From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

h/t Theo; The Grattan Institute has recommended transitioning to electric and banning new gas connections.

No time to waste’: getting Australian homes off gas crucial for meeting net zero targets, report says

Grattan Institute analysis recommends governments help households transition to electric, and ban new gas connections for homes and businesses

Adam Morton Climate and environment editor
Mon 19 Jun 2023 01.00 AEST

Getting households off gas for heating and cooking would cut energy bills and improve people’s health, and is necessary for Australia to have any hope of reaching net zero greenhouse emissions by 2050, a new analysis says.

The report by the Grattan Institute, a Melbourne-based thinktank, called on state and territory governments to set dates for the end of gas use and launch campaigns to encourage and help households become “all electric”, running on renewable energy.

It recommended governments also ban new gas connections for homes, shops and small businesses and set dates to phase out the sale of gas appliances and by which rental homes have to be fitted with electric cooktops and water and home heating systems.

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/19/australian-homes-gas-net-zero-targets-report

Looking at the report summary, there is also a recommendation that landlords be forced to make rental accomodation all electric, and government provided indigenous accomodation be upgraded to all electric.

Australia is already facing a rental accomodation crisis because of landlords fleeing the industry, so this latest demand will just add to the list of reasons not to be a landlord. The full report admits all electric appliances cost more.

The full Grattan Institute report pushes heat pumps instead of gas burners. Heat pumps are fine in principle, but in practice they can be difficult to install. The German Green Party is facing a major embarrassment, they can’t get their heat pumps to work in their own Berlin party headquarters. So far they’ve wasted €5 million with nothing to show but political fallout.

The report also suggests coal generators are not being replaced by gas, they are being replaced by renewables + storage.

The problem with this claim is nobody is building the storage.

Australia needs major energy storage investment to face ‘wicked challenge’ of net zero, CSIRO says

By Andy Colthorpe
March 29, 2023

Australia’s national science agency CSIRO has said the country needs to invest into multiple different energy storage technologies at massive scale to achieve its transition to renewable energy.

A new roadmap published today by government agency Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) highlighted that a 10-14x increase in energy storage capacity will be needed in the National Electricity Market (NEM) in the years 2025 and 2030. Australia is targeting net zero emissions by 2050.

The 200-page Renewable Energy Storage Roadmap discusses how storage can facilitate the uptake of renewable energy, enhance stability and reliability of the grid, and support industries. To do so at the required scale will mean reliance on diverse technologies beyond the accepted duo of lithium-ion battery storage and pumped hydro, it said.

“Over the long-term storage will accelerate the integration of renewables, enhancing grid stability and reliability, and supporting decarbonisation of industries. There is no silver bullet for reaching net zero so we need multiple shots on goal, like from renewables, batteries, hydrogen, thermal storage, pumped hydro, sustainable aviation fuels and a host of new science-driven technologies,” CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall said today.

…Read more: https://www.energy-storage.news/australia-needs-major-energy-storage-investment-to-face-wicked-challenge-of-net-zero-csiro-says/

Apart from problems of actually supplying the required electricity, the suggestion of going all electric is laughable, especially in places where you actually need home heating to work.

Australia is facing increasing problems with grid shortfalls and energy reliability and energy affordability, same as everywhere else which is embracing renewables.

If we continue with this madness, it won’t be long until Australians are paying AUD $5-10,000+ / year for home heating, same as Britain and Germany. Because if the last decade has taught the world anything, that lesson is claims renewables are cheaper are a complete fabrication.

If you think renewables are cheaper, why is everyone’s electricity bill going up, in nations which are embracing renewables?

Why all the talk of “energy efficiency”, which is a nice way of saying energy rationing?

And if renewables are so cheap, why is energy storage such a “wicked problem”, which requires major investment? 

You don’t have to be a genius to figure out who is paying the costs of that “wicked” investment.

Even politicians must be starting to realise they’ve been sold a falsehood, that any genuine attempt to achieve net zero would make them unelectable. But even now, I believe they’re still hoping to kick the can down the road, telling themselves something might turn up, desperately trying to not be the politician who is remembered for pulling the plug on the world’s renewable energy pipe dream.