Journey to Zero Carbon

The potential role for nuclear power as part of Australia’s energy transition is frequently raised in both the media and as part of everyday conversation.  ...

The Greens grudgingly voted with the federal ALP government to amend the Safeguard Mechanism legislation, a key plank in the government’s 43% greenhouse gas (G ...

The transition to zero carbon energy will mean less coal, oil and gas but more of the steel, cement and fiberglass needed for wind turbines, more crystalline s ...

As discussed in a recent JTZC post (1), the new ALP government has increased Australia’s GHG reduction target relative to a 2005 baseline from 26 - 28% to 43% ...

After last May’s federal election Australia’s carbon reduction target was increased from a 26-28% reduction below 2005 levels to a 43% reduction.  Legisla ...

Australian energy has seen some interesting developments over the past few months - a new, more climate focussed and aware federal government, skyrocketing ene ...

The recent power crisis, together with a new ALP government in Canberra, has given fresh impetus to adding a capacity payment mechanism to the National Energy ...

Australia produces just under 1% of global electricity ranking 20th in terms of national generation.  China and the US are responsible for almost half of ...

A few weeks ago the Commercial Director of ExxonMobil Australia (1) warned that the Victorian government’s goal (2) of reducing domestic gas usage by 50% by 20 ...

In 2008 US coal production peaked at just shy of 1.2 billion short tons - 90% of this or about 1.0 billion metric tonnes was thermal coal used in US power plan ...

Global gas prices have risen dramatically in the last 12 months. Gas pricing is important not just because it is a key input to many industrial processes but b ...

A recent story in the Washington Post (1) celebrated the start up of a climate busting facility in Iceland that removes carbon dioxide from air allowing it to ...

A previous article in JTZC compared GHG emissions in Australia with those of Sweden (1).  Sweden has a relatively low per capita GHG emissions of 5.1 tonn ...

INTRODUCTION The US Federal Government is by far the nation’s largest landowner with control over 640 million acres or just over 28% of the total landmass ( ...

Decarbonisation of the aluminium industry is in the news (1,2) with Rio Tinto recently announcing a $1.2 million feasibility study aimed at decarbonising part ...

In 2018 the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced a special report on Global Warming of 1.5 degree C (1).  The report, which ...

House Resolution 109, introduced on February 1, 2019 by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) is better known as the ...

Texas has been experienced an unusually severe winter storm and Texans have discovered that the state’s electricity infrastructure has not been able to cope. T ...

Mere hours after being inaugurated, President Biden signed a raft of executive orders and other proclamations (1), all of which dealt with high profile topics ...

Last week, somewhat overshadowed by the events in Washington, the Democrats took control of the Senate when they won both runoff elections in Georgia. Vice Pre ...

The climate debate represents a broad church, encompassing an enormous diversity of opinion.  I know people who (still) believe that the climate concerns ...

China recently announced (1) a plan to achieve net zero-emissions by 2060. Significantly, this pledge was made by President Xi himself at the annual United Nat ...

Gas looks like becoming the new coal.  Recent announcements by the federal government showcasing gas as being the key to maintaining reliable, low cost el ...

The goal of the Paris Convention is for all nations to have a pathway to net zero carbon emissions.  Ideally by 2050 but if not then soon after.  The ...

In May after the Democrat primaries were cancelled and the Sanders campaign was suspended, Joe Biden moved to shore up party support by setting up Unity Task T ...

The Australian Electricity Market operator (AEMO) is a public/private entity charged with managing the nation's key energy markets.  This includes the Nat ...

How will the Australian grid of the future, one based on 100% zero carbon generation, differ from the current Australian grid which remains dependent on coal a ...

No New Fracking?? Back on March 15, during what turned out to be the final debate of the Democratic primary, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders went back and fort ...

In this article I am going to examine residential energy consumption, its contribution toward the carbon footprint of individual average Australians and using ...

The Australian Electricity Sector Australians consume a lot of electricity - there are many reasons for this but historically cheap power from coal and to a ...

The COP 26 climate conference scheduled for November in Glasgow has been postponed to an unknown future date.  Given the current state of the corona pande ...

In a previous article (1) some of the challenges Australia faces in moving to zero carbon were introduced.  Australia will almost inevitably lose all econ ...

Figure 1  below was included in my previous post (1) - it shows that per capita global CO2 emissions are around 5 tonnes/person/year.   This figure i ...

In an earlier post (1) some of the characteristics of climate denial were examined.  This was an introductory piece and we will look at this in more detai ...

Discussion of climate and decarbonisation in Australia often starts and finishes with conflicting positions on coal mining.  There are strong demands call ...

To accuse someone of being a climate denier means they refuse to believe in what is proven, not just beyond reasonable doubt, but beyond all doubt.  The n ...

For most people a discussion of CO2 emissions either means getting into the details of coal fired power plants and renewables or the benefits of electric vehic ...

A recent post (1) highlighted the risk facing the Liberal National government from Australia’s stagnant Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions.  The thesis in thi ...

Australia’s annual greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory report for Q1 2019 has just been released.  The nation’s emissions were about the same as the prior quar ...

Over the past few weeks, climate change has become the focus of the Democrat presidential primary race.  Most serious candidates have released a climate p ...

A recent report on the Democratic presidential primary highlights candidates attempting to burnish their climate credentials by blaming fossil fuel companies f ...

There is universal agreement on the importance of climate policy, the need to sharply reduce carbon emissions and remain in the Paris Climate Accord among the ...

Australia’s 2018 annual net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were 538.2 M tonnes (1), an increase of 3.5 M tonnes (or 0.7%) over 2017.  Angus Taylor, the fe ...

During the recent federal election in Australia the cost of converting to renewable power and eliminating carbon emissions was raised and the ALP seemed to suf ...

There are three broad positions that one can take on the Adani coal mine - each implies a different view on how the permitting process should work (or not work ...

Calls for urgent action on decarbonisation are often linked with calls for dramatic changes to the political and economic status quo (1, 2).   This pos ...

In part 1 of this blog (1) we found that Australia has a very low electric vehicle (EV) penetration rate of 0.03% (% of EVs in the light vehicle fleet).   ...

The upcoming election has put Electric Vehicle (EV) policy into the spotlight.  This is probably a bit overdue given that vehicle emissions account for so ...

The upcoming federal election will see the current government heavily criticised in many quarter for not having a coherent (or even an incoherent) energy policy ...

The federal election will be upon us very soon and all serious political parties have released something that looks like a climate policy or in some cases a set ...