Renewables will replace ageing coal plants at lowest cost, Aemo says

Australia’s energy market operator says the future of power generation in Australia will be renewables with storage, and gas, with those technologies able to replace the power currently supplied by coal generators at least cost.

Some 30% of coal power plants will be decommissioned in the next
20 years and it will be cheaper to replace them with renewables than
with new coal plants, Aemo says. 

A new forecast by the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) notes 30% of Australia’s coal generators will approach the end of their technical life over the next two decades, and it says it is important to avoid premature departures if the looming transition in the national energy market is to be orderly.

But while some in the Turnbull government have been campaigning to bolt new coal-fired power into the system, backed with government subsidy or underwriting, Aemo is clear about where the future lies, and it is not with coal.

Read Katharine Murphy’s story from The Guardian - “Renewables will replace ageing coal plants at lowest cost, Aemo says.”

Donald Trump’s Climate Fantasies

NEW YORK – Legend holds that King Canute brought his flatterers to the sea to show them that even a king could not command the ocean waves, that the laws of nature are more powerful than the decrees of men. So pity Donald Trump, who really believes that his executive orders can hold back the tides.

Jeffrey D. Sachs.

Trump is surrounded by cronies rather than flatterers, and they and their foolish, ignorant king believe that by denying climate change they can restore the wealth and glory of coal, oil, and gas. They are wrong. Greed will not reverse human-caused climate change, and Trump’s executive orders will not stop the global process of phasing out coal, oil, and gas in favor of wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, geothermal, and other low-carbon energy sources.

In less than 100 days, we have learned that Trump is a man living in a fantasy world. He issues decrees, barks orders, sends out midnight Tweets, but to no avail. The facts – real ones, not his “alternative” variety – keep intervening. There is physics; there is law; there are courts; there are procedures; and there are voters, only 36% of whom approve of Trump’s job performance. There is also China, which wins technologically and diplomatically from every self-defeating move by the incompetent US president.

Read the piece by Jeffrey D. Sachs on Project Syndicate - “Donald Trump’s Climate Fantasies.”