Essay by Eric Worrall

“… The gas industry is still behaving like a bunch of bullies and effectively looking like they’re withholding supply, …”

Gas price caps haven’t been silver bullet the Albanese government was hoping for 

Industry behaving like a ‘bunch of bullies’ and potentially withholding supply, users say, while producers argue intervention has ‘paralysed the market’

Peter Hannam Tue 17 Jan 2023 01.00 AEDT

Strains in the gas market have not been eased by the Albanese government’s price caps imposed late last year, with an industry group claiming supply shortages remain while the peak gas lobby is warning the sector has become “virtually paralysed”.

One month on from the government’s rare intervention to limit domestic gas prices to $12 a gigajoule and black coal to $125 a tonne, big commercial gas users are hoping new compliance guidelines to be released soon by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will force suppliers to provide an adequate supply.

“The gas industry is still behaving like a bunch of bullies and effectively looking like they’re withholding supply,” said Andrew Richards, CEO of the Energy Users Association of Australia (EUAA). “You would only withhold supply if you had market power.”

…

Samantha McCulloch, the chief executive of the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (Appea), said the government’s intervention had resulted in “a chilling of the market” at a time when the sector needed more investment to boost supply.

“The gas industry has sought clarification of a number of practical questions and issues regarding the implementation of the price cap and we are still waiting for guidance from the regulator,” McCulloch said. “The lack of clarity on how the price cap order is to be applied alongside the threat of permanent gas price regulation has virtually paralysed the market.”

…

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/17/gas-price-caps-havent-been-silver-bullet-the-albanese-government-was-hoping-for

WUWT foresaw price caps would lead to an availability crisis back in June, when the the Aussie government started capping energy prices and expropriating energy companies.

You would have to be a socialist to believe there could be any other possible outcome.

The only question is, since energy price caps are failing to deliver the politically desired outcome, what is the government’s next move?

My guess is energy company nationalisation. Some major energy assets are already government owned, and the Victorian Dan Andrews government recently made moves in the direction of energy asset nationalisation. In my opinion, it is only a matter of time until the left wing radicals who run the Aussie Federal Government attempt to fully nationalise the Aussie energy industry.

Given the Aussie government’s track record of expropriation and trampling of property rights during the imposition of energy price caps, I’m guessing the current owners of Aussie energy assets will be less than satisfied with any compensation offered, if their plant and equipment is nationalised.

From Climate Etc.

by Planning Engineer (Russell Schussler)

The potential of climate change with an unworkable grid is the most frightening potential scenario of all.  We need visionaries and problem solvers to avoid this scenario.

This is the third installment in a series concerning academics and the grid.  Part 1 observed that it was frequently the case that an academic paper which solved some component of a problem integrating a” green” resource would be interpreted to imply that all problems associated with integrating that “green” resource had been solved.   Part 2 looked at the large body of papers published on the net zero transition and noted most of the attention was on smaller components, while the larger problems associated with the grid were ignored.  This body of research as a whole generate serious misimpressions by distracting from the major concerns and causing policy makers to discount the significant challenges ahead in increasing renewable penetration.

In previous post Academics and the Grid Part 2: Are They Studying the Right Things?, it was noted that researchers on grid issues related to an energy transition, could be roughly divided into two camps.  I referred to the first of these groups as Visionaries and the second group as Problem Solvers. The study work and recommendations from these two groups are approached in different ways, have differing audiences and unfortunately are unequal in impacting energy policy.

Problem Solvers tend to work on present and emerging challenges.  These are highly technical academics, engineers and scientists.   They tend to look for solutions to emerging problems without questioning their drivers.  Problems solvers ask themselves how do we better adapt to the increase wind and solar we are seeing on the grid.  For the most part they do not question or endorse the emerging trends.  They see their work as important for maintaining the grid. While they are our best hope for adapting to change, some may see them as tools of the industry with to0 narrow a focus.

Visionaries are idealistic and consequently more likely to advance research and development to achieve greater societal goals.  They see their work as necessary for the planet as a whole. They advocate for lowering carbon emissions and promote research to facilitate the goal of CO2 reduction.  The Visionaries share the perspective that the “green energy” transition lies somewhere between “we can do this” to “once we get this going, we will figure it all out and the benefits will be enormous”.

In our overall society most individuals clump into one of two positions around climate change and “green” energy.  In a previous post, Taxonomy of climate/energy policy perspectives I wrote:

One side cries that either we switch to superior clean renewable technologies or we face climatic doom. The other side responds that is there is no problem and we couldn’t fix it anyway. In the debate over climate and energy policy two independent major factors stand out. The first is our understanding around the probability, degree and immediacy of adverse effects from man-made Climate Change. The second factor impacting policy determinations concerns the suitability of today’s various available “clean” energy sources as policy options. Since the policy implications are driven by two major factors there should be at least theoretically four distinct policy perspectives. Unfortunately, most debate seems primarily to feature two factions and major policy concerns may get lost in the noise.

It’s rare to find someone unconcerned by climate change, but who think renewables will work really well with the grid.  We don’t hear so much from those who greatly fear climate change but recognize current pursuits around clean energy are inadequate.  Personally, I find the potential of climate change with an unworkable grid to be the most frightening potential scenario of all.  I have never addressed or taken a position on climate and the need for carbon reduction.  I argue for the need for reliable affordable energy independent of what the climate might do.  I am more worried about the grid changes if we are to face climate doom as well.  Such changes would be the most devastating on poor and moderate-income people.  If we are to face disaster – a terrible inefficient unworking grid will magnify problems exponentially.  Unworkable technology is not the answer to an impending crisis.

The Visionaries tend to frame climate is an impending existential threat and seek to minimize concerns around a green transition.  The Problems Solvers, like me, are largely mum on the subject of climate change. When it comes to a green energy transition, they are similarly silent.  Their grappling with the subject is very narrow and modest in approach.  Reading between the lines in the technical journals it is apparent that there are many huge obstacles looming.  Why are these not discussed more fully?   Perhaps it is because there are many incentives to appear overly optimistic and few to none for espousing views that appear even moderately pessimistic.

Consider the perspectives of those writing as Problems Solvers.  They are typically engineers or scientists with advanced expertise in that specialized area.  The more the excitement and enthusiasm for a net zero transmission, the more their expertise is in demand and the greater the value of that expertise becomes.   They may be working for or supported to some extent by the manufacturers of the “green” industry. Whether they are directly or indirectly tied to a green industry, their near term well being is tied to the continuation of such research.  Chipping away at the problem and achieving minor successes is in their self-interest.  There is likely no personal benefit to be gained by sharing observations that trends in the overall efforts to date do not suggest eventual success at a net zero level.

What are the drivers for the Visionaries?  Overwhelmingly they are academics or work for entities with financial interests  and expertise tied to the “green” future.  Overwhelmingly in their working environment climate change is seen as an existential problem and the environment broadly supports efforts to reduce CO2 from electric generation.  Academic publications are critical to hiring and promotional opportunities.  Would an individual skeptical of the desired changes fare well when any such publications were reviewed?  As much as such views may be needed, I don’t know who would hire or reward those who provide such focus and balance. The environment they work in many work in might  be described  as the eco-anxious,  woke, true- believers or as Thomas Sowell described the “Anointed”.   Academics are likely constrained from sharing concerns and noting short coming of “green” approaches.  This may be too why they in Part 2 we did not see nuclear show up as a key word within the body of Net Zero research.

I will note that the mathematics used by the Academics to look at resource replacement, backup and transmission doesn’t go much beyond arithmetic with maybe some probability and statistics.  Even then the study work is often done by modelling software.  The mathematics needed for Problem Solvers to address the major concerns span mathematics from arithmetic to algebra, trigonometry, calculus and differential equations.  It may be too much too much to expect that many Academics with technological knowledge and capabilities would devote their efforts to sabotaging their career.

Where then is there an incentive for knowledgeable academics and engineers to speak up about grid concerns?  Once upon a time utilities were responsible for grid reliability.  They had skin in the game and if there were problems, accountability ensued.  In those days, when penetration levels were miniscule to small, it didn’t’ make sense for a utility to raise concerns and risk being caught in the crosshairs.  The better short-term plan was to go ahead with preliminary efforts, knowing the grid was very robust, hoping that eventually things would work out or someone else would speak up.  Then the federal entities FERC and NERC changed the interrelationships between basic functions and responsibilities.  FERC worked to break up traditional utility structures into components, with particular concerns for fostering competition within the generation sector and providing open access to transmission facilities. NERC took over responsibility for reliability and “ensures” reliability through their compliance standards. Utilities are no longer responsible for reliability, but rather for meeting the reliability standards.  NERC can impose fines up to $1,000,000 per day for standard violations.  Hard to see the incentives for a utility sticking their neck out to raise long term reliability concerns broadly or with the monitoring entity.

I am greatly suspicious of “conspiracy theories”.  I can’t believe that any parts of the green movement or any governments are plotting to bring down the grid and set back industrialized civilization. But if they were, a good strategy would look a lot like what we are seeing.  How might one seek to turn the economic and reliable grid into a costly, complicated system prone to blackouts?  Discarding dependable generators and replacing with asynchronous intermittent technology would be a good way.  To support this transition and forestall questions, in the public arena, have reputable scientists (Academics) pick small problems and show that they might be solved.  This work will distract from the real problems.  Examining the challenges evaluated by the Academics, the transition might look doable.  In the background technical experts (the Problem Solvers) work on forestalling the problems that will soon become insurmountable.  While the grid transition is not a nefarious plot, we might be better off it was.  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer described malice may be a lesser enemy that what we face.  Dealing with well-intentioned but mislead true believers who become more strident and committed in the face of increasing evidence of the short comings may be a much more alarming scenario than what is described in this paragraph.

As the transition to net-zero continues, what should we expect to see?  The optimistic scenario is a more widespread understanding of the complexities involved leading to more reasonable “good enough” energy plans balancing economics, reliability and environmental concerns. This scenario might include large additions of nuclear with natural gas resources filling the gap until they are available.

The alternative scenario is that the net zero approach continues with wind and solar as key players.  As grid problems become more apparent eventually grid concerns will reach a wider audience.  You will find crossover publications between academics and problem solvers.  If nothing changes as to incentives, these papers will be largely optimistic about what capabilities are just around the corner.  You will see more and more how asynchronous resources might emulate the functions currently provided by synchronous rotating machines.  We might see a grand plan for rapid grid transition as we see calls for energy transition now.

The cost implications could be astounding, as emulating essential reliability services generally requires a large amount of otherwise unusable capacity to be on hand.  Cost estimates associated with the ‘green transition” are notoriously over optimistic.  Cost should not be thought of as the major obstacle. Perhaps the most critical concern is that all these controls are making the complex grid even more and more complex as we get farther and farther away from our extensive real-world experience.  For a more detailed description of these problems see this posting, Renewables and Grid Reliability.    Experience in many areas show we can better build complex systems by tinkering with improvements over time, rather than having them emerge full formed like Athena from the head of Zeus.

Designing large complex systems is fraught with challenges. There can be huge gaps between what works on paper and what works in practice. A couple energy projects stand out for having “green hopes” being dashed by reality.  The Kemper plant was to be a flagship project for clean coal.  It was a key component of President Obamas Climate Plan.  Initially it was supposed to cost $3 billion, it ended up costing over $7 billion.  It was supposed to gasify coal and store the captured carbon but that component of the plant proved unworkable and it cannot use coal or capture carbon.  Now it functions as a 582 MW natural gas plant that could have been built for less than one tenth of the $7 billion in cost.

Ivanpah was one of the most ambitious solar projects, at a cost of $2.2 billion.  The 400 MW plant stretches across 3,600 acres of the Mojave Desert.   The plant concentrates solar thermal energy to produce steam to generate power.  It’s less well known that the plant used natural gas as part of the process. The plant was plagued with problems and did not perform nearly as well as expected.  While generation was much lower than expected, the amount of natural gas used by the plant greatly exceeded expectations.   I found record for five years of the facilities operation (2014-2018).  Were the natural gas, used to preheat the water, instead used to power a combined cycle plant it could have provided roughly 20 to 25% of the total plant output during that time period.   I believe that the plant’s performance is improving with time, but it is hard to tell.  When projects of this sort fail, the problems encountered are not trumpeted as loudly as the initial optimistic assumptions.  The plant has been in operation since 2014 but the DOE webpage for the site while referring to the original projections for annual generation, does not have any readily accessible information or links to actual generation or facility performance.  There are always great press releases on new complex things that will work wonderfully, but when they don’t much is lost in the memory hole.

Evidently the originally intended functioning of both Plan Kemper and Plant Ivanpah were not only considered possible but also considered highly likely.  They both worked well in theory and on paper but proved too complex to implement as intended in the real world. Could large clean coal plants and large solar thermal plants emerge over time through tinkering and improvements on more modest proposals which grew in complexity over time?   That would seem possible, but the likelihood of success goes down the more quickly the transition and the more drastic the change.

We are a long way from figuring out how to solve for a net zero grid in terms of just theory and what might work on paper for many fundamental emerging grid problems. Work is underway on the puzzle pieces with mixed results. How they might fit together takes it to another level.   The challenges of a quick transition to a net zero carbon grid dwarf the complexities of the Kemper and Ivanpah projects.   Bright engineers, scientists and academics are working on the challenges, but they don’t trumpet their concerns as do those with “victories” on smaller problems. It almost seems at time as if all the flash and attention is focused on the more “minor” successes to distract an audience from the more serious concerns emerging from wind and solar. The Visionaries will have their vision and Problem Solvers will be committed to their problems. Who will tie true vision to the actual problems?   It will be dangerous if policy makers are swayed by those who are overly optimistic.  We can’t survive a grid transformation that looked good on paper but in the end turns out to be as disastrous as Kemper and Ivanpah.

Acknowledgements:  Comments from Roger Caiazza are appreciated.

I have always been fascinated by languages. One of my great regrets is that I have precious little facility with languages other than my native tongue. Wherever I go on holiday I try to learn a small number of words in the local lingo to enable me to get by and also demonstrate some courtesy to the local people. I am saddened whenever I learn of the loss of a language, because I think humanity loses something thereby.

I have been aware for some time that languages are disappearing at quite a pace. I supposed that globalisation and urbanisation probably have quite a lot to do with it. But today the Guardian tells me that in the future languages will be threatened by climate change. The headline is shocking (“Lost for words: fears of ‘catastrophic’ language loss due to rising seas) and the sub-heading is terrifying (“Climate crisis could be the ‘nail in the coffin’ for half of languages spoken by the end of the century, say linguists, as coastal communities are forced to migrate”).

I am being a little unfair, but only a little. As usual, the headlines are deliberately sensationalist, and as usual with Guardian headlines, climate change is the culprit. Read on, however, and you find that the problems to date have been things such as a long history of persecution and (as I suspected) “globalisation and migration, as communities move to regions where their language is not spoken or valued” (described in the article as “huge factors”).

The Guardian also links to a couple of web pages justifying its claim that “half of all the 7,000 languages currently spoken will be extinct by the end of the century.” The first link is to the UN International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022 – 2032. It certainly backs up the claim that 50% of languages currently spoken might be lost by the end of the century, but nowhere does it mention climate change. The second link is to The Language Conservancy website, which actually makes a bolder (or more worrying) claim than the UN and the Guardian, namely that at “current rates, about 90% of all languages will become extinct in the next 100 years.” It confirmed my suspicions regarding the cause of language loss to date:

By the middle of the twentieth century, forces including nationalism, urbanization, and globalization began to take their own tolls. Urbanization, like settlement colonization, moves peoples away from ancestral lands. People leave not through forced resettlement but voluntarily depart from the countryside and migrate to cities where they speak the dominant language to take part in the economy.

It doesn’t mention climate change as a culprit. In fact, given that this is yet another organisation that claims that climate change is the greatest threat facing humankind, the lack of any such link is quite striking. Instead we are told:

After global warming, language loss is the Earth’s most acute crisis.

It turns out that when the Guardian refers to “linguists”, it is in fact referring to just three. First, Anastasia Riehl, the director of the Strathy language unit at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Second, Anouschka Foltz, an associate professor in English Linguistics at the University of Graz, in Austria. Third, Dr Gregory Anderson, director of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, an organisation at the University of South Africa that documents and records endangered languages. Dr Anderson is first quoted as noting:

that the death of a language, when the last fluent speaker dies, is often the result of “some sort of assault” on Indigenous communities. It can be overt, such as when Indigenous children were forced into boarding schools and banned from speaking their native language in countries including the US, Canada, Australia and Scandinavian nations in the 1900s, or covert, where people with a strong accent are excluded from jobs.

He doesn’t (at least not within the Guardian article) link language loss to climate change at all. So that leaves us with Ms Riehl and Ms Foltz. One of the problems is that one in five of all the world’s languages are apparently from the Pacific, and Ms Foltz tells us that “If sea level rise or another climate impact hits, they have to leave. Communities scatter to places where their language is not valued.”

Ms Riehl refers specifically to Vanuatu. And Vanuatu really is a special case. According to the Guardian it has “110 languages, one for each 111 sq km, the highest density of languages on the planet” (according to Wikipedia it is home to 138 indigenous Pacific languages). Ms Riehl says it is threatened by sea level and temperature rise, and thus its languages are endangered, since its inhabitants might have to move because of climate change. I’m certainly not going to rely on Wikipedia ahead of a linguist, but I note in passing that Wikipedia suggests that things are getting better for Vanuatu’s languages, since “it currently shows an average of about 1,760 speakers for each indigenous language, and went through a historical low of 565”. It also claims (for what it’s worth) that “despite the low numbers for most of the indigenous languages, they are not considered especially vulnerable to extinction” (citing in a footnote by way of support, Nettle, Daniel and Suzanne Romaine (2016). Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World’s Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.9).

Digging a little further, I suspect (and I can only suspect – I’m obviously not an expert in such matters) that if there is (contra Wikipedia) a threat to Vanuatu’s languages, then it is most obviously a threat that arises from urbanisation and globalisation, and other natural and man-made problems. For instance, according to Wikipedia again:

Natural disasters include tropical cyclones or typhoons from January to April and volcanic activity which sometimes causes minor earthquakes. Tsunamis are also a hazard.

A majority of the population does not have access to a potable and reliable supply of water. Deforestation is another major concern on the islands.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre has a “Risk Profile – Sudden-Onset Hazards and the Risk of Future Displacement in Vanuatu” which notes:

Rapid urbanisation in Port Vila has resulted in high population density in exposed and vulnerable areas of the city. The peri-urban areas of the city are growing at twice the rate of Port Vila. So are nearby villages outside the city limits, such as Erakor, Eratap, Ifira, Mele and Pango. Combined with poor housing quality and deficits in critical services and infrastructure, this population density makes the people in these places highly vulnerable to displacement. The situation is exacerbated by the failure of the urban housing and land markets and the related shortage of affordable housing in urban areas. A recent assessment of the rapidly growing informal settlements of the city have identified up to 21 unauthorized settlements with a combined population of as many as 43,000 people, or about 40 per cent of the urban population. These settlements are located on lands that have been deemed unsuitable for urban development, as they are subject to one or more climate hazard risks.

It lumps together “Sudden-onset hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones and storm surges”. It does make quite a few references to climate change as an issue, but that’s not surprising in an organisation that heads its website with a banner headline: “DISPLACEMENT, DISASTERS AND CLIMATE CHANGE”.

Meanwhile, it is perhaps worth noting (source) that in 1955 the population of Vanuatu was around 55,000, with only 10% of its population urban-based. By 2020 the population had increased to over 300,000, and 24% of its population was then urban-based. As can be seen above, this represents a real problem, but a six-fold increase in population in less than 70 years ought (ceteris paribus) to help keep local languages alive. Clearly, however, all things are not equal, and urbanisation (and, no doubt, globalisation) will continue to have a negative influence on the survival of local languages.

As for climate change – well, it might be worth concluding by noting that in 2018 Ms Riehl published an article at the Conversation with the heading “The impact of climate change on language loss”. I admit straight away that I am predisposed to be suspicious of anything I see published there, due to its monomania on the subject of climate change, blaming pretty much everything under the sun on it. I note that the article commenced by referencing dire headlines about climate change and the latest IPCC report, before moving on to refer to the then recent tsunami that hit Sulawesi. The article continued:

As residents of Sulawesi villages mourn their losses and rebuild their neighbourhoods, scientists and policy makers seek to better understand and prepare for the effects of climate change. Often overlooked are the effects on the world’s languages.

Perhaps it’s cheap of me to point out that tsunamis are not the result of climate change, and the two are not linked. Perhaps it’s also cheap of me to note that much of the Guardian article seems to be in part a re-hash of the 2018 article in the Conversation. Perhaps I am being unfair in noting that while it tells us that “Sulawesi’s languages, increasingly relegated to the oldest generations and most isolated communities, are disappearing”, no link between past and current language losses and climate change is offered. Everything is stated in the future tense:

These changes will force communities to relocate, creating climate change refugees. The resultant dispersal of people will lead to the splintering of linguistic communities and increased contact with other languages. These changes will place additional pressures on languages that are already struggling to survive.

If either the article in the Conversation in 2018, or that in the Guardian today, demonstrated conclusive evidence that climate change had led to the loss of any of the many languages lost to date, I might take these claims more seriously. As it is, however, no such evidence is offered, and all is, so far as I can see, speculation. I suspect and fear that language loss is destined to continue, but that it will be for some or all of the reasons that have caused such losses to date, and that climate change isn’t the elephant in the room.