The western world relies on a stable, regular comparatively cheap supply of generated electricity! Much of it Coal or Gas fired. Today in Australia for various reasons, this has become a problem, particularly the costs to consumers. Prices have risen around 200% in recent years & over a fairly short time span.
It has been said by several Queensland State Government people that placing the Retail electricity market in private enterprise hands would bring down the price of energy to the consumer??
COMPETITION IN THE MARKET PLACE WOULD ENSURE THAT WAS SO!
In Queensland, the wholesale supply of electricity is almost a complete Government-owned monopoly, which in turn takes a considerable dividend, $378 m 2016/17 & a predicted $463m 2017/18 (Queensland Government budget papers 2017/18). This same State Government is saying regularly that cheap energy is required by a small business to be viable in this competitive world?
Let me be very clear here! This government takes a considerable dividend & then says that we need cheap power to be competitive & that same Government is saying again on a regular basis that it is all about creating jobs? Would someone explain to this naive writer how that is supposed to work, when our State Government imposes a backdoor tax on all electricity consumers in Queensland?
Is this creating jobs? The small businesses of Queensland are our largest employers, One may not have a job if this backdoor tax, puts these businesses into liquidation!!!! The State Government is using this electrical dividend to prop up their treasury!!!!! They justify this by blaming the retail power companies, who in turn are saying that the ancient infrastructure that they inherited needs considerable investment to bring it up the modern standards???? Who owns this infrastructure?
As I understand this Energy Queensland!!! Energy Queensland is a State Government entity! Makes one wonder, just a bit?? That is the costing conundrum. Now the Environmental Question? We are constantly told that Global warming is caused by manmade pollution or variations of this theme, & that CO2 is the main greenhouse gas that affects the atmosphere. Well yes in some ways that is true, however, let me ask a question here, Is it not so that CO2 is the main food source for trees & all other plants? (I will not spoil the politicians thinking on this by mentioning the Chlorophyll cycle), after all, the chemical symbol CO2, is easy to say when they are throwing out some speech that may see them as caring environmentalists?
Carbon Monoxide (CO) kills far more people than CO2, yet only makes up around 5/8% of the emission combustion exhaust gasses, given off. Another question that comes to mind, is it too much CO2 being produced that causes this pollution, or is the fact that too many trees worldwide have been cut down? Some 25 years ago the Amazon valley was credited with the production of around 20% of the world’s oxygen, today that figure is around 8/12%, it varies depending on one’s source.
Let me take this a little further, the Standing forests of Malaysia, New Guinea & the Philippines were once the largest Pristine forests in the world, in recent years they have been harvested to a very large degree, leaving vast tracts barren or under local cultivation. I think that the only policy that the Greens have correct is that trees should not be cut down unless absolutely necessary, I would add that we all should plant some additional trees, maybe then we would get some of that oxygen back?
Has anyone noticed that the “Global Warming” theme has changed to “Climate Change”? Well just maybe that is because in the past decade or so, we have not had an increase in world average temperatures!!! Sure some parts have had warmer than average temperatures, while others are colder than Average. Weather patterns have a reasonably predictable cycle, these weather cycles are proven by the various core samples taken around the world, showing patterns that are millions of years old!
The link to electricity & Climate Change is the fact that most of our electricity is generated using either Coal or gas-powered boilers to generate the steam to power the turbines that in turn generate electricity. The burning of these Fossil fuels does give off exhaust gasses, however when the Television programs show all the gas escaping into the atmosphere, that is good television, not in fact the escaping exhaust greenhouse gasses, it is the steam cooling tower exhaust condensing into the atmosphere! Never let the truth get in the way of good television!!!!!
The modern power station is required to have a standard of emission, set by regulatory authorities that keep these emissions within the regulations, Scrubbers & other technologies are in use to follow this requirement! That is not to say that they are clean altogether, they do emit some greenhouse gasses, however, if one includes all our best technological efforts with both Internal combustion engines in motor vehicles & power company emissions all in one, then consider that just one Volcanic eruption anywhere in the world will place all those manmade emissions into insignificance!!!!
That does not mean that we should not apply technology to cleaning up our own emissions, we do contribute, but no where near what the doomsayers are spruiking at this time! After all, every little bit helps! Cheers, Bill HINTE, JP, Qual. Dip Engineering. Dip, Teaching. (Retired)