ride (invariably a fancy Shelby Mustang or a mean-looking BMW, and invariably on their Ps) - you know, sniffing under the car, patting (the car and the lucky owner) on all surfaces, marveling from all distances. Laughing and selfying. The average age within all those groups, to my judgement, was around 16yo, so I highly doubt they could make full use of Salary Sacrifice incentive. And families like mine will always consider paying for a new car a complete waste. Going "carless" is also absolutely not an option, so if we must spend we're looking for maximum value and minimum outlay.

> Where is this fairy country Australia? Living at the western fringe of Greater Melbourne, any charging infrastructure is invisible here, I'm not sure it exists.

There's plenty of options, check out PlugShare. Most people however charge at home - power into a garage or carport is pretty commonplace, and no special equipment is required.

> And $45k or $70k alike both look incredibly expensive to me, I would never find a reason to justify such a purchase.

$45k sounds high until you do the maths on petrol and servicing savings per annum. Depending on your lifestyle, distance travelled per year, access to free charging (solar, shops, etc) you can save $30-60k in fuel over the 10 years of warranty the battery pack has.

> And families like mine will always consider paying for a new car a complete waste. Going "carless" is also absolutely not an option, so if we must spend we're looking for maximum value and minimum outlay.

It's worth sitting down and doing the maths. You might be surprised the value proposition once you do it.

https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/ is the one-stop-shop for current energy situation in Australia.

Anecdotal: SA was pushing towards clean energy notably before the battery came in, but in turn, had a very unstable grid, and the things like energy trading et al. were tied up in international ownership iirc (needing authorization to do a large energy trade required someone from France giving approval, timezones didn't match up, and the grid fully shut down for a significant period of time)

After the battery was put in and operational, (noting that other things may also have been happening that I'm not aware of), the grid ended up being a lot more stable. Almost a night-and-day feeling to the change.

Overall the local sentiment about it is "electricity is too expensive", https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-15/australian-energy-reg... A very hot topic.

Awesome link, thanks.

Can you recommend a good way to find a better electrical supplier offering decent prices? What's your go to method/service? I've just realised that I haven't shopped around for quite some time.

I think the official one is: https://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au/

Side note: OpenNEM has some of the most beautiful data presentation I've seen in a very long time. Particularly great typography and mobile performance / responsiveness as well. Open source too https://github.com/opennem/opennem-fe

I actually found it quite awful on mobile. It's really hard to scroll through because you accidentally interact with the graphs. There should be more whitespace to use for scrolling, or the graphs should be tap to interact or something. I'm not a web designer, but as a layman it was more frustrating than anything.

Really great visualization.

Seems to disprove the title of the article to me though.

Battery has a .1% grid contribution (point 1 percent, not one percent).

Coal is a massive 62% of power generation in Australia!

Seems improbable to me that the major driver of reducing 60+% electricity contribution is something producing .1%.

Seems more like Australia is "quitting coal in records" purely because it's using so much of it and battery contribution is incidental.

The battery is absorbing or providing short bursts of energy, thus providing grid stability, rather than than providing significant net energy. This then allows the use of renewables which might have short term variations int their output.

The big energy producer is the huge number of rooftop solar installations which everyday Australians have been putting on the roofs of their houses and wind. There are periods in summer when South Australia has surpassed 100% solar generation [1], the excess being exported to the East. These periods will continue to become more frequent, until they merge and South Australia is 100% renewable. They are the leaders, but the rest of the country is following.

By happy coincidence the most southern state and least sunny, Tasmania, is already 100% renewable due to abundant hydro, but they also have lots of wind being near the Southern Ocean.

[1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australias-remarkable-100-...

A very small capacitor can stabilize a much larger supply. I totally believe that .1% fast response source and drain could have a stabilizing effect that is measurable.

For example: a battery that large could easily absorb a voltage spike that would cause a grid fault or brownout. Those tend to cascade and not having them immediately has a large effect on grid stability.

I can just imagine that getting a reliable power grid without batteries would mean you would have to supply extra power at all times to account for any shortfall. Now you just have to provide power until some natural gas generators can spool up.

The graph partway down is pretty interesting. In terms of grid battery capacity that's in the works, Australia is second only to China (albeit a fairly distant second). They're even beating the US in 3rd place, which also highlights how much we're slacking in this space.

If Australia is successful here, I wonder if it will spur more investment in places like the US. China is probably not a good bellwether since they invest in infrastructure projects like the money is burning a hole in their pocket and their unique political environment has certain advantages in terms of pushing through big projects. But if a country like Australia can leverage grid storage at scale, a lot of other countries probably can as well.

It's even more interesting when you consider how much bigger China and the US are compared to Australia.

Edit: although I do wonder if all the "planned" projects will become reality

Probably a dumb question, but would mass-batterification leave our society extremely vulnerable to EMP?

To a certain extent we are already extremely vulnerable to an EMP attack, from people living with a pacemaker, to vehicles relying on an Electronic Control Unit to perform fundamental things.

Batteries are not in danger from an EMP. Sensitive electronic components are in danger. https://www.agilesurvival.com/emp-effect-batteries/

I don't see anything concrete here, and there's a ridiculously false statement that brushes everything away:

> However, no one does High-altitude detonation experiments anymore. ... Since then, we have all kinds of new batteries, including lithium and rechargeable batteries.

There are MIL specs for this, with test systems that emulate it [1], including some impressive mobile systems, from what I've been told. These tests happen all the time as a requirement for some equipment.

The sensitive component in a battery would be the power management IC/circuit. No sane system will draw power from a battery without an ok from the power management circuitry. But, then you have everything else attached.

1. https://www.elitetest.com/mil-std-461-testing

The Department of Homeland Security has not identified EMP as a high-risk threat, and thus has not included it in its 15 all-hazards National planning scenarios.

From "THE EMP THREAT: EXAMINING THE CONSEQUENCES" a house hearing. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg80856/html/C...

Of course a house hearing isn't a great way to argue ones point, but it does make me less apprehensive about an EMP attack.

I think they meant 'batteries as a system', not the individual cells and grid tied batteries have a very large amount of electronics to charge, discharge and protect the batteries.

Is there evidence that batteries as a system are more vulnerable to EMP than the current electric grid? More so, is there evidence that EMP is a viable threat? Ensure the battery grid has the same uptime or better than the current grid and call it a day.

Also, thank you for the reminder of the guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

EMP weapons are a scifi myth.

It takes a lot of energy to generate an EMP that would do any damage (think, nuclear bomb levels of energy). And even then, the area of effect would be less than a mile or two radius.

If someone wanted to attack a grid, well placed C4 would be cheaper and more practical (See moore county substation attack).

High altitude nuclear detonations cause powerful EMP effects over a large area. The US famously discovered this by accident in the 60s with the Starfish Prime nuclear tests, which caused EMP damage in Hawaii almost 1000 miles from the detonation.

Yes, and if nukes are being used like this then the world is ending anyway, as the en masse retaliatory nukes aren't going to be set for upper atmospheric detonation only.

EMP does not have to man made to be a problem .

Solar flares and CMEs are the real concern for system wide damage that can set us back by years if not decades .

The last couple of years showed how fragile our supply chains are ,

A large scale event can damage critical equipment like transformers that take years to manufacture, merely restarting a stopped grid is extremely complex let alone a broken one

Not any more so then we're already at risk from nuclear explosions and X-class flares pointed at earth. In the case of nuclear weapons going off and creating EMPs, were going to have a lot of other problems in that case already.

Very few pieces of our current tech are immune to EMPs, the only cars that would work are old diesels pretty much.

Not in the US: the coal lobby has managed to get their product intertwined with culture wars and Manchin will reliably defect from the Democratic Party on related votes.

It's the same thing down here. The previous PM even famously brought a lump of coal into parliament.

Conversely that government was replaced by Labor in a pretty decisive victory, and the state governments on the mainland are now all Labor as well.

He did. And he also convincing lost the next election.

In that loss the red/blue line didn't move a lot (it doesn't have to move much to get a change of government). But what is notable is that prime ministers party fractured. They lost a lot of seats to a bunch of business women.

Those women look to be of the same colour politically as the prime minister - free market, fiscally conservative. But in the lingo of the culture wars they aren't "woke". They care the legacy they hand their future selves and their children. They regarded dissing our largest trading partner to the point they sanctioned our imports (which lost us billions in trade income) to make a few woke points as insanity. The regard putting effort into fostering cooperation and "just getting" along as a priority.

Thus it looks to me is what happened to Australia's culture wars is one side of the war has won. Meanwhile in the US, it looks like the battles continue.

> He did. And he also convincing lost the next election.

A little bit of a correction needed here. Morrison brought the lump of coal to parliament in February 2017 [1] when he was the treasurer in Turnbull's government. A year and a half later, in August 2018, he betrayed Turnbull during a leadership contest (initiated by another contender) and became PM. He then went on to win the next election as PM, in May 2019. It wasn't until the following election (May, 2022) that he got booted out.

So that makes a bit over 5 years between his lump of coal stunt and losing power (2 elections later). I agree that his obnoxious, non-serious antics in the renewable energy / fossil fuel debate contributed to the rise of the 'Teal' independents that were pivotal in his loss of the 2022 election, but I don't think that stunt was a proximate cause, as you seem to be suggesting.

[1] https://theconversation.com/that-lump-of-coal-73046

Yes, you're right. It does read like I'm making a connection between the coal incident and the last electoral loss. That wasn't my intention.

Nonetheless the presentation of that lump of coal in parliament was a loud shot in the cultural war, and I'm sure Morrison was proud of it at the time. But history has not been kind as while the side firing that shot won the day, they lost the war. That lump of coal looks like a polished turd now.

As you say, they didn't lose the cultural war because of that shot. I suspect that loss was caused by COVID, bush fires and then floods. "We will do what we bloody well want and screw the future" becomes less appealing after nature delivers a lesson on what that future could be.

We’re still set to sunset a third of coal power plants in the next 6 years. The economics just don’t work anymore.

While the large batteries have been extremely useful in stabilising a grid composed mainly of renewables, true grid-scale storage will likely not be based on lithium battery tech, but on things like pumped hydro and molten salt heat storage.

Having said that, Australian lithium exports are tipped to exceed those of coal by value within 5 years.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/07/value...

Pumped hydro isn’t any cheaper fundamentally per kWh than lithium cells. Tesla currently sells Megapacks with a high profit margin, but the bulk supplier cell level lithium iron phosphate cells are about half the price per kWh as a finished pumped hydro station (which is to say that the fundamental technology is cheap, even if demand is so high right now that pumped hydro might be cheaper than Megapacks).

RE "South Australia’s last coal-fired power plant had closed, leaving the province of 1.8 million heavily reliant on wind farms and power imports from a neighboring region. " So - now they import power from places that use coal fired power stations and they have grid stability problems. NOT quitting coal at all. Id ask what is the price of their power KWh?

> Id ask what is the price of their power KWh?

https://aemo.com.au/en/energy-systems/electricity/national-e...

and historically aggregated: https://www.aer.gov.au/wholesale-markets/wholesale-statistic...

Hilarious, that last graph really shouldve been in this puff piece article.

Quadruple the energy price in return for replacing coal plants with junk batteries.

Installing a battery in South Australia did not lead to to a quadrupling of national energy prices. The cost of energy globally has shot up since 2020, and Australia's spot prices are based on the global market.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PNRGINDEXM

Energy independence in the form of renewables is now more advantageous than ever. Tethering your economy to global price hikes like this is a vulnerable position to be in.

The graph shows the cost of energy globally at worst doubled. So Australia’s increase is double the global average.

Also renewables were supposed to decrease the exposure to such global price fluctuations, or at least act as a backstop for the marginal kWh.

Apparently the backstop is still much higher. And batteries do not generate energy.

Australia's spot prices aren't based on the global market.

They are based on the (Australian) national energy market (NEM) which sets price based on supply and demand across South Eastern Australia (WA and NT aren't in the NEM)

The big jump in the last couple of years coincides with the war in Ukraine and high international gas prices.

The government response has been to pressure gas producers to reserve more for the domestic market.

If you keep reading, that was the situation seven years ago before the giant Tesla battery that solved their stability problems.

They still rely on interstate power even after getting the big battery, which solved their frequent brownouts but hasn't actually got much capacity: 150MW and 194MWh[0], when the peak grid demand in SA is 2000MW[1] and they've got grid interconnects with Victoria that can deliver nearly 900MW. They make up the capacity with natural gas generators, and their gas usage went up massively after their coal plants went offline[2].

The biggest problem is that SA is pretty flat[3] and doesn't have good sites for dams. They have a grand total of 3MW of hydroelectric capacity, which means they rely on Victoria (and soon NSW) for renewable energy when peak demand exceeds wind/solar generation, as well as their own gas generators and Victoria's coal plants. The big battery can respond faster than the interstate interconnects (which are far away) and the gas generators (which are expensive to run and only turn on when spot prices are high), which lets it fill the same role a big flywheel would in a coal/nuclear plant.

[0] https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/

[1] https://www.aer.gov.au/wholesale-markets/wholesale-statistic...

[2] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_generation_SA..., which is a year-by-year collection of the data from https://www.energy.gov.au/data/australian-electricity-genera...

[3] https://en-au.topographic-map.com/map-wwnx/South-Australia/?...

South Australia is building brand new natural gas plants. Basically, doubling down on fossil fuels.

> So - now they import power from places that use coal fired power stations and they have grid stability problems.

That sounds like Austria. They really dislikes nuclear power, and are suing all their neighbors for it. But when they have power deficit, they are happily importing power from Czechia or Hungary, where Czechia is having 2 NPPs at the southern border with Austria. Austrians obviously have no issues where the imported power is coming from...

You can answer these questions on OpenNEM:

https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=1y&interval=1M

SA imports about ~10% of its power and exports about ~5% at the moment (YTD) and price is cheaper than NSW and QLD

As an Australian living in Canada, I want to say unalike Canada, the term "Province" feels weird to be used here. Australia refers to its divided regions as "States".

As wrong-sounding as saying "the province of California ..."

Im glad someone else agrees. I expected more from Bloomberg.

A comment that might well be made about the entire article.

The other key thing is SAs power use is far smaller than NSW, Victoria and Queensland. So while they can shutdown their coal stations and import if there is a shortfall, those bigger states can't.

For example as I type this Queensland is generating about 4300MW of solar, SA is generating about 1300MW of solar, but SA gets all the plaudits for being green.

As I type this, QLD is using 77% black coal. SA is using 71% gas.

Over the past 24hrs SA was 83% renewable (solar+wind), 16% gas.

In that same 24hrs QLD was 79% black coal, 12% renewables.

Plaudits seem deserved.

https://aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-elec...

That page is showing generation not use. 83% of the power SA generated was renewable, but it wasn't enough to cover their use, so they imported 28% of their power from interstate, renewables cover 45% and the rest was gas. Other states are too big to just import 28% of their power. SA is small enough they can shut down their coal and just import coal-based power from Victoria.

Meanwhile Qld, Vic and NSW each produced more than triple the renewable power SA did today.

https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&interval=30m

OpenNEM puts it at 12% imported and states 67.9% from renewables.

Why would SA want to produce multiple times their requirements in renewable energy? Today during the sunny period more than 100% was fulfilled by solar.

Yeah but Australia also happily digging vast quantities of coal out of the ground and selling it to India and China and elsewhere, utterly dwarfing any local cutbacks in usage.

A land of opportunity (for the OzzieGarchs) and hypocrisy (for the politicians).

Yes, we are hypocrites, but the export trade in thermal coal is doomed regardless.

So. You can't solve everything at once, and you can't solve anything by being the noble idiot in the iterated prisoners dilemma. India and China will figure out a sustainable replacement in their own time. They have a much larger population inertia and thus it takes more time to phase out and replace things. At the same time, Australia will eventually phase out and replace those mining jobs.

You make good points. I'm not so hopeless. China and India in aggregate are expanding wind and solar power at a staggering rate. (India already has the world's single largest installation with more being planned.) Yes, in the short term, both India and China need a lot of coal for power and steel production. In the medium term, that will taper off as wind and solar (any _maybe_ nuclear) provides a greater share of electricity.

More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country

It's a short term effect though. Basically, in the Australian market, coal stopped being competitive. And as you rightly point out that's under political circumstances that were very pro-coal and in a market where lithium batteries were still expensive and scarce. Despite this, those became a viable and popular solution. And by now a proven solution as well.

That's an economical effect that will be replicated elsewhere as well and as it happens, coal demand will suffer. In much of Europe and the US, coal stopped being a growth market about a decade ago. Many plants have already closed and few are expected to survive the next decade.

However, both India and China have am insatiable demand for power. They don't buy coal because it is cheap but because it is the only capacity available to them at a large enough scale. It's a stop gap solution. Of course especially China is working hard to address that supply issue. Ramping up production capacity is going to take time. Demand currently outstrips global production capacity by quite a big margin. But they are already market leaders and working hard to extend the lead.

Tesla just announced opening a new 40 GW megapack factory in China. That will double their output. But it's nowhere near enough. It seems they are one of the few companies able to operate at this scale. For now. That's not going to last of course. It's like printing money almost. They got in early and are benefiting from that right now. But it's inevitable that others will catch up.

Funny that the article doesn't mention the word "export" once.

As is always the case with green energy, local changes don't matter if you're shipping the CO2 emissions somewhere else.

Interestingly enough Australia's coal export are at their lowest in 7 years, but this is mostly because coal companies have been able to maintain very high profits selling less as the price of coal has been high (because there is a lot of global demand) [0].

The real question is, as always with fossil fuels, how much of your proven reserves do you plan to keep in the ground? The only way (outside of sequestration fantasies) to keep CO2 out of the air is to keep it in the ground. But I don't know of any examples where plans for future extraction have been shuttered.

0. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/15/australi...

Australia's CO2 emissions are down when accounting for trade. https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/australia

Similar is true for practically all countries that have reduced their CO2 emissions. Can’t be bothered to dig up a source, but probably yours also links this data.

Exported CO2 emissions negating improvement is a myth, or disinformation.

That's my assessment also.

Australia is the perfect location for solar + battery power, so I am glad they are taking that seriously. If energy becomes a lot cheaper there thanks to the plentiful renewables, that will be a great signal to the rest of the world about what you can do with solar.

Australia is also undergoing something of an energy crisis where our quality of life is at risk. I would not recommend our grid management policies to anyone. SA, famous for installing the Big Battery, is leading the charge with retail prices at ~35c/kWh [0].

These are policies that could very well mean that we have less energy available for use; mainly for ideological reasons. Someone is going to bear the brunt of that. It is lucky we can outsource our manufacturing to other South East Asian countries; but the trends we're seeing are terrible for Australia.

[0] https://www.canstarblue.com.au/electricity/electricity-costs...

Hopefully it will mean more local solar off grid setups, more heat pumps and better thermal insulation. People need to start being more efficient with the energy they use. The increase in cost will help with that in some cases.

Should the message to poor people, who are getting destroyed with very high energy costs, be "just spend $10,000 on solar"?

Environmentalists are pretty out of touch when they throw poor people under the bus and tell them to just buy a $50,000 entry-level Tesla or a $10,000 entry-level solar system.

They'll simply vote for populism if they are bled further, and price rises are a certainty with expensive renewable 'solutions'. Our grid can't even support a large expansion of solar, nor a large expansion of EVs. Costs will grow exponentially if the grid is gold-plated to handle EVs and further solar, along with expensive renewables.

You make good points. I wish govts in wealthy countries would offer more zero rate loans or grants to low income people to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. It's a win-win: That means low income people lower their CO2 footprint and their incomes rise. For low income people, usually that gets spent right back into the economy, further boosting GDP.

If you look closely at the heat pump rebates in the UK, it is roughly 50% the upfront cost for average installations. That leaves an upfront payment of 5,000 GBP or more. There is just no way that middle class and below will have that money in savings. A better idea: Provide zero interest loans. Whatever is saved on energy bills can be used to pay down the loan. After 10-20 years, it should payoff the entire loan with a huge benefit for everyone.

Resources can't be magicked into existence, they have to come from somewhere. They'll probably be the people who are being forced to buy new heat pumps. A 0% interest loan is going to act similarly to just forcing them to buy the heat pump.

How long will the heat pump last? First result says 25 years. [1]

https://www.evergreenenergy.co.uk/heat-pump-guides/how-long-....

Especially in Australia, where we are also undergoing a housing crisis. Australia's poorest don't own their homes, and renters don't have a say on insulation or solar installation.

We have exactly the same policies in Europe. In fact it was the directing line explained by Klaus Schwab, the West should consume less energy and let the rest of the world prosper. The danger is, when you have less energy, your industries move to countries where they can consume/emit, and you become a vassal state of those countries.

If I were China, I would fund the hell of decarbonation and anti-nuclear groups.

> The danger is, when you have less energy, your industries move to countries where they can consume/emit, and you become a vassal state of those countries.

"Just" add carbon tariffs, which is what the eu was planning to do on steel, for example.

"Planning to do" sounds like it won't happen. https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/green-taxation-0/carbo... gives October 2023 as a start date.

thanks, I only used the past because I remember this was in the works but did not follow the development. Glad to know it is in force already.

> ...and you become a vassal state of those countries.

As an interesting aside, I would like to see Australia opening negotiations with India in case the US pulls back from the Pacific. If it turns out the US can't afford to fight China and Russia at the same time, I think signing up with India is probably the most workable path. Either as some sort of inferior ally or maybe trying to sign up as a full Indian state.

> Either as some sort of inferior ally or maybe trying to sign up as a full Indian state

This overstates India's power projection and understates Australia's.

Instead - Japan, Australia, and India have been workng on Trilateral Defense and Economic relations since the mid-2010s, with this being formalized with the Quad (which offically isn't a defense agreement yet).

SK and VN have also shown interest in joining the Quad, and honestly, it makes more sense in the Asia context.

On the economic and energy policy side, ik India+Japan have put their renewable eggs in the Blue and Brown Hydrogen strategy - use Australian NatGas and Coal to create Hydrogen cells. This also allows both India and Japan to minimize any dependencies on Chinese battery tech and supply chains and integrate Australia's economy closer with India+Japan [0][1][2][3], and Australian mining companies are being selected by India to help with the Lithium deposits in Jammu [4]

[0] - https://www.csis.org/analysis/japans-hydrogen-industrial-str...

[1] - https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-hydrogen

[2] - https://www.pv-magazine-india.com/2021/12/11/the-long-read-r...

[3] - https://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/trade-and-investment/in...

[4] - https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Commodities/India-s...

> SA, famous for installing the Big Battery, is leading the charge with retail prices at ~35c/kWh

Yes, SA's electricity prices are high. But they've always had the highest price in Australia because they have no coal or gas. What's pertinent here is SA's electricity prices are dropping, whereas in every other state electricity prices are going up.

Prices going up is sort of inevitable when you are replacing your generation. We are currently coasting along on 30 year of paid for coal plants that are reaching EOL. Someone has to pay for whatever replaces them. The mechanism was always going to be the old plants drop off, the price then goes up, then it becomes attractive for new generation to enter the market.

The frightening bit is it took SA about 17 years to go from 1% renewable to their current 80%, and only now are prices starting to drop. The rest of Australia has to go through the same transition, in less time.

And France did it in the 70/80s without the need for Tesla. Its almost as if we had the solution 50 years ago and simply refused to do it for idiotic reasons.

No, they aren’t quitting coal in record time. They are just planning to and they’re far away from having achieved that.

A quick look on »Electricity Maps« proves that the article’s claim is wrong.

If there is any country in the world that achieved a coal exit in record time, it’s France with the »Messmer Plan«.

I sometimes try to see in a graph what Tesla's battery impact was on the energy network.

My assumption is that it's stabiles the frequency so we'll that this should be easily seen in some frequency graph.

But I can't find one, if someone can enlighten me.

https://archive.is/2023.04.04-221503/https://www.bloomberg.c...

TLDR battery storage can replace grid inertia (“ancillary services”) historically provided by thermal generators (coal and various forms of fossil gas). This is a distinct service/capability from energy arbitrage and has its own revenue stream.

South Australia (where the Hornsdale Power Reserve was installed) runs a minimum of 80MW of fossil gas generation to provide these services (in concert with synchronous condensers), and this year the grid operator AEMO plans on lowering that minimum further, approaching a point where they’ll allow running on renewables and batteries alone around 2025-2026 (once a new interconnector with adjacent New South Wales is complete).

https://reneweconomy.com.au/remarkable-south-australia-may-s...

(also of note are new capabilities in battery and solar power controls that allow them to form grids independently vs simply following existing grid reference)

https://reneweconomy.com.au/aemo-to-fast-track-grid-forming-...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235246772...

The cost however remains remarkably high. A combination of renewables and giant piles of lithium is more expensive than nuclear, by quite a bit. [1]

Anyways, the future is a mix of all sorts of things and this is a strict improvement so it's hard to be anything other than supportive.

[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/what-energy-storage-would-have-to-...

You’re assuming long duration lithium storage vs excess renewables with curtailment. Australia is going 100% renewables at a reasonable cost with solar, wind, hydro, transmission, and some batteries. No nuclear is required to decarbonize.

https://aemo.com.au/newsroom/media-release/engineering-frame...

https://aemo.com.au/initiatives/major-programs/engineering-f...

I'm not actually making that assumption, I linked an article with the numbers as [1] in an edit to my initial reply.

Nuclear is renewable :) [2]

But yes, adjusting demand is far more efficient than adjusting supply. However it seems there's limited appetite.

> No nuclear is required to decarbonize.

No but it's less expensive, and better from a space utilization and environmental impact perspective. It's the best energy source we have. Safest, cleanest and lowest carbon. And most reliable. [1] Not perfect, but better than anything else we've got.

[1] https://sustainablereview.com/nuclear-energy-is-better-than-...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s...

I’m not against nuclear but it is a long way from being cheap and easy. Look at the recent andventures with Hinkley C. And that’s with an existing industrial base for nuclear power. 25 bn pounds is 45 billion AUD which is what previous governments paid to wire the whole country up with a patchwork of broadband (inflation unadjusted). And don’t say they small modular will step into the breach because it is not a proven technology and until the first 10 are deployed may never be.

Australia has no nuclear knowledge base and would require a nationwide debate about getting into the nuclear power game so we would have at a minimum a 20 year lead time to build something.

We could be totally decarbonised by that point and we wouldn’t even have a reactor online.

As to your other points, have you seen how much space we have down here? Cramming a plant into a specific area is not a net benefit. We’ve got a geographically diverse population with a lot of empty space, it would be better to have more plants in more diversified locations.

We will end up passing nuclear by, the economics and time lag just don’t stack up for us

> We will end up passing nuclear by, the economics and time lag just don’t stack up for us

Again the economics are better than what is being done. However.

> I’m not against nuclear but it is a long way from being cheap and easy.

Ah yes just like JFK said about going to space. "We choose to decarbonize the grid with solar not because it is the best option, not because the cheapest option or even because it is hard - but because it is easy and politically expedient."

You haven’t managed to make any strong assertions, just a smattering of pseudo-intellectualism. Thanks and good luck

You can politically thank The Greens for no nuclear power plants in Australia (apart from Lucas Heights, medical).

Ironically, their 100% outright, non negotiable no nuclear policy has pushed heavy carbon emitting coal power plants for the last 30 years until the recent policy shift of winding them down in lieu of solar.

Is this true?

Greens sometimes have influence in balance of power, but ultimatly they are a smaller party with limited influence or policy making decisions.

Logically that view seems to look at one side of the position only, if they had the power to stop nuclear you'd have to think they also have the power to significantly reduce/replace coal, which hasn't been the case.

Generally doesn't seem fair statement to me but open to reading information that shows otherwise.

No. It's not true. The Greens as a party didn't exist when the Australian Labor Party resolved to ban uranium mining and join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact in the mid 70's. The various Australian anti-nuclear movements (plural) largely arose and thrived during the late 70s and 80s. Public opposition to nuclear energy started to wane in the 2000s, accelerated by concerns relating to climate change.

I think generally it wasn't the 'Green Party' but rather the wider environmental movement that then had a wide influence on the left in particular. The right meanwhile generally is just happy with fossil fuels and does whatever is cheaper.

That was always the problem with nuclear, it didn't have a political ally.

In one of the few cases where it did have political allies, it was in France when the realized how much control over oil is in the middle east. So French elites turned on fossil and invested in nuclear. And within 20 years they solved the problem. Its pretty instructive.

It is not true; the main impediment to nuclear in Australia has been some combination of the Australian Labor party and the people who vote for them. They've been staunchly anti-nuclear for a long time.

"Labor will ... [p]rohibit the establishment of nuclear power plants and all other stages of the nuclear fuel cycle in Australia;" [0]

[0] https://www.alp.org.au/2021nationalplatform

> recent andventures with Hinkley C

Building individual prestige one-off projects will always be a bad idea. This is the kind of things government do if they just need to hand out pieces of the pie to everybody.

A better example would be what South Korea has done in the UAE. Building 4 reactors 1 after the other in a country with no experience and no labor force. They did it pretty quickly and the unit price and unit speed goes up with every one.

In the UAE, construction started 2012, commissioned 2020. But importantly, after that they finish every year.

In reality, nuclear is not actually that slow if a government is really willing to do it and build a plant that has been built before.

RE "...Australia is going 100% renewables at a reasonable cost with solar, wind, hydro, transmission, and some batteries....." The level of network supply reliability ( as in outages ) and the cost will be higher than the predicated "reasonable " in my opinion. Id like to know how several days of "overcast weather over extended areas " will be dealt with. Batteries are ok for short term storage .

Hydro. Snowy 2 and Tasmania. Worst case, we’re still burning some small amount of fossil gas, or perhaps ammonia or hydrogen generated from renewables that would’ve otherwise been curtailed.

Consider that enough energy falls on the Earth every ~60 minutes to power humanity for a year. We just need to continue to drive down renewables and storage costs. The world is already fusion capable, at a distance.

It doesn't matter that nuclear is cheaper if you can't build a nuclear plant.

The difference is that a lithium battery facility can be installed and functional in 12-24 months. A nuclear plant takes 12-24 years.

Much like World War I strategies, a solution that nobody has the political will to implement isn't a solution.

> The difference is that a lithium battery facility can be installed and functional in 12-24 months.

These things aren't comparable without putting it together as a system.

> A nuclear plant takes 12-24 years.

You're thinking about wild outliers there. It's around 6.5 years median [1].

[1] https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/nuclear-construction-ti...

Funny article. It talks about time to build nuclear reactors but never mentions Russia.

Why would it?

Rosatom builds faster than South Korea, which takes 9 years to build a reactor [0]. For example, the reactor in Belarus was built in 8 years[1]. The first reactor at the Akkuyu site in Turkey is going to be built in 6 years [2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...

[2] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Major-components...

> Funny article. It talks about time to build nuclear reactors but never mentions Russia. > ... > For example, the reactor in Belarus was built in 8 years[1].

Sorry to break it to you but Belarus is still not russia, yet.

If you look again at the article you'll see lots of countries that have nuclear reactors are not specifically mentioned, however in the one section where countries are specifically mentioned a group for all former USSR countries is called out that includes russia and other countries. This will be due to how reactor data was recorded prior to the dissolution of the USSR.

Slava Ukraini

Just like UAE isn't South Korea but the reactors there are designed and built by a South Korean company. What's your point?

Sorry to break it to you, but the USSR dissolved over 30 years ago.

You are confused. The article talks about reactor construction time in countries.

E.g. Hinkley Point C is being built in the UK, that means it gets recorded in data about construction in the UK, even though it is designed by a French company, and owned by a French and Chinese company.

The same applies for reactors designed by Rosatom and built around the world. A VVER-1200 built in China may be a russian design, but the data is recorded as construction in China for obvious reasons.

> Sorry to break it to you, but the USSR dissolved over 30 years ago.

Yes, you're the one that was confused why Belarusian projects did not count as russian, and you ignored the Former USSR information in the article. If you would like to know why she aggregated the data that way and didn't break it out into before and after USSR dissolution, you should go and post a comment asking on her Substack.

Firstly, it's meaningless -- the construction time depends on who is building, not where.

Secondly, it doesn't matter -- reactors in Russia are built by Rosatom just a little slower and still on par with South Korea.

I have zero interest in asking her about anything.

> the reactor in Belarus was built in 8 years

That’s slower than average [1]. Striking, considering how much where you build influences timelines as much as who’s building. (I doubt Minsk subjects Rosatom to community input, labor requirements or environmental reviews.)

[1] https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/nuclear-construction-ti...

Yes, lots of the reactors are built by China which takes 5-6 years to do the job. All other countries take more time.

"community input, ... environmental reviews"

It all happens before the start of construction, doesn't it?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...

> lots of the reactors are built by China which takes 5-6 years to do the job. All other countries take more time

This is incorrect: Russia builds new nuclear power plants slower than the average plant built by Japan and Korea in the last decades. The slowpokes are Europe and the U.S.

> happens before the start of construction, doesn't it

No. It’s an ongoing process in developed countries. (Including, increasingly, China.)

Why don't you support your statements with sources?

"the average plant built by Japan"

Japan stopped building reactors after Fukushima disaster. If you cut corners, build a reactor in five years and later it blows up, that's not what you want, isn't it?

"It’s an ongoing process"

What kind of effect does it have on the construction? If none, it's just ongoing show.

That's from start of "building" not "planning". In the US, getting the permits and handling the planning far exceeds the actual construction.

In addition, there have only been 7 reactors constructed in North America since 1990 and none from 1995 to 2005.

I'm actually a fan of nuclear reactors. However, in the US, we simply don't have the political will to build them.

Wind and solar also have many years (and decades) of planning involved. And many also fail to get past the planning phase.

> However, in the US, we simply don't have the political will to build them.

Fair enough, though this article is about Australia. Here in the US we do have the TVA that is looking to go ahead with new nuclear. But we will likely lag other countries such as Canada (OPG and SaskPower are proceeding with new nuclear builds).

Chicken and egg thing. If you listen to the DOE Loan Program head, he says it takes so long and costs so much because each plant is a bespoke hand-crafted special construction project. They can be made much cheaper and much faster if you standardize the design and copy-paste them to where it's a good fit.

This isn't an issue inherent to nuclear power at all, but instead in how we approach it.

This isn't speculation either, China is building 150 new plants by 2035. [1]

> Much like World War I strategies, a solution that nobody has the political will to implement isn't a solution.

That's just a tautology.

[1] https://thediplomat.com/2022/09/powering-chinas-nuclear-ambi...

Again, you’re saying that it’s cheap, but then responding to criticism they’re bespoke by presenting an untested technology that has further lead time delays and may even be vapourwear. You still can’t spin up an industrial base in less than 5-10 years, and there sure as hell isn’t the political will to ask the Chinese to build it for us

I didn't say it was cheap. I said current nuclear reactor technology is cheaper than a mix of renewables and lithium batteries. They're both quite expensive, and headline renewable 'low costs' exclude storage. But that's ok, I think the fact it's expensive isn't a reason to avoid either of them.

I then said that we can also make it significantly cheaper than it is to construct nuclear plants, and offered a path presented by someone very knowledgeable about the space. Jigar Shah from DOE. [1]

> ... but then responding to criticism they’re bespoke by presenting an untested technology that has further lead time delays and may even be vapourwear.

What untested technology lol, nuclear has been around since 1955. I'm talking about layouts.

> You still can’t spin up an industrial base in less than 5-10 years, and there sure as hell isn’t the political will to ask the Chinese to build it for us

That's ok just get the Canadians to do it. Check out the CANDU family. [2] And you know all those solar panels are being made in China right? 85% of all panels - 45% of polysilicon comes from Xinjiang. So that's exactly what is being done. [3]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXRmlcsqHtk

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor

[3] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/china-made-solar-pv-created...

They are actually quite cheap. I did some basic calculations on what it would have cost Germany if they in 2000 had started a the 'Gründewende' with nuclear. And it would have been massively cheaper then what they have been doing.

Modern CANDU reactors can be really great. There is some new Thorium/Uranium based fuel that will revolutionize CANDU operations. One of the biggest issues with CANDU is that it high labor cost to change the fuel bundles. Some new fuels will allow the reduction of those operations by like 4x, saving on labor cost.

It takes 12-24 years if its a lazy one off with little political support.

We also shouldn't measure time for a single plant, but for many.

Fact is, France built like 50 in 20 years. And if you look at the UAE, its much more instructive. A country with no experience.

Handed out a bid in 2009, first plant active 2020 and then plants going online 2021, 2022, 2023. And if you just keep going like that eventually you can finish 2 or more per year. France was finishing like 5-6 plants a year.

If you look at Germany in 2000 for example. Had they done what France did in the 70/80s, Germany would have carbon free right now and they would have spent far less money then the 'Green Revolution' that they are engaged with now (and all the massive cost they will be paying the next 20 years). If you just do the math, based even on the prices that South Korea charged ULA, nuclear would be a no brain. And nobody can tell me Germany wouldn't have the engineering skill to do this.

That article is 4 years old the prices it assumes are more than what they actually are already. With large scale Sodium Ion battery production expected to start this year in China it will be interesting to see what profilates faster grid scale battery storage or home battery packs.

I mean, that points to a Joule article that says: “If other sources meet demand 5% of the time, electricity costs fall and the energy capacity cost target rises to $150/kWh.” (Ie from $20/kWh). In other words, the grid can easily go to 95% variable renewable using storage costs the same as what they are right now. I should point out even nuclear power tends to use fossil power for backup, and synthesizing hydrogen for industrial uses could also be used to provide that last 5% affordably.

That’s why when you add hydrogen season storage (to lithium daily storage), renewables are very competitive with nuclear even at 100% bAsElOaD. See: https://model.energy for an illustration of this.

But seriously, getting to even just 95% clean energy would be a massive win, and the most important thing is getting to 95% clean within 20 years, not 100% in 40. (Or actually, getting to 80% in 10 is even more important, and to do it in a way that doesn’t massively increase energy costs, because we also have to eliminate natural gas for heating and petroleum for transportation.)

(And I’m a big proponent of nuclear, but you can just build renewable WAAAAY faster in 2023. And that’s what matters… well that and not prematurely decommissioning existing nuclear!)

South Australia is building brand new gas peaking plants. Seems like fossil fuels continue to be a core pillar of their energy strategy.

Irrational decisions still occur occasionally.

https://www.energy-storage.news/no-longer-economically-ratio...

https://www.energy-storage.news/battery-storage-30-cheaper-t...

https://www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au/resources/resources-hu...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The fact that in the opening hook the author mistook the state of South Australia for a province just me doubt even more how close to reality this is.

province - an administrative district or division of a country

Is that not close enough to how states in Australia work that you can accept the mistake and move on?

The word "state" usually implies a part of a federated country. "Province" is more often used for administrative circuits of a country with a centralized government.

Technically each Australian State is a sovereign entity with His Majesty King Charles represented by the Governer who is "advised" by the State Parliament. The Federal Government many only manages those things that cross State boundaries, like defense, international treaties and borders, once again via the Governer-General who represents the King.

We have an enormous amount of duplication in our governments.

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4472/when-will-australia...

Wait.. so we're going to stop shipping millions of tons of coal to China. A country that accounts for 20% of our GDP. We're not even going to scratch the coal off the walls. Sill article, that really equates to blowing a raspberry at a bon fire.

It struck me that all of the battery big "white boxes" of the Victorian Big Battery are gathered at the same facility.

Shouldn't they be spread over a larger area, even possibly over several towns?

Else, it looks like very vulnerable to accidents, fire, or even wartime attacks.

Is it? I'm Australian & haven't heard a thing about this.

Im curious how the hell Australia is planning on making up its GDP if we and the world are "cleaning up fast" as the article puts it.

No manufacturing, no tech, no engineering...hmm...

Copper and Lithium mining.

This article claims the needed costs are seriously underestimated. https://www.siliconchip.com.au/Issue/2023/April/Renewable+en...

It just makes a bunch of assertions without strong evidence?

Australia is also shipping all its coal to China

and India. The alternative is cutting them off instead and cause widespread famine.

Australia needs to get its act together and build high speed rail lines. Their geography is actually fantastic for it, its criminal not to have done it 40 years ago.

Why? What problems will this solve?

Much better to spend it on public transport improvements in our cities, and a congestion charge to make cars pay for what they use.

Those things are not opposed to each other. In fact one benefits from the other. One is national, the other is more local.

And the main thing holding back cities is cars and removing them is not primarily a cost issue, but a political one.

As for what will it solve, it decarbonize the most important air routes in your country. It will serve as a backbone for the transportation network of your country for next 100 years.

> Their geography is actually fantastic for it

their demographic sparsity on the other hand, is not fantastic for it.

You want high usage for rail. Unfortunately, there's not really enough people travelling to make it a profitable venture imho. Between sydney and melbourne, it's _just_ barely in the range for a flight, and so a rail will not beat it on convenience.

But there's no destination closer!

You are apparently being too rational with this answer. You are right. You can't spend 60 billion for something that 500 people a day will use when planes already do it for less.

Having something that is incredibly useful doesn't have to be profitable. High speed rail is infrastructure that will serve you well for literally the next 100+ years.

And as you improve your local rail network and amount of connections to that high speed rail, its a no brainer.

There's literally an episode of the satirical comedy "Utopia" about how this is untrue and yet keeps getting raised every election.

What was the previous record?

Quitting coal mining in exchange for lithium mining? That’s like saying an addict is healthy because he quit heroin in exchange for being hooked on fentanyl.

It's actually like quitting heron for pot. Coal is vastly more damaging.

I assume you don’t live near a lithium mine

Do you know that after coal is burned, it’s gone?

Do you know that after your lithium battery degrades, it’s toxic waste?

Batteries can be recycled.

CO2 in the air is damaging all life on earth, while a lithium mine at most damages the local area around the mine. It's probably much better to have a few local "dead" spots than a complete planet out of whack.

And as a sibling comment said, lithium can be recycled.

> lithium can be recycled

It can’t. This is an extremely energy intensive process that produces toxic waste products.

It’s a fantasy.

Lithium is regularly recycled already.

There are major listed companies doing lithium recycling in Melbourne: https://www.reuters.com/technology/lithium-australia-signs-l...

CO2, whether from fossil fuel combustion or respiration (e.g. part of your and my exhaled breath, day and night) becomes plant tissue. Land plants, algae in the oceans, the herbivorous content of your salad, the flowers in your garden, etc.

"Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds" https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...

Yeah, well, I expressed myself clumsy. CO2 in itself is not bad, but the global warming effect caused by too much and unnatural CO2 in the atmosphere is bad. And that global warming effect slowly wreaks havoc with natures balance and long-term kills life on earth as we know it.

Such crap, battery power is effectively just exporting pollution to Africa, anyone bothered to research the Lithium mines/processing plants? They are horrificly polluting.

Can you share anything on the magnitude of pollution harm from lithium mining vs. coal?

What kind of pollution? There are many and they aren’t all equal. And in what quantities per kWh for each type?

lithium is mined in US and australia, not so much africa. And, unlike coal, only needs to be mined once

[Edited my original comment to include processing plants]. There is a secondary stage of processing after extraction which is highly toxic, that is the polluting part. Have a look at the huge tailings dams they set up to hold the toxic waste. These things just kick the can down the road for future generations. They also probably leak into groundwater. Lucky you don't have to drink that water.

infinitely better than putting CO2, particulate matter and carcinogens in the air. And recyclable.

Non of the processing plants are in Africa. So I have no idea what you are talking about. There is like 1 lithium mine in Africa and I'm not even sure it produces lithium for batteries. As far as I now not a single lithium refinement facility is in Africa.

The waste majority of lithium comes from Australia, China or South America. If you look at industry statistics, 90% of lithium refinement is done in China.

Lithium refinement isn't actually that dirty or polluting. Please provide with evidence of what is so bad about it if you want to make that claim. Where in China can people not drink the water because of these plants?

I am seriously questioning where you get the data for any of the claims you make.

If you want to talk about Africa, the real issue is not lithium but rather cobalt from the Congo. And the issue there is not refining as this is done in China. The issue there is artisanal mines employing children.

For some sound figures, see the 25 years of lithium production graphic here [1] Australia is responsible for twice the seperated end product as Chile which itself produces twice that of China (2021).

Half of Australias 55.4 ktonnes of production (REO) comes from Mt Weld ( 240,000 tonnes per annum of ore to produce up to 66,000 tonnes per annum of concentrate containing 26,500 tonnes of REO ) [2].

Mt Weld Australia ships its concentrate to the world’s largest single rare earths processing plant in Malaysia[3].

These figures rather undercut the assertion that:

> If you look at industry statistics, 90% of lithium refinement is done in China.

Can you link to the "industry statistics" that you are quoting? Thankyou.

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/01/chart-countries-produ...

[2] https://lynasrareearths.com/about-us/locations/mt-weld-weste...

[3] https://lynasrareearths.com/

Its really hard to find stats for refinement. I thought I had seen 90%, but I do not remember where. Your [1] seems to suggest its only 60%. So I might have been wrong on that.

My [1] states that :

    [ China ] also hosts 60% of the world’s lithium refining capacity for batteries.

AND states that :

    Batteries == 74% of total lithium usage

So that's 60 % of 74 % of global refining capacity (I'll leave the math for you)

That's also a tad out of date as it fails to account for post 2020 refining plants and the coming changes as proposed plants (eg: Musk's super Texas plant) lay ground and get built to start production in (?) near future.

You need lithium refinement not just for batteries. You don't need lithium as poor for other applications, but its still has to be refined. So its more like 60% of all global lithium refinement.

China has less % of that in terms of battery materials production, as that is also very common in South Korea and Japan.

> and the coming changes as proposed plants

Yeah but its not only the rest of the world that has plans. Lithium refinement capacity in China is also growing.

Partly why Tesla is building the refinement plant is because of Chinas dominance.

> So its more like 60% of all global lithium refinement.

This is poor reasoning.

> Lithium refinement capacity in China is also growing.

Falling in a relative sense, particularly now that the movement globally is against offshoring the filthy end of rare earth semi conductor, solar, battery, etc production to China.

China's dominance of REO production came as a result of a practice of shipping global concentrates to China .. in a production sense these are relatively low tonnages (dwarfed by iron ore etc shipping) .. and with large plants planned outside of China (eg the one linked above in Malaysia) there is now will be significant competition | options for locations where concentrates can be refined.

Have you bothered to do it?

Africa has almost no lithium mining and as far as I know no lithium refining. There are a bunch of projects in planning stages but few are operating.

Can you please link to these African lithium mines and refinement facilities that are so horrible?

Are you confused between lithium and cobalt perhaps?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com