Unsurprisingly, the Government doesn’t like to draw attention to the fact that since the 2022 election:
It has approved four new coal projects.
It has approved the drilling of 116 new coal seam gas wells.
It has sat in court with coal companies and defended its right not to consider the climate impact of opening new fossil fuel projects.
The Government has passed legislation at the request of gas companies specifically designed to expedite their expansion. This is not hyperbole. The transcripts and documents are there in black and white.
The Government has stacked the agencies legislated to oversee and shape Australia’s climate policies — including the Net Zero Authority and the National Reconstruction Fund — with industry interests and surrounded them with a fortress-like bureaucracy, impervious to public scrutiny. It has left a former gas executive in charge of the Climate Change Authority.
The Prime Minister and various ministers have flown to India, Japan, Korea, and (just this month) Vietnam to lock in customers for our gas and coal. The media releases never mention that either. Australia is one of the world’s largest fossil fuel exporters, and the Government is subsidising, legislating, and using the full weight of our foreign policy to ensure we stay that way. Because Governments are very effective at making very big things happen very quickly when they want to.
The Australian Government has lobbied UNESCO to stop the Great Barrier Reef from being listed as “in danger”. This is as it is in the grip of another mass coral bleaching event.
The Australian Government has refused to end native forest logging. Despite the carbon it would store and the very real risk of extinction to the koala and the swift parrot. It has left the protection of our collapsing ecosystems to the market. It has put far more energy into talking about being ‘nature positive’ than doing anything about it.
The federal Labor government alone still gives over $9 billion in subsidies to fossil fuels. It has committed $1.5 billion to a gas export hub in the Northern Territory. One single gas export hub is getting half of what Australia has committed to global climate finance over five years.
Peter Dutton has realised nobody is falling for his hype about Small Nuclear Reactors, so he's pivoted to large scale nuclear reactors.
The CSIRO has conclusively shown nuclear power is a dead-end technology — not fit for purpose in Australia — we need to accelerate our work with renewable energy such as wind and solar, and build more battery storage.
To make green steel a reality, and decarbonize the steel sector, the U.S. steel industry will need to significantly increase its #renewableenergy capacity. https://buff.ly/3VaAyKU
@BenjaminHCCarr This doesn't make sense to me - nearly every house gets an AC already. There is nothing different about a heat pump to the installer. Ban installation of regular cooling only AC units and everyone will get a heat pump. The only thing that really is missing is heat pumps need to be larger than an AC (a heat pump sized for cooling will not work below 25F - it will produce heat down to -20F but not enough to keep the house warm).
I'd be interested to know what this kind of power storage does to the lifetime of the EV's battery.
How many years does it take off the car's lifetime? How much does it cost the car owner?
I'd love to see Xcel actually compensate homeowners for giving them access to power storage.
🧵2/3 “Insurance is where people are feeling the economic impacts of climate change first. That is going to spill into housing markets, mortgage markets, & local economies.”
“Climate change is real. We can’t raise rates fast enough or high enough.”
🧵3/3 $25 TRILLION climate change bill for global homeowners
"Climate change is doing vast damage to property all around the world ... Hurricanes, wildfires & floods are more common & severe, but so are more mundane" problems that hurt individual homes. - https://tinyurl.com/52wwsdd3
Pedal-electric Hopper may be the German "car" you didn't know you wanted.
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The rider's pedaling power is augmented by a 250-watt rear hub motor, taking the Hopper up to a top speed of 25 km/h (16 mph). The motor is powered by a removable 30-Ah/48V/1,440-Wh lithium-iron-phosphate battery, which is claimed to be good for a range of approximately 65 km (40 miles) per charge. An optional rooftop solar panel should help boost that figure.
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In order to minimise maintenance and mechanical complexity, the Hopper utilises an electronic pedal-by-wire system instead of a traditional chain-drive drivetrain.
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Such systems work by having the rider spin up a generator as they pedal. Doing so converts their mechanical energy into electrical energy, which is fed into the motor. That motor converts the electrical energy back into mechanical energy, which is used to turn the wheel.