Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

Nice news. BNEF suggest power prices will actually fall, before leveling off as storage costs are added.

Why power prices will inevitably fall, then look like Charlie Brown

Power prices will inevitably fall as more wind and solar comes on line and pushes baseload power out of the market — but energy storage will eventually keep prices relatively stable, according to a senior BloombergNEF (BNEF) analyst.

With power-purchase agreements getting shorter and more subsidy-free and merchant renewables projects being built, wind and solar’s increased reliance on wholesale market prices means that power-price forecasts are becoming increasingly important for the renewable-energy industry.

Yet most forecasts incorrectly predict ever-rising prices, BNEF head of clean-tech research Amy Grace told the BNEF Summit in London on Monday.

Market prices, she explained, reflect the lowest price at which producers are willing to sell their power — which is their marginal cost of generation, or the cost of producing an additional hour of electricity.

“So what goes into [the marginal cost]? What about all the cost it took to build that wind farm or solar farm, or all that $5bn overrun for that nuclear project? It doesn’t matter — totally irrelevant. Sunk costs have no bearing on the power price,” she said.

“So what does matter? It’s basically your fuel cost and your operations and maintenance cost — that’s what goes into your marginal cost of generation. O&M is pretty negligible, especially for coal and gas, so what really matters is your fuel costs. So for renewables that’s good news, because until Donald Trump takes over the sun, renewables — our solar and wind — are free.”

Exiled_Tyke

From the BBC today on the NAO report on fracking:


The NAO report is a hammer blow to those aspirations.
It found no evidence that prices would be lowered, uncertainty as to whether it could viably produce gas in meaningful quantities, no plan for clean-up if a fracking firm were to go bust, serial breaches of agreed limits on earth tremors, strains on local authorities in fracking areas, and plummeting public support.
Local farmer John Bradley's land is about a mile from Cuadrilla's biggest fracking site in Preston.
He told the BBC he had started with an open mind but he had been shaken (literally) off the fence he'd been sitting on when a tremor of 2.9 on the Richter scale was recorded in July.
"It was not very nice at all - quite scary in fact. That settled it for me. Also we are dairy farmers producing a high quality rural product. Having a site like that nearby doesn't fit with what we do at all."

Martyn1981

Too much good news, so sorry, but here's some negative stuff, and also helps (partly) explain why I keep saying the cost of action is far, far less than the cost of inaction / less action.

Climate Change Will Cost Us Even More Than We Think

For some time now it has been clear that the effects of climate change are appearing faster than scientists anticipated. Now it turns out that there is another form of underestimation as bad or worse than the scientific one: the underestimating by economists of the costs.

The result of this failure by economists is that world leaders understand neither the magnitude of the risks to lives and livelihoods, nor the urgency of action. How and why this has occurred is explained in a recent report by scientists and economists at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

One reason is obvious: Since climate scientists have been underestimating the rate of climate change and the severity of its effects, then economists will necessarily underestimate their costs.

But it’s worse than that. A set of assumptions and practices in economics has led economists both to underestimate the economic impact of many climate risks and to miss some of them entirely. That is a problem because, as the report notes, these “missing risks” could have “drastic and potentially catastrophic impacts on citizens, communities and companies.”

JKenH

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Too much good news, so sorry, but here's some negative stuff, and also helps (partly) explain why I keep saying the cost of action is far, far less than the cost of inaction / less action.

Climate Change Will Cost Us Even More Than We Think

Just for a bit of balance - from the IPCC report

‘Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation
Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’


Increasing exposure of people and economic assets has been the major cause of long-term increases in economic losses from weather- and climate-related disasters. Long-term trends in economic disaster losses adjusted for wealth and population increases have not been attributed to climate change, but a role for climate change has not been excluded.



https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/SREX_Full_Report-1.pdf

1961Nick

Martyn1981 wrote: »

[My bold] - Easy to say, but those authors don't have to deal with the 'three Amigos' on this thread/board!

Amigo here.....:rotfl:

I really don't see why climate change was the responsibility of Exxon. Their role was to produce & market fuel to make a profit for the benefit of their shareholders. As long as they don't break any laws they should be free to go about their business.

Any climate change data they produced would been for forward planning purposes & therefore a trade secret. Why would you give that information to your competitors?

Their only misdemeanour seems to be that they gave their shareholders some misleading information regarding climate change & it's potential effect on the business. Considering how much money they've made, it's hard to argue that withholding that information cost shareholders anything.

ABrass

The current court case accuses them of fraud. That's against the law.

1961Nick

ABrass wrote: »

The current court case accuses them of fraud. That's against the law.

They are currently innocent.

They may be found guilty of giving shareholders misleading information which is a financial crime.

Hexane

1961Nick wrote: »

They may be found guilty of giving shareholders misleading information which is a financial crime.

The term "financial crime" has no special status under either U.S. law or U.K. law, as Jordan Belfort and others found out. It's odd that you used it as an immediate followup to your previous post which used the term "misdemeanour", which does have a different status under U.S. law. I don't think we're going to get confused between the two.

Martyn1981

1961Nick wrote: »

Amigo here.....:rotfl:

I really don't see why climate change was the responsibility of Exxon. Their role was to produce & market fuel to make a profit for the benefit of their shareholders. As long as they don't break any laws they should be free to go about their business.

Their research confirmed exactly what all of the science was saying, that AGW was both real and would have a huge negative impact.

They chose to lie, by omission, and then (like many other FF businesses) to lie openly to the World by funding a misinformation campaign designed to stop or delay action. They probably cost us 20yrs of action, delaying the big push to around 2010.

The result of their (and others) actions, is that the environmental impacts, and cost impacts will be vastly greater, and if we do manage to avoid runaway GW (not certain anymore that that is even possible) then it will be at a temperature higher than it otherwise would have been, with all the negative connotations that that will bring.

You like to talk about the cost of action, and how much we should spend (or not spend), well thanks to those companies we have to spend vastly more - yet you would rather argue against me, and defend them.

PS - TSLA up 20% in out of hours trading.

1961Nick

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Their research confirmed exactly what all of the science was saying, that AGW was both real and would have a huge negative impact.

They chose to lie, by omission, and then (like many other FF businesses) to lie openly to the World by funding a misinformation campaign designed to stop or delay action. They probably cost us 20yrs of action, delaying the big push to around 2010.

The result of their (and others) actions, is that the environmental impacts, and cost impacts will be vastly greater, and if we do manage to avoid runaway GW (not certain anymore that that is even possible) then it will be at a temperature higher than it otherwise would have been, with all the negative connotations that that will bring.

You like to talk about the cost of action, and how much we should spend (or not spend), well thanks to those companies we have to spend vastly more - yet you would rather argue against me, and defend them.

PS - TSLA up 20% in out of hours trading.

Governments set the legal framework under which businesses operate ... and that includes environmental considerations. From what I can remember about the 1980's & 90's, was that there was virtually no governmental interest in climate change in terms of setting policy. This should have been the job of the departments like the Environment Agency & the EPA, not businesses like Exxon.

Retrospectively sub-contracting responsibility for the welfare of the environment to an oil company is ridiculous imo.

PS. Excellent numbers from TSLA & they seem to be ahead of schedule in a number of key areas. Could this be the next Amazon/Apple/Microsoft/Google?