Saw Chris Bowen (minister for a contradiction in terms; namely, climate change and energy) some time back, with a crazy-eyes look, talking about emission standards being applied to conventional cars to encourage the take up of electric cars (EVs). He had the same look when inviting people to vote against Labor if they didn’t like him taxing super-fund franking credits. And they accepted his invitation. I think he might be the only hope the Libs have got (slim though it is) of bypassing the teals and getting back in.
Bowen won’t be able to come up with anything extreme enough to please Adam Bandt and the teals. All of the pressure will be to go too far. I suggest that to a man of Bowen’s temperament, it will be simply irresistible, as Robert Palmer sang in another context. Disaster lies ahead. Thus, hope lies ahead, even for waste-of-space Liberals.
In its ‘Powering Australia Plan’, Labor projects that the proportion of light EVs on the road will increase from 0.2 percent now to 15 percent (i.e., to 3.8 million vehicles) by 2030. New EV sales, including hybrids) will make up close to 90 percent of car sales. Note the Greens have 100 percent zero-emission new car sales by 2030. Labor claim they will build 1800 new public fast-charging stations. The Green say 3000. Whatever Labor can promise to do, the Greens promise more. The fact that all of the promises are illusory and delusional is incidental.
Labor in its unhinged imaginings has 100,000 businesses and 3.8 million households with EV charging capacity by 2030. For the avoidance of doubt, all figures, pulled out of a hat. And the Greens and teals have even bigger hats remember.
A figure of 3.8 million households, represent about 35 percent of the projected number of around 11 million Australian households by 2030. It’s simply not a small thing to put 3.8 million 7.2 kW power points into houses and apartments. First, you have to generate the power, while busily closing down fossil-fuel power sources. Second, you need wiring and substations capable of handling the extra power. Third, you need to electrically refit houses and apartment buildings to handle the extra power. Fourth, you need thousands upon thousands of expert electricians to do the work. C’mon mate, she’ll be right. We did pink batts didn’t we.
And by the way, this is just EV’s. How about across-the-board emissions down by 43 percent by 2030. Renewables generating 82 percent of electricity. Really? And, all the time, Bandt whispering, nay shouting, in Bowen’s ear. It ain’t enough.
‘Fuel emissions standards’ just a costly leg-up for EVs
Coming soon from Labor: a carbon tax
Judith Sloan
You have to hand it to the passenger motor vehicle industry – they are past masters at securing favours from governments. They have been doing it for decades – arguably it’s their core skill set.
Notwithstanding the fact that Volkswagen was involved in one of the largest corporate scandals ever – in relation to falsifying the emissions standards of their vehicles – the company remains a favourite of the German government as well as other governments around the world.
Car manufacturing in Australia lasted several decades in the context of extremely high rates of protection. Over time, the number of manufacturers shrank but at the end, the overseas-owned companies could not convince the federal government to continue to prop them up.
Australian consumers had paid dearly with high prices and a limited range of cars on offer.
It’s why there is actually an all-mighty spat going on between the premium European car companies which are represented by the Electric Vehicle Council and the companies that supply the bulk of cars for income-constrained customers – Toyota and Mazda, in particular – which are represented by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries.
The European car companies are led by VW – there’s an irony there. Their aim is to kill off the push to hybrid vehicles, preferring instead for government policy to leapfrog the hybrid phase and head straight to fully electric vehicles, something which they specialise in. (Mind you, given that VW is essentially paid by the German government to produce fully electric vehicles, it’s hardly surprising that the company made the switch away from internal combustion engine vehicles.)
FCAI, by contrast, sees hybrids as being a popular and convenient stepping-stone to accommodate lower net emissions arising from car transport. (It accounts for around 10 per cent of our total emissions.) According to its modelling, fully electric vehicles will make up less than 20 per cent of new car sales in 2030, with a further quarter internal combustion and the remaining hybrids.
The preferred government modelling and one also favoured by the EVC is that over 90 per cent of new cars sales will be fully EV by 2030. (In their dreams, by the way.) The EVC is lobbying to make sure that only plug-in hybrids are counted in this percentage, thereby serving the interests of its members. (Most hybrids at this stage are not plug-in.)
When Bowen summarily rejected the idea that these new fuel emissions standards are the equivalent of a sector carbon tax, he was dead wrong. That’s what it is, that’s what its intention is.
There is another major complication to the insistence on Euro 6 in Australia and that is that our two remaining refineries are not in a position to comply at this point of time. There has been considerable progress with the sulphur issue and a solution is now likely by 2024. But the problem of aromatics has not been solved. Additions of ethanol would help but would also significantly add to the price of petrol, which wouldn’t be politically popular.
You might imagine the resulting closure of the refineries would weigh on Bowen’s thinking – on national security grounds, at the very least – but there is little doubt that some of his advisers and the bureaucrats will be telling him not to worry too much. Just think of the contribution to the reduction in our national emissions that their closure would involve!
But consumer preferences won’t count for much when Bowen thinks he is saving the planet but is actually being conned by lobbyists. More sighing.
From the Comments
– A Kia EV6 uses about 22kwh per 100km. Even more if air-conditioner or lights are used, or it is cold or more passengers are on board. At around 60 cents per kWh to charge it costs around $13 per 100km travelled. If travelling at 110km the consumption rises and range falls quite significantly. My Hyundai i30 at steady 100kph with aircon on uses about 5.5 litres unleaded per 100km at $2 per litre for a cost of $11 per 100km. Translate that into the much larger emissions to build an EV and the larger emissions used though the electricity generated to charge its battery, we are being conned by the bulging eyed fanatics like Bowen.
– Has anyone ever given any thought to the people that can’t and never could afford a new car let alone an electric one. Are they going to be forced to give up their five year old Holden, with 100.000 kilometers on the clock and take a bus! I wonder how many people are thinking of leaving socialist Australia to go to a Democratic country.
Peter you may have overlooked that they want a vast reduction in car ownership across the board.
We are not working towards a swap of ICE cars for EV cars. It’s maybe twenty ICE to one EV…. massive reductions planned.
Sure you can hold onto your existing car but remember who controls the fuel importation, price of fuel and vehicle registration. No local source of fuel unless you build a steam powered car or jerry-rig a wood gas converter like Germany 1945.
Let see, we sell nearly 1,000,000 new cars a year.
15,000 public charging points divided by the 15% of new vehicles is 150,000 vehicles needing charging, or 10 vehicles fighting for each of those charging points.
Next year its 20, year after 30….
And in quivering in your bowels news a idiot managing a super fund was quacking how wonderful it would be for them to invest in “social outcomes” projects (housing, green charging etc) if only the government could subsidize them a little.
Transition teething problem or permanent disaster?
Alan Moran
Politicians, regulators, and subsidy-seekers portray the present difficulties in the energy market as being part of the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy – and perhaps to more exotic forms of energy derived from extracting hydrogen from water.
They go on to claim that transitions always involve teething problem difficulties.
This is false.
Transitions in the past from horse-drawn transport to trains, motor vehicles, and aeroplanes involved only benefits to consumers. Indeed, producers adapted to the changing technology with ease. This was also seen in the progression from sail ships to steamships and from the abacus to the mechanical calculator to the computer. The transition from obtaining power, heat, and light from wood and watermills to coal oil, and gas was equally painless and was essential to bringing about modern living standards.
Today’s ‘energy transition’ is one forced by governments – there is likely not a single megawatt of wind/solar anywhere in the world that was built without a subsidy. Glib statements about cheap renewables are based on estimates of their costs without including the vastly increased transmission expenses they entail (according to the Australian government, this would be a fourfold increase in the cost of the current network) and the costs of filling in the supply gaps inevitable with intermittent wind and solar supplies.
In contrast to an ‘energy transition’ force-fed by highly subsidised wind and solar generation, governments played a passive role in the earlier transitions. Those transitions were driven by entrepreneurial innovations being embraced by customers because they were cheaper or had other superior features. Among the latter was greater reliability – a severe shortcoming of an energy system being converted from fossil fuels to wind/solar.
For Australia, Global-Roam (forty-minute mark) estimates that even with a perfect system, the equivalent of 25 Snowy 2’s or 70,000 Hornsdale-type batteries would be required to firm up an exclusively wind-supplied generation system. Even so, the outcome would still mean less reliability than at present. Based on Global-Roam’s analysis, total cost (and therefore prices) would be some 4-5 times that of the system from which we are being transitioned.
Consistent with the Global Roam estimates, James Taylor, in critiquing the Integrated System Plan (ISP) recently published by the Australian Energy Market Operator, concludes it, ‘Would require at least 7980 GWh instead of the 319 GWh in the ISP. Cost estimates for this scale of battery back-up would be in the $5-7 trillion range.’ As the batteries would be on a 10-year replacement cycle, the cost would be $500-$700 billion a year, or over one-quarter of GDP each year. Then there is the cost of the additional transmission and the wind/solar units themselves!
Modern living standards depend on cheap and reliable energy supplies. But ill-informed prejudices from electorates and pressures from the wind/solar industries’ vested interests, has brought aphasia among politicians in Western democracies regarding the energy industry.
By 2030 it will cost more to charge an EV than to fill an ICE the way costs are going.
Analysis like this and money others which aren’t difficult to make just shows how these idiots are blinded by their belief.
FFS there will be a reckoning as I don’t think people will stand for having their cars and electricity regulated in such a manner.
I remain hopeful that a tipping point will be reached in the next few years (unfortunately with a lot of pain for most people) but given what’s happening right now in Europe and the UK pitchforks will be on the horizon to deal with these zealots.
Never interrupt you enemy when he’s making a mistake.
Of course, the Stupid Fucking Liberals will try to rebrand Labor policy as their own because they believe in nothing.
Australia’s real crisis is lack of leadership.
Covid was just a target of opportunity in the war between government (and their overlords) and the people.
The real targetsets in war are
Transport
Food
Fuel
Power
Ringing any bells?
Decisions have been made by governments (under pressure from activists and media, and then downstream to influenced elections) which will be difficult if not impossible to fix.
As Steve Bannon has said, we’re screwed.
Snowy 2.0 is predicated on there being an excess of electricity created by windmills and solar panels in the middle of the day. This is / will not be”needed” and will be diverted to running pumps to send water from Blowering / Talbingo Reservoirs up-hill to Tantangara Reservoir where it will wait to be released back downhill to Blowering / Talbingo at peak times…..creating power while running through the power station in Ravine/Lob’s Hole en route.
As there will be no un-needed electricity when 3-4 million new EVs are soaking it up recharging by day…at all hours, does any New Cat have an idea what Snowy 2.0 will do to run it’s up-hill pumping operations?
Not just Australia. The Western democracies are on an insane race to obliterate the very things that let them thrive and grow strong.
The global leadership vacuum is creating the conditions for various spivs, crooks and tyrants hiding in plain sight to step in and kill the off completely.
It’s depressing, especially to those of us who can see where we are heading but cannot fight the zeitgeist, but is yet another example of the inevitable collapse of societies, cultures and civilizations over the eons of history.
Strap yourself in and prepare to ride the wave. It’s going to require a strong blend of white knuckling and sheer grit.
Depressing but well said Megan.
Those children in the COngo need to start working longer hours.
@ Megan:
“Australia’s real crisis is lack of leadership”.
The problem IS the “leadership”.
Beware wishing for “strong leadership”.
You will probably get it; good and hard and often.
The degenerate “usual suspects” are utterly determined to obliterate personal “autonomy” and independence of thought.
And the “clock” is ticking faster each week.
Mantaray 7.34pm
Question – if water flows down from one dam to another – I assume there is some pressure an d velocity.
Does the dam wall of the lower dam need to be replaced or re enforced.
Concerns of cracking walls buckling pipe joins etc.
I assume there will be some infrastructure update for this.
point of order:
3.8 million 7.5kW power points, not MW
anyways … that many kW on a single phase circuit is still about 30 Amps
so, 4mm or probably 6mm cable
very likely also a switchboard upgrade to go with it
and believe it or not there are many many houses in Melb at least that only have 6mm consumers mains so yeah, potentially a mains upgrade as well.
We do a bit of work calibrating and deploying Carbon Monoxide control systems in commercial buildings. I was in one the other day with 3 levels underground and I noticed the slew of Teslas and a dozen chargers on the wall.
So naturally I asked the building manager who was paying for the EV energy and installation etc? House, or tenancies?
Initially he said, don’t ask … that’s a bloody sore-point
turns out the tenants pay ( who knew heh?)
and what followed was a explanation of the utter shit-fight between tenants to get their grubby hands on an extremely limited resource.
They’d fight each other to the death to secure Gaia’s good graces
So anyway they maxed out the incoming supply, maxed out the tenancy switchboard and only about 15% of the tenants get a charger.
nothing else happens without a new transformer and new switchboards
But don’t listen to me
Im just a dumb sparky.
still, its a good time to be a sparky
-I met a couple travelling in a Hyundai Kona SUV electric vehicle (EV) in a small town in NSW, north of the Victorian border. The car was hooked up to an NRMA power outlet (it is interesting that NRMA are getting in on the ground with local councils – providing outlets in tourist spots). Their time cost there was at 30 minutes but more like 45 minutes. It travels about 200 to 250 km before requiring a charge. How extra much time is that to get from QLD to Wangaratta? (I knew a guy who lived in Melbourne and found a girlfriend in Brisbane. He would drive 18 hours up the Newell after work on Friday – back at it Melbourne on Monday. Young and stupid. Not anymore if it is an EV.)
-They were happy to talk. It seems that EV travellers, at least down the Hume, have a small community thing going with other EV users. They have to figure out where the outlets are, who might be currently hooked up, and when they need to stop and charge, and so on. They try to plan their trip based on power outlets. They can also charge it at home, but apparently it requires most of the night.
-They were rather pleased that were able to travel from Queensland through NSW for less than $40. But you need to put a price on time as well; as well as the bother of always being aware of how much juice they have before they need to plug in. They were quick to note they should have bought the petrol/EV version not EV ONLY.
-I wonder if the number of outlets and time cost will produce resistance. It is notable in Alan Moran’s article, above, that previous transitions were driven by producers and consumers (i.e. a desire for faster, cheaper, better). This one, in an effort to phase out fossil fuels, is concocted by government. So it will be interesting to see the many and varied unintended consequences flow. What appears to be a prospective shortage of base load power will meet demand at some point, not just for cars but homes and production. The public will tire of doing their bit as the standard of living falls due to higher costs in money and time; the other part of the Australian populace will kick back violently (as if the silent majority is not already). And of course the media and government will blame the greedy producers.
Will the council allow me to run a long extension lead out of my third floow window, across the footpath, and to wherever I found a street parking spot in this treet or around the corner. Or can I just plug into one of the thousands of public sockets installed along all the streets in our terrace house inner west suburbs.
Greenies with an EV come to visit and the first thing they do is seek a power point. I opine that if I visited them in our diesel powered Kia (6.4 litres to 100 kms) and asked them to fill the tank with diesel at their cost, I wouldn’t be popular.
Nowhere in that comment did I mention I was wishing for strong leadership. Apart from ‘wishing’ being a useless activity, leadership requires
I’m looking for intelligent leaders who understand that leading is contextual and requires different skills and approaches depending on circumstances. Ones with courage, the curiosity to explore multiple alternatives and can confidently navigate uncertainty.
Not one who thinks that the words Prime Minister [insert many alternatives here]
appearng after his/her/its name makes him/her/it a leader.
Submit trigger finger this morning, managed to miss a bit. Should read…
Apart from ‘wishing’ being a useless activity, the kind of strength leadership requires is of character and alignment to solid values. I agree that your interpretation of a ‘strong leader’ is not a desirable outcome.
Hahaha, that is so not going to happen.
The whole world, at least the Western woke bits of it, are now hitting a wall called supply issues. The lithium price has quintupled this year.
Lithium Prices Putting EV Producers Under Pressure (22 Aug)
And the biggest supplier of lithium is…Australia. Which means spodumene. That is very energy consuming to process and results in a massive amount of alkaline or acidic residue, which gets stored in dams. The process is also capital intensive and requires a complex chemical plant. Such plants in Australia takes forever to get built (eg. the urea project in Burrup). All three issues mean that expansion of production is going to be slow. With everyone mandating EVs like stampeding lemmings the supply is going to be ‘way behind the demand. For decades.
And the Greens are already opposing lithium mines…
Environmentalists Have Turned On The Lithium Industry (28 Aug)
You couldn’t make this up.
A pungent and excellent summary.
The absurd logical contradictions of woke ideology can only be seen when they are allowed to implement the three year olds’ fairy floss economy.
Unfortunately, we all have to suffer in the meantime.
I gather that electricity prices have risen so high in the UK now, as a consequence of years of “green energy policy, that it is now cheaper, per mile, to drive a petrol car than an electric vehicle…and, of course, 50% less to buy one which would have twice the expected service life (and twice the range).
And all that when the price of petrol is more than half “taxes” and electricity is subsidised.
That’ll sell more EVs ???
“And the Greens are already opposing lithium mines…
Environmentalists Have Turned On The Lithium Industry (28 Aug)
You couldn’t make this up.”
Remember the Franklin River dam? Utterly opposed by the Green Blob, who insisted it was more “environmentally friendly” to run a cable to Vic and use some coal power instead.
Remember how the green blob cheered the dynamiting of a coal fired power plant in SA and how soon after that the entire state went “black” for days?
I’ve seen more intelligent creatures peering at me from the bottom of ponds.
I’ve seen creatures with a longer memory swimming around goldfish bowls.
No matter how often they are wrong, no matter how many times they cost us money to no benefit, they still insist they are right and the rest of us are morons who don’t care about “the world”.
Enough.
I’ll be turning everything electrical on for Earth Hour – a bright spot in your desolate darkness.
I’ll keep driving not just an ICE, but a dinosaur, gas-guzzler V8 – and going for multi- 100km drives just to relieve the bordem and to look at pretty scenery.
This is what happens when you go too far – I double down, then triple down.
Toby Hogan of EV Central speaks on Night Life ABC Radio some Thursday nights; he is not in favour of hybrids.
The green type people all seem to believe that if they oppose everything they dislike and restrict it, eventually someone will come up with a solution that they do like.
You can see this in Germany, the greens there chant “Atom Kraft? Nein Danke” and laughed at trump for suggesting they were going to end up in trouble shutting down nuclear power plants and getting their gas from Russia. I’m sure they are still laughing.
Current German Foreign Minister and also the Minister of the Economy (a noted Children’s book author) are Greens, hostile to Nuclear power. .. this is going to be fun to watch over winter in the north.
Sad for everyone else in Germany though.
Apparently it takes 2.2 million litres of water to produce 1 tonne of lithium. I don’t think there have been any studies on the environmental and health effects of lithium production.
looks like a planned disaster
Anybody seen what’s left when an EV hits a tree? Wouldn’t want to be stuck in there even before the crash.
Road accidents involving EVs will bring a new definition to the term “horror smash”. Those batteries weight a bit. Replacement batteries cost a bit too, not counting all the dead and deformed African kids digging up the lithium.
HD
I think the African kids are digging up the cobalt.
HD
Well you need both!