Aidan Morrison @FootnotesGuy

Taiwan is returning to nuclear! Hard to overstate how big this is. Taiwan was the Germany of the Pacific, just more blockadable. Saving its nuclear was a major campaign for the old Environmental Progress crew starting back in 2017, working with brave local leaders Germany next

Stephen Stapczynski @SStapczynski

a day ago

☢️ HUGE NUCLEAR POWER REVERSAL ☢️ Taiwan approved a preliminary plan to restart an idled atomic power plant, marking a reversal of the ruling party’s anti-nuclear stance. It closed its last reactor last year The earliest the plant may resume is 2028 bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

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@AngelicaOung A combination of instant gratification and a character limit that encourages the distillation of ideas into bite-sized chunks.

The most important imperative for Australia is to…. Tame inflation? Get real wages growing? Make housing affordable? Bring down energy prices? Control government spending? Secure fuel supplies? Oh no… silly me. “get rid of diesel”

Renew Economy @renew_economy

2 days ago

The most important imperative for Australia is to get rid of diesel. It is a no brainer for the economy, for national security and the environment. But there is no policy reneweconomy.com.au/australia-can-…

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@ColinBe34407533 Also, that’s grid-supplied, rooftop solar is wound into the other stats.

@ColinBe34407533 yes, we need hydro to get the 45%

We haven't "surged past 50%". We've crept past 45%. Over last three years, we've added just 2.7% per year. At current rates, we won't hit 50% for nearly two years, possibly after the next federal election. So I can't let this slide. One of my jobs as an energy researcher is battling misinformation, which distorts public debate, and presenting true facts in context. See below my letter to the dedicated energy reporter at @australian, Colin Packham, asking for this '50%' howler to be corrected. Sadly Colin has already indicated to me he's to busy to update today, and that he was actually aware that his 50% number was the peak of a seasonal, fluctuating quarterly number, not a sustainable annual average. So please share and comment widely enough to make sure those in charge of our major newspapers realise that this kind of misinformation is unacceptable, and needs to be called out. Dear Colin, I'd like to request a correction to factually inaccurate and misleading headlines and content in today's Australian in the "Energy Nation" feature: "Renewables push past 50pc but next phase proves harder" "Renewables surge past 50pc but the next phase proving harder" As well as further incorrect claims in your article: "Renewable energy has breached 50% of electricity generation in the national market, a significant advance on a year ago and a major step towards Labor's target of 82%" "Australia's 50 per cent renewable milestone therefore comes at an awkward moment." This claim is misleading, and factually unsubstantiated.  If this was a claim made by any person of public note at Energy Nation Forum, please let me know, and I will pursue a correction and acknowledgement of the mistake from whichever organisation that person belongs to.  But if it is your own (as I can find no attribution in your writing, so I assume that it is) I would kindly request a correction published in The Australian, proportionate to the prominence afforded to this article associated headlines. The source of your confusion might possibly be from headlines published by AEMO claiming more than half was generated from renewables in a single quarter (Q4 2025), which I link below.  The highest quarterly number that can be attributed to an authoritative source is 50.1%, see page 22 of the Quarterly Energy Dynamics report, also linked. However, if you inspect other such quarterly reports prior to or after that one, you'll realise that this is an outlier due to seasonal fluctuation. The 4th Quarter consistently achieves some of the highest renewable share, and a 50% share has never been sustained over 12 months.  A convenient means of viewing these statistics, derived from AEMO data, is to use the tracking tool in the OpenElectricity.org.au website, where you'll find that the quarters prior to and since that single quarter range from the high 30s (eg Q2 2025 at 37.4%) through to the high 40s (eg Q1 2026 at 46.1%). Given the very large seasonal fluctuation that is expected between quarters, the proper basis for assessing milestones for renewable energy penetration must include 12 sequential months.  Assessed again using OpenElectricity, this could be the last calendar year at 43%, the last financial year at 44.9%, or the last 365 days up to 23rd of September, at 45.3%.  But to claim "renewables surge past 50%", and make direct reference to this as progress towards government targets like 82% which must be assessed on an annual basis, it is a fundamental and serious misrepresentation of the facts.  Your article and headlines claims a rate of progress that has no basis in reality. Since FY 2023, when the renewable share was 36.8% to the close of FY 2026 when we had 44.9%, renewable share has grown by just 2.7% on average per year. Therefore, it is most likely that at the current rate of progress, the 50% milestone which your article claims has been achieved will still not be achieved at the time of the next federal election campaign. For major media outlets with prominent standing in the energy debate to establish in the public mind that such a milestone is already behind us is a serious disservice to debate. I therefore request an immediate and clear correction to the articles and headlines in proportion to the prominence given. Please find links to sources below: explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/nem/?ra… aemo.com.au/newsroom/media… aemo.com.au/-/media/files/… Sincerely, Aidan Morrison theaustralian.com.au/special-report…

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Why Net-Zero Will TANK Aussie AI | @FootnotesGuy #artificialintelligence #ai #datacentre #energy #renewableenergy #diesel

Dave back in FY23 that I took my reference from for the 2.7% calculation, Hydro produced 16TWh. Last FY it's 13.5. But back in FYs 2020 and 21 it's 14.5. I don't think it's that material to my calculation over three years, and certainly wasn't chosen by design to cherry-pick. Hydro may yet have to be constrained further to allow more wind and solar into the grid. Certainly the power lines between Southern NSW and Sydney are a point of direct and binding competition between wind and hydro at times of high demand. So I think my portrayal of the numbers is still fair, and supports the conclusions I draw.

@threadreaderapp unroll

Here's Penny's letter. Interpreted: "damn the costs, damn the consumers, damn the communities, damn the consultation, I'm doing it anyway, bugger off AEMO stop putting your nose into it." She does this by attempting to tick boxes on planning, contracts, and authorisation, which conform with the "anticipated" status that means AEMO doesn't check the economics, optimal timing, size etc ever again. 2/

This is the most damning and outrageous draft-final change in the latest ISP. In the draft, just Stage 1, ie one 500KV line, modelled to New England. Ongoing analysis and stakeholder engagement needed "to ascertain whether the second stage will optimise benefits to consumers..." Crystal clear that AEMO knows full well that there are no projects likely to close in the REZ, and this will be a white-elephant, with terrible costs imposed on consumers with no chance of proportional benefit. So what happened with the analysis and stakeholder engagement? Well, one stakeholder trumped all others. The NSW government wrote and declared that they're doing both lines, in a single project, and asked for it to be treated as 'anticipated' which makes it a sunk-cost in the ISP, so AEMO would not do any further analysis on whether it makes economic sense for consumers. The sheer bloody-mindedness of this move is just breathtaking. There can be no pretense now that the ISP does anything at all to coordinate investment or protect consumers. A supremely arrogant government can just over-rule the community, and consumer interests, and the ISP just nods along, puts it all in the path called 'optimal'. 1/

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🤩🤓 Can't describe the explosive nerd-out excitement at seeing this incredible family tree, of jets. I read a brilliant book a while back that covered the early lineage of the Rolls Royce family in exquisite detail. The process of developing jets is such an amazingly intense process of engineering; truly new jets are rare. I grasped immediately that the entire universe would be tractable and family-tree-like. So cool seeing it laid out like this.

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Casey Handmer @CJHandmer

4 days ago

I think this jet family tree is relatively complete.

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This. The intuitive assumption underlying broad popular support for superannuation - that otherwise we can’t afford the pension - is so, so badly wrong.

Cameron Murray @DrCameronMurray

4 days ago

Superannuation saves a tiny amount of age pension costs. Tax breaks for super far outweigh any budget savings from lower pensions. If you argue we need super to help the budget to afford pensions then you are wrong. You should support scrapping super if that is your reasoning

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What is the world's most overrated problem? It's easily climate change. You can trust the experts. Climate change is real and it's happening. But the experts also do estimates of the damage, and the vast majority come out to less than 10% of world GDP by 2100. That's not 10% poorer than today. It's 10% poorer than we otherwise would be. But if we increase GDP growth by less than 0.2 percentage points a year, it'll more than cover the likely effects of climate. Getting off fossil fuels also has costs, and there are OECD projections where doing so doesn't even pay for itself by 2100. Meanwhile, as temperatures go up, deaths from natural disasters have collapsed as increasing wealth allows people to better adjust to changing climate and weather. Climate hysteria needs to be understood in the larger context of Westerners being enamored by the idea that we are evil for sinning against Mother Earth, who will eventually take her revenge. This contradicts our history as a species, where growth and technology rather than restraint are what solve problems and increase human flourishing. richardhanania.com/p/climate-chan…

What a story.

chris keefer @Dr_Keefer

4 days ago

Economist Milton Friedman once said, "Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions taken depend on the ideas lying around. Our basic function is to develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available

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They put too much solar on the grid, so it drives the value of the output to zero and the operators go bankrupt leaving €3bn of debt. Same would happen in Britain without generous subsidies.

Christian Sandström @ChrisSandstrom

5 days ago

Tyska soljätten Enerparc har ansökt om insolvens i Tyskland. Bolaget äger och driver mer än 500 solcellsanläggningar. Kvar står ett skuldberg på 33 miljarder kronor: affarsvarlden.se/kronika/tysk-s…

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Why is this not surprising.

Sam Berridge @strikeextent

4 days ago

Despite batteries getting cheaper, the relevant department in WA has pivoted back to gas as the lowest-cost means of peaking capacity. The history of BRCP pricing in the chart below tells a story of ideological capture. Specifically, the mental gymnastics required to squeeze

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This is what achieving net-zero for a nation looks like in practice. Destroying domestic industries, exporting the emissions to another country who will produce the same thing instead. Net-zero change in emissions globally.

Stephen Stapczynski @SStapczynski

4 days ago

DEMAND DESTRUCTION: Ineos will idle three of its chemical plants in northern England due to high energy costs🇬🇧 ⚠️ “With gas prices now 12 times the level in the US and eight times that of China, we just cannot compete,” said Chairman Ratcliffe bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

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Here's the scene of the crime, in the PACR, 'C' for conclusions, they rule out finishin the last leg into Sydney. Too expensive. Oh, and taken option is at $3.3 billion by then. Now, the final leg for Sydney Ring South is $3.5 billion on its own. This is a planning disaster which I'll outline even more fully in an upcoming paper. 4/4

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It was considered as part of the HumeLink process. This is from the PADR, the 'D' for Draft. Looked like it would only cost a tiny bit more money. Note that the option 3C, which we took, was only $1.3 billion then. 3/

The answer is in this chart. There is even worse congestion just a bir further South, in the region where we've built most of NSW's wind farms, Gullen, Crookwell, Rye Park etc. And up in the Snowy Scheme. But what's the point in relieving some of that (actually only the bit near Tumut/Maragle, HumeLink doesn't have any transformers that mesh with the 330kV network between there and Bannaby) if it lands at a place that's almost as congested for the final leg into Sydney? 2/

Nearly a year ago, I identified that the project between Bannaby and Sydney, called Sydney Ring South, was perhaps the most urgently required transmission upgrade in NSW. The 2026 Transmission Annual Planning Report confirms this. In each little blue box, the bottom left number is the highest throughput experienced, as a fraction of it's normal rating. These are perhaps the most importnat numbers to look at. For Line 39, which is the current most direct link between southern NSW, that's 98%. The highest on the page. The others going south are 91% and 94%, for line 17 and 11. So getting power into the South of Sydney is a real problem, already. There's a power-flow-control option being discussed to try to squeeze more power into Sydney, by basically tricking the alternating electic fields to squeeze a bit of power into the lines that are at 91% and 94% rather than the one at 98%. That doesn't really do that much, as you can imagine. So the burning question is why is Sydney Ring South the last cab off the rank? What use will HumeLink be, landing up to 2.2GW of power from Snowy 2.0 at Bannaby, where the line direct from there to Sydney is at 98%, and it's buddies down the coast are also above 90%? 1/

Aidan Morrison @FootnotesGuy

10 months ago

When Jesus said "the first will be last and the last will be first" he wasn't giving instructions on how to build out transmission lines. And yet... In NSW... This is the story of Sydney Ring South. Probably the most urgently needed transmission line. Approved to be...

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