Big Diesel-Burning Pickup Trucks Are Paying for GM’s Electric Future

The vehicles that will secure the next decade for General Motors Co. aren’t covered in self-driving sensors or loaded with batteries. No, the future depends on hulking pickup trucks that often run on diesel and cost more than the average BMW.

Sales of heavy-duty pickups like the 2020 Chevrolet
Silverado are paying for General Motors to invest
billions into electric vehicles and driverless technology.

That’s the irony at the heart of GM’s event this week at its sprawling factory in Flint, Michigan, where the next iterations of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra will be introduced. These revamped heavy-duty pickups, which go on sale in June, feature advanced, lightweight materials and fuel-efficient engines but none of the technology that will supposedly shape the next era of the auto industry. Yet in Detroit that future can’t exist without the profit margins generated by classic pickup trucks.

Read the story from Bloomberg by David Welch - “Big Diesel-Burning Pickup Trucks Are Paying for GM’s Electric Future.”

Transforming Australia's energy system should not be beyond us

Over the past 100 years, Australia has built a secure, reliable and affordable energy system, based on large, centralised, fossil-fuelled power stations close to the major cities. Over the next 30 years, this system must be transformed to one based almost entirely on widely-distributed, low-emissions energy sources such as solar and wind with complementary storage. This is an unprecedented economic, political, social and technical challenge.

Rapid reductions in the cost of solar power
suggest technology will not be a constraint.

It shouldn’t be beyond us. Australia has abundant primary energy resources and we are a nation of early adopters of technology. Rapid reductions in the cost of solar power and battery storage suggest that technology will not be a constraint in what will be an electric century.

Read the comment by Tony Wood from The Age - “Transforming Australia's energy system should not be beyond us.”

Cape Town to set up disaster operations HQ as the city faces Day Zero

South Africa's police and military will help secure water collection sites in drought-stricken Cape Town if authorities must turn off most taps on Day Zero, a date projected to fall in the first half of April, according to the city.

Some residents are supplementing water supply
by collecting from natural springs in the city.

Hospitals, key economic and industrial areas and densely populated areas with a higher risk of disease would be exempt from a water cut-off, municipal authorities said.

The authorities plan to open a disaster operations centre on Monday to prepare for a possible closure of taps in a city known internationally for its natural beauty and tourist attractions.

South Africa's second-biggest city ramped up contingency plans as the water crisis hurt tourism.

Politicians bickered over alleged failures to offset a looming disaster blamed on explosive population growth over the past two decades and several years of drought that scientists say was possibly exacerbated by man-made global warming.

Read the ABC News story - “Cape Town to set up disaster operations HQ as the city faces Day Zero.”

Australia needs a clean energy target, not Coalition paralysis

"If you're cold, put on a jumper. If you're too hot, play under the hose.”

These have long been stock phrases for cost-conscious parents confronted with a complaining child wanting the heater turned up or the air-conditioning switched on (at least, in the latter case, until water restrictions started to bite). But now, it seems, they have become the de facto national energy policies of a government too paralysed by ideology and infighting to give the country what it needs: a secure road from the power generation of the past to the power generation of the future.

Australians were recently confronted with the startling news that nationwide, our power is among the most expensive in the world, despite our abundance of fossil fuels, long hours of sunshine and windy coastlines. The situation is worst in South Australia, which, while struggling to keep the lights on during summer, has the world's costliest electricity. Given the other states' increasing reliance on creaking relics such as NSW's Liddell power station, however, the rest of us should not be too smug.

Read the Editorial from today’s Melbourne Age - “Australia needs a clean energy target, not Coalition paralysis.”

Energy solutions but weak on climate – experts react to the Finkel Review

The keenly anticipated Finkel Review, commissioned in the wake of last year’s South Australian blackout, has made a range of recommendations aimed at delivering a reliable, secure and sustainable National Electricity Market.

Dr Alan Finkel. 

Among the proposals is a new Clean Energy Target to boost investment in low-carbon electricity generation, as well as moves to require high-emitting power stations to give three years’ notice before shutting down.

Below, our experts react to the measures.

Read the piece on The Conversation - “Energy solutions but weak on climate – experts react to the Finkel Review.”