Carbon Tax May Work after 1000 years!!!

Cisco, if the "The whole "Global Warming/Climate Change/Carbon Emissions" thing is being used by the powers that be worldwide as an excuse to get more taxes and exert more control over the masses", then why would you want to go from dirt cheap coal fired to nuclear which no one will build not because of the dangers but because of the huge cost. If the whole GW thing is crap, as you want us to believe then why go to nuclear?

spot on, full of inconsistancies. poloticking again is my guess

@pweedas,

cold fusion would be great. I notice the Chinese have announced they are looking at thorium reactors which would be nearly as good. These are well known technology, have minimal radiation and the nuclear reaction stops if the power supply is cut. Plus thorium is much more plentiful than uranium and doesn't require extraction of isotopes.

While we're all arguing about climate change, those guys will get the jump on us on the Next Big Thing.

geez, here we go again!!

Competition is the reason that electricity supply shouldn't be a monopoly under government control. (Anything written about Maggie Thatcher would cover the theory and application of such ideas.)

Here is an article from the Grattan Institute.
www.grattan.edu.au
There's no magic pudding in emissions reduction Published in The Australian Financial Review, page 55, Tuesday 29 March 2011
Carbon pricing won't be painless, but effective policy design can limit that pain and bring long-term pay-offs, writes John Daley.
The carbon debate – like most political debates – is shaped by what people want to hear. Politicians tend to focus on the parts of the pudding we want to eat: more jobs and lower cost of living. But there are few free lunches, let alone magic puddings, in real life.
Choosing the best policy needs clear-eyed analysis about all of the real costs and benefits of the alternatives.
Carbon pricing inevitably means that some existing jobs will go. The whole point of carbon pricing is to restructure the economy to emit less carbon. Firms that innovate to produce goods and services with less carbon will reduce their relative costs, gain market share and add jobs; those that do not innovate will ultimately shed employees.
Similarly, standards of living will be lower in the short run. Spending more to reduce emissions, but produce the same amount of electricity, reduces productivity by definition.
Unfortunately, doing nothing is a very bad option. Reducing emissions is not going to be painless: the trick is to design policy to minimise the pain.
In any country, job losses cause pain. Governments are inevitably under political pressure to protect existing jobs. But attempts to shield existing jobs from carbon pricing – like most government assistance to protect existing jobs – will come at the price of less visible jobs and living standards elsewhere.
To take one of the most politically charged examples, preserving the 5000 jobs in Australia's aluminium smelting industry will in effect cost about $160,000 per job per year. The “free” permits proposed for the industry will ultimately raise the costs that others have to pay to reduce emissions.
These other costs and jobs are more dispersed across the economy, and are harder to identify, but these jobs have families too. Of course, carbon pricing with free permits is not useless reform. It is just substantially more expensive for the general community than it needs to be. Governments can respond to the political pressure by pointing to the “green jobs” created as we reduce emissions. These will no doubt offset some of the job losses in emissions-intensive sectors.
But at the end of the day, there is no magic pudding: with a net increase in the costs of production, average living standards across the economy will inevitably grow more slowly for a time. The most important policy question is how to minimise the total cost to all Australians.
One alternative is to pay directly for reductions. This avoids the immediate pain of imposing a new and visible tax. But taxpayers must ultimately pay for the reductions through reduced services or higher taxes. Even if the funds are identified out of “budget savings”, those savings could instead be used to increase living standards through lower taxes or better services. The community still pays, whether government taxes emissions or pays for reductions.
At a more sophisticated level, direct payment for emission reductions, unlike carbon pricing, avoids the churn of money from consumers to producers to the government and back through compensation payments. However, government funding to reduce emissions creates a substantial industry. In a direct payment scheme, government must identify potential reductions, tender for these, and then check on delivery. As with other rebate-type schemes, there is a real risk that taxpayers will pay for actions that would have happened anyway. Living standards ultimately bear these “deadweight” costs, in addition to the cost of real adjustment to cut actual emissions.
Is there any way for Australians to get some magic pudding?
We might get a bite or two if Australia quickly set up low-carbon-technology industries to export to the rest of the world. However, this is unlikely given the rate of progress elsewhere. Emerging markets (particularly China) registered 3000 low-emission-technology patents in 2006, almost half the total of the developed world, and this percentage is increasing rapidly. As other countries ramp up their response to global warming, it is getting harder for Australia to reach the forefront of any low-emissions industry.
There might be another bite of magic pudding in the push towards energy efficiency. Many people buy a cheap fridge even though it will cost more to run.
Carbon pricing, and publicity around carbon emissions, may result in people making wiser capital decisions that increase efficiency, reduce emissions, and cost less in the long run. But we cannot expect to reduce emissions to our targets purely through efficiencies.
Using the revenue from carbon pricing to reduce inefficient taxes, as recently suggested by Ross Garnaut, might provide a full slice of genuine magic pudding. Carbon pricing is a relatively efficient tax: it is cheap to collect and difficult to avoid because the levy will only be paid and accounted for by fewer than a thousand firms.
The tax burden is ultimately shared widely across the economy, roughly proportionate to consumption, because much of the tax cost will be passed on through commodities such as electricity and steel that are small inputs to a wide variety of goods and services. And the tax encourages taxpayers to avoid behaviour that we want to deter – emitting carbon. For these reasons, it is a “good” tax relative to many existing taxes such as stamp duty. If it replaced them, productivity would be higher.
Of course, we might be able to get the same productivity dividend by replacing these inefficient taxes with higher income, consumption or land taxes. However, the history of the past few years suggests we could be waiting a while.
Theory and practice both suggest that a straightforward carbon price is likely to deliver at lower cost to us all. And if we take the opportunity to replace some inefficient taxes, we might just get a taste of magic pudding.
John Daley is chief executive of the Grattan Institute.
John Daley
www.grattan.edu.au

A coal fired power station burns pulverised coal in a furnace.. "to heat water to superheated steam to drive a turbine that drives an alternator or generator that produces electricity."

A nuclear power station uses a nuclear reaction ..................."to heat water to superheated steam to drive a turbine that drives an alternator or generator that produces electricity."

Are those statements correct?

In Australia coal is dirt cheap because all we have to do is dig it up.

In Australia uranium is dirt cheap because all we have to do is dig it up.

The energy yield per tonne from uranium is many times that of coal.

Therefore it is necessary to add the volume handling cost of coal to the cost of running coal fired power stations.

Coal fired power stations have huge shut down maintenance costs associated with furnace rebuilds, poor quality coal, coal handling and processing.

Nuclear boilers no doubt have maintenance costs but I do not believe it would be anywhere near that of coal fired boilers. (This opinion based on general knowlege and therefore may be incorrect.)

The CSIRO proved over 30 years ago that, with the technology then available, modern urban housing could be "stand alone energy independant".

Therefore the main requirement for grid electricity supply is industry and essential services.

Studies have shown that if the "Darwin to Melbourne, High Speed Mag-Lev Rail Line" was built through the heart lands, the turn around time for cargo ships coming to Australia could be reduced from six weeks to six days and that interstate trucking could be almost eliminated.

Given all the above and following a "Nation Building" line of reasoning, it would make sense to relocate heavy industries to close proximity of the "Darwin to Melbourne, High Speed Mag-Lev Rail Line".

While I believe the whole "CO2 emissions/G.W./Climate Change" thing is a load of bollocks, I am not saying coal fired power stations do not pollute.

Further, I did say before:-

"We need to go nuclear with the latest technology like ceramic coated fuel beads, higher extraxtions of nuclear energy resulting in spent fuel being rendered virtually harmless and smaller unitised power generation modules thereby limiting and isolating damage caused by system failures.

Nuclear can only be a temporary solution though until cold fusion, geothermal and other technologies are perfected.

There is no lack of solutions for the problems of the world. What is lacking is "political will"."

Hey Will!! Hey WILL!!! Where are ya??

Have someone had a look at micro hydrogene power plant (hydrogene cells) that are big enough to power 1 to 2 houses using cheap hydrogene and producing steam as by product, would it be economical? I know the unit is available but no here??!!

I do not know the Wealth of Nations but will look it up.

I have always questioned things but my mind was opened up one day whilst building tilt panels, shovelling concrete.

The bloke I was working with is stark raving mad. He believes he is an angel. He is also one of the most fascinating and intelligent people I have ever met.

Anyway, I commented to him on the weight of concrete and why the **** could they not come up with something lighter that blue metal. He then filled me in on the progress of light weight concrete building systems.

So why the hell are we not using them says I, in the mid summer Perth sun, to which he replied, have a look at the resources invested in the current system.

So I did, and as anyone who has built tilt panels will know there is plenty of time to think.

There is so much money tied up in infrastructure that any change from the current modus operandi would have such a massive impact that simply prevents the change from happening.

I read somewhere once that governments are not there to effect change, they are there to maintain the staus quo.

Never a truer word said.

Hey Cisco, have you read it, I was thinking of doing so but I'm guessing its going to be pretty heavy.

At the risk of introducing some facts in this thread...

For anyone interested, this'll tell you who owns what, how the power is generated and what is being planned. NSW only:
http://www.industry.nsw.gov.au/energy/electricity/generation

Also for anyone wanting more info on thorium reactors and Australia's puny research efforts into it.

www.abc.net.au/quantum/scripts98/9820/thoriumscpt.htm

Not only does it generate clean energy, not only can it NOT melt down, not only can it burn current uranium/plutonium and other highly radioactive waste and so get rid of them BUT Australia has big reserves of the stuff. And the Chinese are putting money into it.

Felix and Some Other Guy look like they are on the pace.