TURNING OFF THE VOTERS

 The following first appeared as a guest post guest post on Lavatus Prodeo on 22 Sept 2010:

TURNING OFF THE VOTERS - John Davidson

Tim Colebatch in The Age presented some interesting data on voter turnout and informal voting. He says that:

"More than 14 million Australians were on the rolls for the 2010 election. But almost a million of them decided not to vote. And of those who did, almost 730,000 voted informal.
Combine the two, and the conclusion jumps out at you. This election campaign turned off more voters than any other election for decades."

PICKING WINNERS IS NOT ALL BAD

A lot of  commentators see "picking winners" as an automatic term of abuse.   And they can be right when what is happening is pollies deciding that X is the answer and it has to happen in a marginal electorate.  It is less dangerous when what it means is identifying the boundaries within an acceptable decision can be made and the selection criteria.
What the Chinese seem to be doing is "picking losers" (Ex: Coal fired power and dependence on oil) and then pursuing a number of alternatives.
What worries me about the Greens and Labor is that they are obsessed with renewables while not really understanding the limitations.

SIMPLE CLIMATE ACTION PLAN ANYONE?

I have just had a guest post published in Larvatusa Prodeo which suggests that it would be better to use an "Include by exception" approach to developing the climate action plan required to meet 2020 emission reduction targets.  This plan might start with a base plan that uses the clean up electricity on its own to achieve the target  and then modifies the base plan by adding other actions to the plan with the aim of reducing overall cost and/or giving a better result.  The modification may include reducing the extent to which electricity would be cleaned up so that the 2020 target remains unchanged.
The big attraction of this approach is that it is much easier to understand than systems like CPRS that have started out as EXCLUDE by exception.  The problem with CPRS is that by the time all the exclusions are included the system has become extremely complex and difficult to understand.

DRIVING INVESTMENT IN CLEAN ELECTRICTY

Revised 11 April 2013

This post is essentially an extract from Submission 572 to the Senate Climate Committee (John Davidson - April 2009).

It considers the issues involved in driving major investment in clean-electricity and compares one "case specific" approach with emission trading and carbon tax comprehensive schemes.  A case specific approach  is an approach  developed for a particular opportunity to reduce NCP (net carbon pollution).  In this example, the case the approach selected was the use of regulation and contracts for the supply of cleaner electricity   The attraction of this particular strategy is that it is able to deal with the issues associated with the clean up of electricity, gives a very predicable growth in clean electricity capacity, satisfies most of the needs of the various stakeholders and only requires the average price of electricity to ramp up slowly in line with average costs.  Problems with both the emission trading and carbon tax approach include much faster price increases, a much less satisfactory resolution of stakeholder concerns and a far less predicable rate of investment in clean electricity.
Note:  A different approach  may be appropriate for driving minor investment such as the installation of rooftop solar cells.
Breaking News: Since I first started talking about competitive tendering, the ACT introduced their "Reverse Auction" for driving investment in utility scale solar.  I don't know all the details of their system except that it is a competitive tendering system.

I have now found this article in the Australian (Giles Parkinson 7 Sept 2012) that announced that the ACT auction process had reached the point where the first contract has been awarded to  Spanish group FRV for a lower than expected fixed price of 18.6 cents/kWh for 20 yrs.  This price may seem a bit high but, based on Qld experience it should actually reduce ACT power bills by replacing more expensive sources of day-time power.

REDUCING THE FUEL CONSUMPTION OF CARS

DRIVING DOWN THE AVERAGE FUEL CONSUMPTION OF
NEW CARS

This post considers alternatives for driving down the average fuel consumption/km of
new cars.  It is largely based on  Submission 572 to the Senate Climate Committee (John Davidson - April 2009) 


It considers the issues involved in driving down the average duel consumption of new cars and compares one "case specific" approach with emission trading and carbon tax comprehensive schemes.  A case specific approach  is an approach is an approach developed for a particular opportunity to reduce NCP (net carbon pollution).  In this example, the case the approach selected was the use of regulation and offset credit trading to control the average fuel consumption of new cars.  The attraction of this particular strategy is that it doesn't require changes in fuel price to work and gives a very predictable outcome.  By contrast, both the emission trading and carbon tax approach require an increase in the price of fuel to drive the change and the outcome will be difficult to predict.

Submission 572 argues in favour of the case specific approach rather than the "one answer fits all" approach used by both emission trading and carbon tax schemes.  The key feature of the specific case approach is that it allows quite different strategies to be used to handle different opportunities to reduce NCP.  To get a better idea of how this might work in practice see Simple action plan anyone?

3.1: Background:

Passenger vehicles accounted for 62% of transport fuel consumption in 1995 (3) with total transport responsible for 14% of total CO2 emissions in 1999 (4). Based on these figures, passenger vehicles would account for 9% of total greenhouse emissions. The average fuel consumption of passenger vehicles was 11.5
litres/100km in 2007 compared with 11.4 litres/100 km in 1963 (5).  Part of the problem is that most Australians would consider the loss of their cars as a major attack on their quality of life. To some extent this concern is due to practical considerations such as trip times, delays waiting for public transport, comfort and
security. These issues are of particular importance to those who live away from the most congested parts of large cities. In addition, for many people, cars are linked to psychological factors such as status and image. The action required to reduce NCP from people transport will need something more complex than the availability of low NCP (net carbon pollution) alternatives.
Any credible plan for reducing the fuel consumption of cars to the levels required to meet 2050 targets must include strategies for reducing average fuel consumption/km. Reducing the average fuel consumption of new cars would have to be part, if not all of this effort. Small cars are already available in Australia with fuel consumptions below 4 litres/100 km. There are no technical reasons why further reductions cannot be
made without radical changes to the car as we know it.
For example, existing plug-in hybrid technology would allow most car owners to significantly reduce petrol consumption without having to wait for technical breakthroughs or new infrastructure; e.g., an owner with the writer’s typical-working week trip pattern would achieve an average petrol consumption of less than 0.8 litres/100 km by retrofitting a 4 litres/100 km car with a plug-in hybrid able to go 35 km on battery
power alone.  (Basis 6x30 + 1x100km trips per week.)
Special features related to the use of cars that may influence the design of schemes for driving down the average fuel consumption of new cars include: