Download the printable 13-page PDF (includes appendix) here.
By Peter Lang. Peter is a retired geologist and engineer with 40 years experience on a wide range of energy projects throughout the world, including managing energy R&D and providing policy advice for government and opposition. His experience includes: coal, oil, gas, hydro, geothermal, nuclear power plants, nuclear waste disposal, and a wide range of energy end use management projects.
Introduction
The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) is an Australian government economic research agency that provides analysis and forecasting of, among other things, our energy production and usage. ABARE’s projections have been criticized by some hoping for large scale changes in our energy sector as unreliable, biased towards the fossil fuel industry, and as underestimating the contributions that will be achieved in the future by renewable energy, energy efficiency, smart grids and the like.
To test these criticisms I have compared ABARE’s projections [1] for the year 2004-05 with the actual figures for 2004-05 [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]. I have compared the following: primary energy production, electricity consumption, resource reserves, and CO2 emissions. I also comment on what was being advocated by green energy proponents in 1990, and point out how little has changed. The same arguments are being repeated again now by the same sorts of groups with similar beliefs and agendas.
The reason I’ve used the year 2004-05 for the comparison is because ABARE’s 1991 projections were for the period 1990-91 to 2004-05. I have my own hard copies of that and earlier reports but not of later reports so I used this readily available source.
I make two points:
- ABARE’s projections are the best we have to work with. We can’t do better than follow their projections.
- The arguments about what can really be achieved with renewable energy, energy efficiency improvements, smart grids and the like, have all been had before. Twenty years later, nothing has changed.
These ideas proved excessively optimistic in the past, as shown here, and people with sound engineering judgement and experience are warning against repeating the same mistakes. The effective solution is not to try to apply draconian methods. The priority should be on developing rational policies, largely aimed at facilitating rational fuel switching.
Primary energy production
Table 1 compares ABARE’s 1991 projection of Australia’s 2004-05 primary energy production with the actual production in 2004-05.
Points to note:
ABARE’s 1991 projections of Australia’s primary energy production in 2004-05:
- underestimated total energy production by 22%
- significantly underestimated the 2004-05 production of fossil fuels except oil. It overestimated the production of oil by 8%, which most would consider good forecasting for a 15-year projection.
- underestimated uranium production by 11%
- overestimated the hydro-electricity production by 18%
Electricity generation
Table 2 compares ABARE’s 1991 projection of Australia’s 2004-05 electricity generation with the actual generation in 2004-05.
Points to note: ABARE’s 1991 projections of the electricity demand in 2004-05
- underestimated the electricity demand in 2004-05
- overestimated the amount by which energy efficiency improvements would reduce demand growth.
- underestimated the fossil fuel generated electricity by 12%
- overestimated hydro-electricity generation by 18%
Resource reserves
Table 3 compares our known economically recoverable energy resources in 1989 and 2009. This is not a comparison of ABARE’s projections but is interesting to see how our estimated energy resources have changed over that 20 year period.
Points to note:
- ABARE’s figures for known mineral and energy reserves in 1989 were based on reports by the Bureau of Mineral Resources (BMR) and Department of Primary Industries and Energy (DPIE). Now they come from Geoscience Australia (formerly BMR). ABARE does not undertake its own estimates of resource reserves, so are not accountable for errors.
- Over the intervening 20 years, our estimates of known economically recoverable resources have been revised. Coal has been revised down and oil, natural gas and uranium have been revised up by 39%, 220% and 145% respectively.
- Known uranium resources have increased by a factor of nearly 2.5 in 20 years and we’ve hardly even looked. There is little activity in uranium exploration being undertaken. Most of Australia is locked up against uranium exploration.
CO2 emissions
Table 4 compares ABARE’s 1991 projection with the actual CO2 emissions from Australian energy consumption for the year 2004-05. ABARE’s 1991 projection of 379 Mt is for the ‘Business as Usual’ (BAU) case. ABARE also defined what we’d have to do to achieve the government’s target (20% below 1988 levels by 2005) and what would be needed to achieve a ‘half way’ target.
Points to note:
- ABARE underestimated by 4% (based on BAU). This is excellent given the state of knowledge 20 years ago.
- The government set an extremely low target but made it impossible to achieve by banning nuclear power from being an option. Nuclear was not even to be considered in analyses by government departments.
- There was strong pressure by the green lobby groups at the time to set lower targets and for governments to mandate stringent regulations for energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy, but no nuclear.
- The same groups are still advocating the same failed policies now.
- Some people never learn!
See Attachment 1, an extract from the 1991 ABARE report. It is fascinating to be reminded how much we knew, the policies, the CO2 emissions reduction targets, and the realities. It demonstrates little has changed in 20 years.
Conclusions
ABARE’s projections are good. I am not aware of any organisation that has made consistently better forecasts of Australia’s energy demand and supply.
I believe the consistently optimistic pressure from green advocacy groups, pushing for projections that align with their beliefs of what governments should do, influenced ABARE to underestimate energy demand, underestimate fossil fuel demand, overestimate renewable energy contribution and over-estimate how much energy efficiency improvement can be achieved over the projection period.
References
[1] ABARE (1991) Projections of Energy Demand and Supply; Australia 1990-91 to 2004-05, ISBN: 0 664 13716 9
[2] ABARE (2006) energy update
http://www.abare.gov.au/publications_html/energy/energy_06/energyupdate_06.pdf
[3] ABARE (2006), Australian energy: national and state projections to 2029-30
http://www.abare.gov.au/publications_html/energy/energy_06/nrg_projections06.pdf
[4] ABARE (2007), Table A Update 07, Table A1 Australian energy supply and disposal, 2004-05 – energy units,
http://www.abare.gov.au/interactive/energy_july07/excel/Table_A_update_07.xls
[5] ABARE (2009), Energy in Australia 2009
http://www.abareconomics.com/publications_html/energy/energy_09/auEnergy09.pdf
[6] ABARE (2010), Energy in Australia 2010
http://www.abare.gov.au/publications_html/energy/energy_10/energyAUS2010.pdf
Attachment 1
(Download the 8-page PDF of the ABARE extract here)
Extract from: ABARE (1991)
Projections of Energy Demand and Supply: 1990-91 to 2004-05, pp 31-37.
“4. Greenhouse gas reduction: an illustrative scenario”
Here I attach a chapter “Greenhouse gas reductions: an illustrative scenario” extracted from the 1991 ABARE report. It makes fascinating reading. It shows:
1. how much we knew back then;
2. how little has changed;
3. we knew the targets were impossible given the policies being advocated;
4. we knew that renewable energy and energy efficiency could not make significant improvement over and above what was already included in the Business as Usual (BAU) projections;
5. we knew then that if we wanted to really cut GHG emissions we had to go nuclear.
But politics dictated nuclear could not be on the agenda. The reason was Labor needed the Green vote to hold onto power.
Many conclude the Greens have been the cause of the delay all along!!
Brave New Climate 
229 replies on “Accuracy of ABARE Energy Projections”
Don’t miss Attachment 1; it is an extract from the 1991 ABARE report concerning the projections of CO2 emissions from energy consumption.
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Hi Peter,
I never rejected ABARE’s demand estimations for various energy types. I agree with everything you say about needing rational energy policies moving forward. My main concern has been their price estimates of oil in particular.
I think they were misled by certain Middle Eastern countries that oil supply was guaranteed for decades to come.
My main concern was for their price estimates. Price = interactions between supply and demand. The head of ABARE reported to the Senate Committee on peak oil that he had not bothered to factor in peak oil when considering price!
I didn’t know one could work out the price without considering supply of a product. ;-) That’s “Dog ate my homework” material!
Until such time as I see ABARE engaging the majority of peer-reviewed oil reports circulating in the peak oil discussion, I cannot and will not respect their opinion on oil price forecasts.
I cannot understand how they think Australia’s oil reserves have *increased* by 39% when we passed our peak of production in 2000 and are now producing under half what we produced back then. Are we about to see a massive increase in domestic production or something? A ‘second peak’? Is this based on REAL technological improvement leading to reserve growth, or wishful thinking like so much oil related data?
Otherwise, I agree with you that their energy demand projections are probably reliable, and they may even be reliable in other resource sectors where supply and demand issues are more transparent.
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Have I missed something? Martin Nicholson said ABARE recently claimed Australia’s energy use was 3,915 PJ a year https://bravenewclimate.com/2010/07/14/zca2020/#comment-82801
From the above table excluding all uranium and LPG as exports and half the black coal gives more like 7,600 PJ in 2005.
If we had a confirmed current figure we could assume say 2.5% annual demand growth to get ‘aspired’ future energy use in n years time. For example 1.025^20 = 1.64 or 64% more than now except there will be virtually no cheap fossil fuels left by 2030. Forget efficiency it will be hard finding enough primary energy sources.
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How does that ABARE graph track with the graph at the top of ASPO Australia’s page? It shows the rate of decline in Australian oil production.
It seems to me that ABARE have been smoking some whacky tobaccy.
http://www.aspo-australia.org.au/introduction/oil-production-decline.html
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Whoops LPG is mainly an oil refining byproduct that stays here. Maybe subtract another 400 PJ of the gas figure that was exported as LNG.
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Understanding of Attachment 1 should be essential prior knowledge for those wishing to enter the renewables debate. It is amazing how careful, fact-based, reviewed formal report writing such as this example from ABARE can provide very high quality, lasting insights into issues.
Many thanks, Peter.
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Hi John,
sure, but what do you make of their oil figures?
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@ eclipsenow, on 22 August 2010 at 15.49:
ABARE have runs on the board, as demonstrated by Peter’s article.
Perhaps, Eclise, you should refer your question to your selected site, the one with the name which indicates its bias.
As Peter stated, ABARE adopts production and reserve figures from Geoscience Australia and do not acquire them via the smoke of “wacky tobacco” as you so unkindly suggested.
If, after response from ASPO’s authors has been obtained and after you have also obtained corresponding data from Geoscience Australia, you might choose to enlighten us all.
Meanwhile, I choose to stick with the expert opinion.
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@eclipsenow
I reckon you’re barking up the wrong tree being hypercritical of oil price forecasts. To be sure, supply and demand interact in price formation, but that is highly mediated by speculation in the futures markets.
We saw a classic speculative bubble not only in oil but also in things like ag chemicals. If you don’t believe me go and have a look at price charts of stocks like POT, MOS in Nth America and Incitec in Australia. This speculative activity was ultimately fueled by debt and the house of cards came tumbling down.
These speculative bubbles are notoriously difficult forecast years ahead and the prices reached are both unsustainable and reflect the demand for and supply of futures contracts as much as real economic demand for and supply of the underlying physical commodity.
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Eclipsenow,
I think the problem is you’ve been reading and accepting sensationalist, junk media like Crickey. Crickey is basically a politically biased web site, so why would you take any notice of it?
As I said in my previous posts on other threads on this matter, ABARE’s primary function is not about forecasting prices. It gets this information from others and the only purpose is to help with its demand and consumption forecasts. And no one is good at forecasting long term prices well. Just look at all the forecasts of renewable energy that have been made over the same time by various organisation for comparison. And who forecast the 1970’s oil price shocks or the GFC.
So, if you are using price forecasts as your basis for criticising ABARE, then that is your problem. I am not interested. It is just a beat up.
If you know an authoritative organisations that has done better forecasting then I suggest you need to post and argue the case, not simply make unsubstantiated statements that ABARE is biased and incompetent.
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John Newlands,
Can I suggest you read the references to understand. You are confusing production and domestic consumption. Production includes exports. It is all included in the ABARE reports. It can’t all be covered i=on the blog site, so if you have questions or comments, you really do need to go to the source document and understand
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ABARE or APPEA, who actually understand oil geology?
Warning: this was written 5 years ago
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/5213
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@ eclipsenow, on 22 August 2010 at 15.57:
See P 357 onwards of Peter’s linked reference to the ABARE quarterly. It is not 5 years old and they have no partisan axe to grind.
Oil and gas production and consumption and export in Australia are all trending upwards, not down. Please try to keep up with the game.
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@eclipsenow, on 22 August 2010 at 16.20
Again, you are parrotting old information from a partisan source.
The current trends are up, not down. I agree, this cannot go on for ever and is not ideal, but it is indisputable that those who state otherwise are incorrect and those who forecast that this could not be so are not only wrong, but are also poorer forecasters than ABARE.
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Two jobs for later; reconciling upbeat ABARE with downbeat EIA
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/Australia/Oil.html
and reconciling ABARE with ABARE. Right now I’m going to watch the desal doco on SBS.
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How about Geoscience Australia?
This blog by Engineer, Matt Mushalik.
http://www.crudeoilpeak.com/?p=1243
Graphic from Geoscience data.
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@John Bennetts, on 22 August 2010 at 16.40 said;
“The current trends are up, not down”;
BP data shows 2000 as the peak production year for oil in Australia, with 2009 being 30% below the peak and the last four years as being below the lowest of the preceding 20 years.
Source;
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/reports_and_publications/statistical_energy_review_2008/STAGING/local_assets/2010_downloads/Statistical_Review_of_World_Energy_2010.xls
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@ eclipsenow:
Why do you bother posting two more bits and pieces from single-purpose, biased sites such as “Peak Oil Whatever”? There is nothing to gain from discussing filtered, cherry-picked chunks which are devoid of context.
How about tracking back to the original documents from Geoscience Australia or whatever? This gives at least some assurance that these references are complete and not fiddled with. Maybe we can discuss them.
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Excellent piece Peter.
Agree that ABARE remains the best source we have for supply/consumption data, despite valid criticisms over their approach from to to time – it is populated by members of the “dismal science” after all. And anyway, ABARE is in the business of making projections, not predictions.
One only has to look at the American RE guru, Amory Lovins, for how poorly RE advocates routinely get their predictions wrong and badly misjudge the inertia in energy systems. In 1976, Lovins suggested that biofuels would be capable of powering the entire US transport sector (sound familiar) – this would have to be one of the most profoundly misguided positions taken by environmentalists.
He also suggested that solar and wind would make up a substantial proportion of the US energy supply (also sound familiar).
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=676
Needless to say, he’s still promoting his “soft energy” path to those willing to listen:
http://www.rmi.org/Default.aspx?Id=1048&Cat1=Best+of+Amory+Lovins&Cat2=Best+of+Amory+Lovins&CatType=sharepoint
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Sorry, I don’t think in PJ’s but in barrels. Anyone know what ABARE says Australia has in barrels? 19.5 PJ is elusive: I want to know about how we’re going to meet close to 1mbd Aussie demand when this has already happened… (EIA from ABARE and APPEA data).
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/Australia/Full.html
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But hey, they didn’t think of including peak oil in their pricing forecasts. Just makes you all warm and fuzzy inside.
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Eclipsenow:
Barrels are a unit of volume. Joules relate to energy.
Some barrels contain much less energy than others (eg heavy oils Vs light oils)
Americans measure gas reserves in cubic feet. Interesting, this excludes considerations such as the volume of CO2 bound up in the gas. Again, Aussies tend to report in terms of joules or petejoules.
Go figure. Use Google or Wikipedia or something, but please avoid repeatedly displaying your ignorance on this site. It is getting quite tedious.
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Eclipsenow,
The problem is that you are looking at junk sites that have a bias. You are reading junk and swallowing their story.
Regarding comparisons between EIA and ABARE, EIA and IEA get their info from ABARE. Australian Government organisations such as Australian Bureau of Statistics, Treasury, Productivity Commission and the other departments get their projections from ABARE. ABARE is the Australian government organisation that provides these statistics and projections.
You would need to look carefully to see exactly what EIA is showing if it appears on the surface to be different to what ABARE is showing. You would be aware that there is a mass more data in the database and it will be presented in different ways to meet different purposes. So you need to dig down into the data and understand what is being shown and be sure you are comparing apples and apples.
You will alos find that different organisations use different conversion factors. For example the BP energy statistics convert everything to oil equivalent. This gives some really weird results when comparing hydro and electricity generation. So you need to be really careful when comparing data. If you look superficially at charts, any conclusions you draw can be misleading to completely meaningless.
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Well, I agree that energy reporting is tricky and that people can convert various products into one neat label that maybe shouldn’t be there. (Hydro into OEE! Are you kidding me? Wow – what where they trying to prove?!)
Anyway, this is what my engineering mate says about ABARE and accuses them of *almost* doing the same thing with the various liquid fuels.
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Eclipsenow,
I suggest you start by reading the references I linked in the article.
Here is the link to the BP energy stats: http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6929&contentId=7044622
I am sure you would understand you have to do some homework to find out what is authoritative, what data is being presented, what is included and what is excluded from each catagory, how is the data grouped, etc. If you don’t group correctly and compare like with like, the conclusions you might draw are meaningless.
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@ Peter Lang, on 22 August 2010 at 22.38 Said:
Eclipsenow,
I suggest you start by reading the references I linked in the article.
Here is the link to the BP energy stats: http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6929&contentId=7044622;
BP data shows 2000 as the peak production year for oil in Australia, with 2009 being 30% below the peak and the last four years as being below the lowest of the preceding 20 years.
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Eclipsenow,
I’ll illustrate my point with an example that should be familiar.
Supposing I ask you how much energy do you use? How would you answer me? Which of the following would you include and how would you group the items onto categories?
electricity used in your house
[separated into off-peak and regular?)
gas
wood
petrol
energy in food
energy embedded in supplying your water
energy embedded in the consumer products you buy
energy embedded in the services you use
energy embedded in the house you live in
energy embedded in the roads you travel
So what does it mean if I ask you how much energy you use?
I’ve provided this to emphasise the point that you do have to do some work to ensure you are comparing like with like.
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On checking ABARE’s Energy in Australia 2008 I find it is roughly consistent with domestic energy consumption of 3800 PJ/yr used in the ZCA critique. Allowing for time shifts and comparing with Table 1 above it suggests Australia exports 75% or so of its ‘produced’ energy.
This site http://www.abare.gov.au/interactive/09ac_sept/htm/oil.htm says Australian oil production will decline in 2010. I think the telltale statistic will be the percentage of medium density oil imported in the coming years. As in how to replace it.
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@ John Newlands, on 23 August 2010 at 6.35;
Looking at the latest ABARE Mineral Statistics http://abare.gov.au/publications_html/ams/ams_10/ams_june10.pdf it is possible to sum the last 4 quarters of (Production + Imports – Exports) of diesel to show Australia imports 42% of all the diesel consumed,
at a value of $12.5 billion/year.
Ten years previously, at peak production, it was importing only 11.3% of its diesel consumption, at a cost of $4.0 billion/year.
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John Newlands,
Yes, and if you actually read the ABARE reports instead of reading one section out of context, you will have a much better understanding of what you are talking about. Likewise with the ACIL-Tasman report I’ve pointed you to read a dozen times, but you still never read.
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Mercury,
It might be an appropriate time to point out the effect of government interventions and taxes. The government in the early 1990s imposed the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT). This effectively stopped wild cat drilling for oil exploration. So new discoveries slowed. This is part of the reason our oil production is heading for decline.
I make this point to highlight that the actions we ask our governments to impose have unintended consequences.
By the way, I am not argjing about whether the world is close to or has passed “peak oil”. Nor am I arguing that we should not have the PRRT. I am just pointing out that many people argue inconsistent positions. They complain that our indigenous oil production is in decline and at the same time argue for taxes that effectively stop exploration. The same is the case with the new taxes on mining. Those advocating it have next to zero understanding of the consequences. Apart from the direct effect on the mining industry and down stream jobs, and trhe economy, what these new taxes do is provide more funds to support pork barrelling at elections and more support for the ‘nanny state’. At this election, the government was handing out billions of dollars marginal electorates from future mining taxes before the legislation has even been passed.
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A corollary of Australia exporting 75% of its fuels is that maybe we don’t need to worry about oil imports since we can pay for it with coal, LNG and yellowcake. However I think that is not a good idea. Firstly we should plan to phase out coal exports to help wean other countries out of emissions dependent energy. See if they can get reliable and suitable coal somewhere else. Secondly some kind of bottleneck could arise so even if we are in energy trade credit the oil can’t get to us in time. A recent expert group Automotive Australia 2020 recommended natural gas and electric vehicles. I think we should prepare now in case high oil prices come out of nowhere as in 2008 but this time stay high.
@Peter I’ve had ACIL Tasman’s new NEM generation costs report downloaded for some time. While domestic coal and gas prices are a commercial secret I think their future fuel costs could be on the low side. If export demand drives up spot prices for coal and LNG by x% then we might expect new contracts for local coal and piped gas to go up x%. Fuel costs need to be reviewed a couple of years from now.
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Hi Peter and John,
I think we are talking at cross-purposes here, and it is largely my fault for starting off on the wrong footing. You’re recommending trusting ABARE’s models for energy demand, and also discussing some of their reliability in projecting Australia’s own energy supply. I started off on a bad note questioning their reserve growth figures*. I’m suffering a ‘once-bitten, twice shy’ approach to ABARE from a completely different area to the one you are both presenting.
As I understand it, ABARE are the agency that not only measure and quantify all reports coming in about Australia’s resources, but also present price estimates and recommendations about oil and other global resources. So while they might not compile the global resource base data themselves, they are the ones reading other agencies and meant to be advising government of any impending resource price spikes that might affect our marketplace. So it’s not necessarily ABARE’s fault if that global oil database is corrupt, but it is their fault if they’re not even asking the pertinent questions of the global oil supply chain in the first place!
Forget my “Energy Bulletin” and Matt Mushalik quotes above then. Let’s go straight to video footage of ABARE’s former head being interviewed by the Federal Senate inquiry into peak oil.
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2006/s1683060.htm
*Back to Australian oil resources. Where do ABARE get their data? Do they compile it and report it from other agencies, like Geoscience Australia and APPEA? If so, what ‘economic games’ have the heads of ABARE played on the data. Is this their estimated oil resource or oil reserves? Did the economists tinker with it on the basis of P5 , P50, or P95 reserves? Without knowing the Probability factors, ‘PJ’ can be just as ambiguous a term as ‘barrels’ in this case. What sectors of the marketplace are these fuels servicing, and how much will it go towards actually decreasing the oil Australia imports? So I completely agree when John writes:
Ultimately, after ABARE’s embarrassing failures in front of the Senate Committee, what is ABARE’s response to an increasing consensus of independent geologists around the world that global peak oil is imminent? I’m sorry Peter, but in this particular regard they’ve completely lost my trust.
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1. Re Peak Oil. I agree that Australia’s peak production of oil (as against gas) is past its peak. The stats for this as published by ABARE are probably more consistent and authoritative and available publicly than from other sources, even if there is room for challenge.
2. Re price, ABARE may have a poor predictive record, but so do the commodity markets on which their prices are, at least in part, based. The price of crude is able to be gamed by large producers, for com mercial and/or political reasons, eg the decision a couple of years back by the middle eastern producers to cut back production, which resulted in a rise which is still with us. Your bet is as good as mine, but remember that this is not a perfect market where supply and demand and cost of production and shared knowledge and all those lovely assumptions about the marketplace which are part of Economics 101 apply. This is a cartel marketplace with significant gaming going on at the production level and even more gaming happening in the market via advance and short selling, etc, and that is even before we have governments, refiners, distributors and retailers playing their parts.
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Eclipsenow,
You say:
Why do you assume that Australia’s peak authority on these matters is “not even asking the pertinent questions of the global oil supply chain in the first place”?
Don’t you think this statement is a bit naive? Of course they are researching all the available data, weighing it and making informed judgements on the information available. This is what they do year after year. Do you really think Crickey journos, others with an axe to grind are a more reliable source of info.
I have my own beefs with ABARE as I do with all organisations. My beef with ABARE is that it sometimes succumbs to political pressure, as it did with the late changes and late release of the 2020 energy report. There was a clear political influence went into that report, and that is the first time it has happened in 20 years. I am really disappointed by that, but we should blame the government for that not ABARE.
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1. Re Peak Oil. I agree that Australia’s peak production of oil (as against gas) is past its peak. The stats for this as published by ABARE are probably more consistent and authoritative and available publicly than from other sources, even if there is room for challenge.
2. Re price, ABARE may have a poor predictive record, but so do the commodity markets on which their prices are, at least in part, based. The price of crude is able to be gamed by large producers, for commercial and/or political reasons, eg the decision a couple of years back by the middle eastern producers to cut back production, which resulted in a rise which is still with us. Your bet is as good as mine, but remember that this is not a perfect market where supply and demand and cost of production and shared knowledge and all those lovely assumptions about the marketplace which are part of Economics 101 apply. This is a cartel marketplace with significant gaming going on at the production level and even more gaming happening in the market via advance and short selling, etc, and that is even before we have governments, refiners, distributors and retailers playing their parts.
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Eclipsenow:
You say:
and you say:
I’d suggest you read the reports so you understand where they get their information. To decide you don’t trust them on the basis of the partisan opinions you are reading, and your total lack of understanding of any of the material, is not much better than placing your trust in the opinion of a taxi driver or the guy you met in the pub, instead of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Sorry eclipsenow, you have demonstrated your opinion on this is based on nothing more than belief. Making decisions based on strongly held, but unfounded beliefs is exactly what causes us to make so many bad decisions.
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Thanks Peter Lang for initiating what is turning out to be another stimulating discussion. Good to see also limited attacks on the other person’s view. Perhaps we are becoming more tolerant. That’s a good thing. Keep it up everyone.On the RE matter, we should note that after spending billions on renewables researc the Americans finally gave up on sun and wind [I think currently at 0.6% of their energy total] and noted that those two were never going to provide more than a small fraction of their energy needs. Something like 240 energy scientists/experts signed off on this. They have been proved right. Yet we persist with spending billions on these and other yet to be commercialized technologies. And we have the Greens making outrageous claims about Australia having 100% solar thermal within 10 years. I repeat, in the time we would appear to have the world must mostly replace the fossil fuel energy generation with the only alternative viz NUCLEAR. I’m about to contact the very important Independents in our next parliament in the hope that they may be able to help get nuclear into the energy debate. How about some of you joining me? Write to Tony Windsor, Bob Katter and Bob? Oakeshot and try them.
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Peter Lang, on 23 August 2010 at 8.53 Said:
The government in the early 1990s imposed the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT). This effectively stopped wild cat drilling for oil exploration. So new discoveries slowed. This is part of the reason our oil production is heading for decline.
However, you can’t find what is not there and no amount of wildcatting or any other money wasting effort is going to change that. Also, this is ABARE we are talking about (an org. which believes that even roosters will lay eggs, at the right price), that has forecast increases in oil production regularly since 2000, but which have never materialised.
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This thread is a mind blowing for me given that my understanding of Australia is limited. Taking the information at face value a number of conclusions occur to me. I will number them so you folks who really understand can set me straight:
1. Australia’s number one primary energy production is black coal (at least up to 2007) and Uranium is #2.
2. In spite of the huge amount of uranium produced, Australia does not have a single commercial Nuclear Power Plant.
3. The energy reserves of Australia are dominated by Uranium and the estimates keep rising, a sure sign that there is plenty more that has not been found yet.
I could go on but are the above statements accurate?
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Yes gallopingcamel, all 3 statements are quite correct. I should note that with breeder reactors, point 3 would actually be true of most countries! For Oz, it’s true even with only thermal reactors.
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gallopingcamel,
Yes. You’ve got all that correct so far. Spot on. HD. Keep going.
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Mercury,
Can you please substantiate your statements so I can see what you are talking about. At the moment you statements look more like data cherry-picking to support a preconceived idea than a balanced critique.
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Peter Lang said:
And…
Read the 4 Corners quote again, slowly. Or better yet, watch the whole peak oil report by 4 Corners. The head of ABARE, with his own lips flapping and his own embarrassed grin giving him away, said that he had not considered peak oil when making price forecasts. I saw it with my own eyes, right there, on the TV. The head of ABARE with his pants down in front of the nation. I don’t need complicated resource charts or source documents for this one Peter, that’s disingenuous. There is absolutely no need to say I’m relying on “partisan opinions that I’m reading”. I saw it with my own eyes!
And the fact that he could be so relaxed about this stuff up, and joke around about the different categories of oil, makes me quite nervous about the credibility of their oil reporting.
Mercury’s quote on the ‘even roosters will lay eggs’ comment also come from the 4 Corners link I provided above, which you have obviously declined to read.
If there are any graphs to be studied here, I suggest you go and brush up on global oil reserves. You have the skills to understand this stuff far better than I do. If you spent a few weeks answering the following questions, I’m sure it would add fresh urgency to your nuclear campaign.
1. In which decade did we discover the most oil?
2. How has the discovery of conventional oil been going since then?
Keep in mind that oil is probably only 2nd to the military in terms of the money and technology available to their enterprise. Big oil have BILLIONS at their disposal for the latest discovery technologies.
3. What is the ratio of discovery to consumption? Are we discovering more than we use, or less? How good or ‘bad’ is the ratio?
4. How long has the trend been in this direction?
5. How many oil producing countries have already peaked and are in irreversible decline? What are their decline rates?
6. Which countries are still able increase production and have not reached their all time historical peak??
Is there an ‘international oil cop’ with a giant dipstick that can actually check what is on the books of various oil blocks? Who reports to who? What is the chain of command down which the oil data has to travel in the non-OPEC western world?
How do we know whether OPEC oil reports are legitimate? Who do they report to? Who can audit their books? Does the western world get access to their fields to verify if their books have real barrels on them or just ‘paper barrels’?
9. If domestic consumption of oil exporting nations rises too fast (because of a booming domestic economy), how quickly can domestic consumption outpace their ability to export post peak? (Hint: there are historical precedents — google “Export Land Model”).
10. If those few exporting nations that are left suddenly DO decide to keep the oil for their own economies, how relevant is a global depletion rate of 5% per annum if the OIL MARKET has collapsed because hardly any nations are selling?
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Export retention could apply to our yellowcake as well as OPEC oil. If we had say 20 Gen III reactors plus a local enrichment industry we might not export that much. If I recall the Switkowski report said we’d take 50% for ourselves.
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Eclipsenow,
You say:
You may take that sort of media hype as gospel truth. I don’t. I have no interest in wasting time on that sort of selective reporting and media beat up. All you need to do is watch anything the ABC reports to see how they have a bias and report selectively to try to convince the public to accept their bias, whether it is based on fact or not. That is the problem we have when people are not sufficiently discerning about what they are being fed by the media.
Instead of me reading that nonsense, I’d suggest you read the ABARE reports, because so far you have displayed next to no understanding of the subject matter and haven’t even read the reports you are criticising as being incompetent, biased and not supporting your beliefs.
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@ John Newlands:
I haven’t done the maths, but there are about 1000 nuclear reactors being built or running in the world. Another 20 Type III+ for Australia will not alter the strategic situation at all. Even the existing few breeder type reactors could expand the resource sufficiently to change the topography, let alone the planned additions.
My guess is that Switkowski put this into the report just to turn away silly questions.
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John Newlands,
The amount of uranium is effectively unlimited. If we want more, we explore for more.
You advocate “Export retention”? Is there no end to your belief that governments and bureaucrats are best able to make all these miriad decisions about controlling resources and prices and what should and shouldn’t be used to generate power? Is there no end to your belief that the state should contol everything in our lives? Why do you think bureaucrats can make better decisions than individuals can?
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Peter Lang, on 23 August 2010 at 13.09 Said:
Mercury,
Can you please substantiate your statements so I can see what you are talking about. At the moment you statements look more like data cherry-picking to support a preconceived idea than a balanced critique.
Please be more specific Peter. Which statements of mine are you referring to?
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John Newlands,
You have continually advocated more state inteventions and more state controls to implement what you believe in. You want a price on carbon and you want to cut back coal exports as two examples.
Cutting back on coal exports is a case of Australia telling other countries what they should and should not do. It is consistent with your advocacy of more state control in Australia (more ‘nanny state’). But if we cut off energy exports or raise the price unfairly it has lots of bad effects, both within Australia and also with our international relations. You’d recall the US blocking Japans access to oil was a mjor cause of world war.
There is an alternative to putting a price on carbon. A much better alternative in my opinion. That is to remove all the impediments to low cost clean electricity.
Here are examples of impediments we should remove.
The sort of impediments and regulatory distortions to the market that are blocking nuclear in Australia are:
1. ban on nuclear power
2. high investor risk premium because of the politics
3. Renewable Energy Targets
4. Renewable Energy Certificates
5. Feed in Tariffs for renewables
6. Subsidies and tax advantages for renewable energy
7. Subsidies and tax advantages for fossil fuel electricity generators
8. subsidies for transmission and grid enhancements to support renewable energy
9. massive funding for research into renewable energy
10. massive subsidies for research into carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)
11. Guarantees that the government will carry the risk for any leakage from CCS
12. No equivalent guarantee for management of once used nuclear fuel
13. Massive subsidies and government facilitation for the gas industry, coal seam gas and coal to gas industries (despite the latter putting toxic chemicals into the ground water and the Great Artesian Basin water)
14. Fast tracking of the approvals process for wind power, solar power, gas industry, coal industry while nuclear industry remains band from even fair comparative studies by Treasury, Productivity Commission, ABARE, Department of Climate change and more. We can just imagine what the approvals process would be like for a nuclear power plant!!
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Peter,
that’s a ‘fingers in my ears, don’t want to know’ reply if ever I read one. It’s called Denial, or cognitive dissonance. Your faith in the group is shaken by some inconvenient truths.
Until you have answers to the questions I put to you on the world oil supply, I can’t engage you further on this conversation. You’re simply in denial.
If the ABC held a doco on the wonders of GenIV reactors, you’d be all over it, quoting it to everyone. You JUST DON’T WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE WHAT THE HEAD OF ABARE SAID!
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Sorry eclipsenow,
If you want to believe selective, partisan reports and cherry picked data that is your business. I am not interested in wasting time on this sort of nonsense. I think the report above has clearly shown that you are completely wrong with your assertions and are trying to defend your previous statements. There is no point me wading through piles of nonsense that you want to refer me to when you are at the position that you can’t accept that you have made a mistake. You were wrong!
You chose not to read the ABARE reports but just throw mud at them. That is denial. That is the display of cognitive dissonance.
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*You were wrong!*
In which regard? Do you even know what I’m criticising? One minute you’re like a High School science teacher asking me to convert wood energy to oil equivalent energy, or something equally irrelevant.
What has that got to do with global peak oil? In which exact area do you think I’m actually criticising ABARE? Please… prove that I’m wrong. Show me the ABARE world peak oil report. I’d love to be wrong!
Please. I’d love to know that the Senate Enquiry just caught Dr Fisher on a bad day, and he simply ‘forgot’ that there was actually an ABARE global peak oil report. Show me where they have spelt out the implications of various peak oil scenarios. I’d love to know that ABARE’s ignorance of peak oil was actually some nightmare of my own paranoia. Please, show me…
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Peter,
You’re asking me to dive into an ABARE report and ‘just believe it’ from its own terms of reference when I have larger meta-narrative questions about where ABARE fits in reporting WORLD energy issues, and its failure to do so when reporting to the Australian government on world oil price trends.
Otherwise, I have already said that I respect their projections of Australian energy demand.
But their SUPPLY SUCKS! What are they using… P50’s? Even a cursory investigation into my Top 10 peak oil questions raises issues that the precautionary principle would demand we only use P95’s. As the Senate Committee says of ABARE:
When it comes to liquid fuel resources, I’m sticking with Geoscience Australia and maybe APPEA. ABARE’s had their modelling pickled by the economists!
Oh, and I’m *SURE* this bipartisan, multiparty Senate Enquiry is just a “selective, partisan report”
http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/rrat_ctte/completed_inquiries/2004-07/oil_supply/report/c02.htm
In the meantime, try APPEA’s take on our oil situation:
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Thought I’d check if Gorgon, Australia’s largest resource project (starting 2014) would produce a liquid fuel by-product. That is liquid at standard temperature and pressure. It seems not as they expect only 20,000 barrels of condensate per day along with the 2.6 bn c.f. of natural gas.
http://www.chevron.com/countries/australia/businessportfolio/
I think oil depletion is a more pressing problem near term than climate change and the current modest price of oil is giving a false signal. We’ll know soon enough.
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So by that I take it you’re agreeing that ABARE = good on the energy demand projections, but not so good on the oil price projections?
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John Bennets, just to get the facts straight, I think you’ll find that there are currently around 440 reactors generating 16% of the world’s electricity and a further 54 under construction worldwide with 24 of those being built in China.
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@eclipsenow:
How old are you? I know that this site is not meant to be a conduit for personal attacks, however you have shown no cognitive distinction between polite discussion and a dummy-spitting rant.
Further, either you have not read or do not understand the fairly basic reference documents to which your attention was drawn.
A word of advice is in order. Those who you are attacking are experienced, well-read and serious about the issues of global warming and energy production, especially electrical power production. If you wish to change their opinions, you will need to demonstrate which facts are not in accordance with their world views.
If, however, you come without facts or choose to rely on excerpts from media reports or partisan publications, then what you have to say is incapable of being seriously considered. It will change nobody’s opinion, let alone their world view.
YOUR FUTURE ON THIS SITE
Remember, this is not my site. I am not threatening you with banishment.
However, your “voice” grows weaker each time you repeat unfounded nonsense. Less and less actual communication will be possible.
So, in the expectation that you actually wish to enlighten us about some things and are open to intellectual challenge and to incorporate new facts into your world view, I ask you to please reason and debate from the basis of verifiable facts. Give this discussion thread the respect which you expect, by relying on facts, not biased, unverifiable opinion.
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Terry, thanks. Yep, a few facts are useful. Plus or minus 20 generators will still not affect the strategic situation.
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John Bennetts obviously doesn’t like Senate Committee reports discussing the difference in focus between various government agencies.
Tactics used: diversion and insults.
(yawns)
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Eclipsenow,
you say:
Eclipse now you say you have larger questions. I say, no, that is not what is going on. You have not read the material you are accusing of being rubbish, you don’t understand it, you don’t understand the material you are quoting, and you want me to waste many fruitless hoursd trying to explain it to you. I’ve explained sufficient in previous posts to make it clear to you that you don’t have sufficient understanding of the subject matter to be making assertions about accuracy. You need to go into the detail before you start trying to assert that something is nonsense. I am satisfied that ABARE’s projections are the most reliable we have available. So is Treasury, ABS and the various other organisations that have to make policy decisions based on our energy projections. But you’d rather believe the sorts of nonsense, emotive journalism that have been promoting renewable energy as our saviour for the past 3 decades.
You don’t seem to get what I am saying. I say you need to do the homework to understand what you are talking about before spewing forth that ABARE is nonsense. You need to demonstrate, with a careful comparitive study, who has done better than ABARE – consistently. Otherwise just admit you cannot substantiate your assertions and withdraw them.
This all started because you made statements you’d concluded from junk web sites you’d been reading. I have demonstrated your statements were baseless. Now you are trying to find some way to deflect attention from that.
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Peter,
did you even read my 2 posts to you?
“But you’d rather believe the sorts of nonsense, emotive journalism that have been promoting renewable energy as our saviour for the past 3 decades.”
“from junk web sites you’d been reading”
If that’s your view of your Federal Senate’s ability to report on the nature of various sub-agencies responsible to the Australian government, then we are in an even worse situation that I first thought.
How you doing on the Top 10 peak oil questions I sent you?
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One of the points I made in the article above was how much we knew 20 years ago and how little has changed in that time regarding our CO2 emissions and what we could do to reduce them.
I thought it interesting that 45 years ago we knew the solar system was 4.5 billion years old. I notice it is now understood to be 4.5682 billion years old. Not much change in our understanding of the age of the universe in the past 45 years. Source attributed toNature Geoscience.
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Eclipsenow
How are you doing on reading, for the first time, the ABARE material you call crap?
There is no point me reading or discussing your peak oil questions. The discussion would go nowhere. You don’t understand what you are talking about. The article at the top of this thread shows you are wrong. You have demonstrated you can’t admint it. There is no point going onto something else.
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Now you’re using the ‘insult and divert’ to back away from the most pertinent questions.
Tell me Peter, which bit of the ABARE report am I reading again? Which particular paragraph covers world peak oil? I’ll get straight to it if you just tell me where…
Again, I’m NOT QUESTIONING THEIR ENERGY DEMAND SCENARIOS!!!! So can you please stop saying you’ve “proved” anything at all about my main criticism when your precious article doesn’t even COVER IT!
Here’s another quote from a “junk article” of some relevance to this discussion. I’m quoting you!
Gee, how interesting, YOUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT says pretty much the same thing: that ABARE not only gets its data from Geoscience Australia, but it then tarts it up a bit!
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
2.47 ABARE expects that Australia’s crude oil and condensate production will remain steady at over 1,000 petajoules per year (about 466,000 barrels per day[54]) to 2029-30. This would means Australia’s net self-sufficiency in petroleum products falls to about 50 per cent by 2029-30. This is rather more than Geoscience Australia’s estimate.[55]
This is because ABARE, unlike GA, makes an estimate of prospective production from resources that have not yet been discovered in basins that have not yet been fully explored, based on the resource estimates of USGS 2000. This includes modelling economic variables which are not within GA’s brief.[56]
That sounds like P50 farting around with the data to me!
FAIL!
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Take a look at the August 13 2010 issue of Science. The issue contains a Special Section: Scaling Up Alternate Energy which basically assumes that the solution to climate change is “clean renewables”. Nuclear gets a few mentions, but for instance – the lead editorial “Beyond Petroleum”, written by Donald Kennedy, Editor Emeritus of Science, does not contain so much as a single mention of the word “nuclear” or “carbon capture”. Coal and oil are called the “axis of evil”, and renewables are said to be what we need to “end the US national addiction”.
And on, ad nauseum, and on. There is substantial evidence that scientists do not generally support this “clean renewables” line eg. any number of high level statements such as the G8 +5 Academies Joint Statement http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/G8+5energy-climate09.pdf which calls for a “very rapid worldwide implementation of all currently available low carbon technologies”. Etc.
I put a post on The Energy Collective with more detail. http://theenergycollective.com/david-lewis/41986/science-mag-special-section-bleak-future-without-nukes-and-ccs
Perhaps scientists who subscribe to Science might take a look at that August 13 issue and send in their thoughts to the editor.
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Eclipsenow,
You don’t understand what you are talking about. There is no point continuing this.
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eclipsenow, you have gone out of your way to be aggressive to each of us who have tried to help you. You are a waste of time and space.
In the interests of CO2 reduction, please cease breathing.
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Peter, please note that I normally respect your writing, but resorted to this sarcasm out of frustration with your patronising tone to any source you don’t like, even Federal government sources that seem to me to have a higher status than ABARE.
But honestly guys, that’s just unfair. I’m an easy target, I’ve always admitted that. I’m an activist with background in the Social Sciences and welfare. Sadly that means I’m not very technical. Yet I am genuinely concerned for our energy security. It is out of that sense of *desperation* for our energy security that I became so frustrated above.
(The kids kept us up last night as well, so I’m not quite myself today).
I’m not a troll as I changed my tune on nuclear power didn’t I? We contributed a cool poster. I one day hope to do more.
I’ve been raving about this site all over the net, doing what I can within the limits of my ability.
So I’ll try and calm down. I really feel we’re talking at cross purposes. You’re saying ABARE is good at modelling the Australian scenario. Fine. Ignore the Federal government report.
But can you just help me find their gear on global peak oil? I genuinely can’t find it.
I downloaded Peter’s 13 page PDF which included no references to peak oil.
A week ago I used Google Site Search to find all references to “peak oil” or “oil peak” or just “peak” on ABARE’s site.
http://www.google.com/sitesearch/
I also searched through your reference PDF’s and spreadsheets.
The only ‘peaks’ that seem to come up in ABARE are to do with peak prices, peak demand, and on just a few occasions there was *some* discussion on peak oil and peak gas output from the Gippsland basin. That was it.
The head of ABARE told the Senate he simply didn’t consider it, as ‘no one told him to’.
So rather than telling me to search through all those ABARE documents a 3rd time, it would be really great if you could just point to where ABARE presents global peak oil.
It really grabs my attention when I can’t even find an Executive Summary from ABARE on global peak oil. So you can go ahead and attack my lack of technical expertise, but that’s simply not the issue.
If I have totally embarrassed myself here, and ABARE have covered global peak oil extensively, then I will gladly back down and apologise and grovel.
Can someone just *please* help me find their global peak oil scenarios? Please?
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eclipsenow, perhaps it would help, initially, if you explain to us briefly why you consider ‘peak oil’ to be such a critical issue, since this is the fulcrum that this argument seems to be leveraging on. Could you perhaps outline your case — the core arguments — in < 500 words, as to why you think the peak is imminent and the subsequent 'shark fin' (or similar) inevitable? I'm not sold on the urgency of the peak oil issue, so will be interested to engage in a friendly bit of 'Socratic debate' on this topic.
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For an example of my passionate, but rather technically limited, attempts to spread the BNC word out across the net, see here where I take on the Inhabitat solar city greenies.
It’s not much, but I’m trying.
http://inhabitat.com/2010/08/16/sonnenschiff-solar-city-produces-4x-the-energy-it-needs/
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So ABARE do not cover peak oil in the manner that you demand. So effin’ what? They try to do the job that they are paid for. This continuing sideshow is both tedious and fruitless.
Since your Googled research is now complete, what did you learn?
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Barry we don’t need a shark fin or sudden decline in liquid fuel production (either volume or net energy) merely a non-increase. The current economic system based on debt repayment requires ever increasing amounts of growth via energy input. Minor efficiency gains are swamped by population increase and middle class aspirations of the world’s poor. We have not prepared early enough to switch away from liquid fuels therefore substantial difficulties lie ahead.
Could the current economic stagnation in the US and Europe be attributed to the peaking of oil production? Some economists think so. Some predict the effects will soon flow on to China and India then Australia will export less coal and iron ore. Thus global economic activity will contract unless we find a way around dependence on oil.
The good/bad news about this theory is that it must show itself in the next 5 years or so as we fall off the 2005-2008 oil production plateau. That is to say if the world economy doesn’t contract as oil output declines then it can’t be as dire as we think.
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Seeing as you have bullied Dave into submission I will have one go at explaining the fallacy of Peter Lang’s position.
In a nutshell Peter is saying this. ABARE made some correct predictions therefore all their predictions must be correct.
It so happens that the predictions they got right were the quite simple growth models that almost anyone with a spreadsheet would have a good chance of getting correct. Where they have problems is where the growth or decline is outside normal economics and is hard to predict like oil prices.
Just because they got simple ones correct does not necessarily mean that all their predictions are correct. Only someone that has an unhealthy dependence on authority would try to assert that.
I’m the case of energy efficiency, where this started, abare, though quite accurate in other things, may be overly conservative in their estimation of possible energy efficiency gains just as they were inaccurate in predicting oil prices.
That’s it btw that’s all I said to start this rant on the qualities of ABARE. You accused me of not accepting abare’s figures because I don’t like them however is there a possibility that you cling so desperately to them because they tell you what you want to hear? We can both be guilty of such selective hearing. ABARE do have a very comforting message for conservatives.
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Hi all,
I apologise for my tone yesterday as I was over-tired and defensive.
I guess the best way to explain where I’m coming from is firstly to try and find any reference to global peak oil by ABARE, then to watch the peak oil episode from 4 Corners here. Grab a coffee and just watch it online. That is much more entertaining than just reading it.
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20060710/
Then have a crack at my “Peak oil Top 10” over the next few weeks and see how you go. (Most of these questions are answered in the 4 Corners special, but you will all no doubt want to do more research to confirm their claims. The more technical of you will be able to model this data far more efficiently than I can, and go into much more depth: but hopefully by then the picture will have emerged and we’ll be on some common ground. *IF* people can be objective and honest. If not, I guess there’s nothing I can do about that).
1. In which decade did we discover the most oil?
2. How has the discovery of conventional oil been going since then? Keep in mind that oil is probably only 2nd to the military in terms of the money and technology available to their enterprise. Big oil have BILLIONS at their disposal for the latest discovery and drilling technologies.
3. What is the ratio of discovery to consumption? Are we discovering more than we use, or less? How good or ‘bad’ is the ratio?
4. How long has the trend been in this direction?
5. How many oil producing countries have already peaked and are in irreversible decline? What are their decline rates?
6. Which countries are still able to increase production and have not reached their all time historical peak?
7. Is there an ‘international oil cop’ agency that audits the fields and confirms the books of various oil blocks? Who reports to who? What is the chain of command down which the oil data has to travel in the non-OPEC western world?
8. How do we know whether OPEC reports are legitimate? Who do they report to? Who can audit their books? Does the western world get access to their fields? How do we confirm what they know?
9. If domestic consumption of oil exporting nations rises too fast (because of a booming domestic economy), how quickly can domestic consumption outpace their ability to export oil once they themselves peak? (Hint: there are historical precedents — google “Export Land Model”).
10. If those few exporting nations that are left suddenly DO decide to keep the oil for their own economies, how relevant is a global depletion rate of 5% per annum if the OIL MARKET has collapsed because hardly any nations are selling?
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Stephen Gloor,
Where did I make any such statement?
Possibly. On the other hand, perhaps that applies to you not me.
Tell me what organisation has demonstrated consistently better projections than ABARE over a period of decades and I may concede your point.
Also, please explain why Treasury, ABS, Productivity Commission, Department of Climate Change, IEA, EIA, World Bank, OECD, UN etc all rely on the ABARE stats and projections? I would seem to be in good company.
Is it in fact the case that you don’t like ABARE’s predictions because they do not tell you what you want to hear; they demonstrate your beliefs are based on what you want to believe, not on facts?. Are you displaying cognitive dissonance?
3. Do you have any evidence to back your assertion? If so please post it.
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Stephen Gloor,
In 1991, the deep Green advocacy groups and their consultants were trying to convince ABARE to make their projections based on the rate of take up of renewable energy and energy efficiency improvements that these groups argued were economic and would happen. At the time, ABARE said give us the figures, with sufficent substantiation that they are feasible and we’ll run the models and projections with thescenarios you suggest. ABARE did so at the time. The projections based on these scenarios turned out to be totally wrong, as ABARE said at the time they would.
We are in the same position again with groups that you support wanting the same sort of idelogically driven projections. Once again you will be totally wrong. If any of our government departments were forced by political pressure to adopt your beliefs as the basis for setting Australian policy, we’d be further up the creek than we are already. The irrational beliefs of the Greens are doing far too much damage already.
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For the efficiency gains possible you only need to look at California.
“California has cut annual peak demand by 12 GW — and total demand by about 40,000 GWh — over the past three decades. The cost of efficiency programs has averaged 2-3¢ per kW — which is about one fifth the cost of electricity generated from new nuclear, coal and natural gas-fired plants. And, of course, energy efficiency does not require new power lines and does not generate greenhouse gas emissions or long-lived radioactive waste”
On Climate Progress is a list of the programs that they have put in place and have delivered the sort of energy savings that the BZE plan details.
http://climateprogress.org/2008/07/27/energy-efficiency-part-3-the-only-cheap-power-left/
If you don’t like Joseph Romm then you could wade through this report and find the savings:
http://www.nrdc.org/air/energy/eecal/contents.asp
Peter Lang – unlike Eclipsenow I have no intention of engaging with your bullying tactics. Suffice to say that the energy efficiency reductions in the BZE plan do have precendents and are achievable. We have a model of a heavily industrialised state that held its energy growth flat with an aggressive energy efficiency campaign that worked. We only have to do the same. I am also pretty sure that ABARE given the task of predicting California’s energy use in 1980 would have come up with a much higher figure in line with the rest of the USA’s growth.
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Peter Lang:
At no time have I argued against demand management per se, nor RE per se.
I have reservations about the way that both have been portrayed in the recent ZCA report.
When it comes to determining cost-effective energy solutions which recognise the climate imperatives, the ZCA report contains nothing of use to ABAREbecause it is so unsupported by evidence.
If the DM and RE advances of which you speak in California are a guide, then let’s go flat out to repeat them here. They could buy us 12% (4 years) time. Once these are well into the planning and implementation stage, one would expect ABARE to modify their models accordingly.
In parallel with this, I suggest that the climate war effort should advance on all fronts, not Plan A to the exclusion of Plans B, C… Z. THe only constraints are resources, including brainpower and goodwill, both of which are occasionally in short supply.
In the interests of harmony I now cease responding to Eclipsenow on this thread.
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Hi Peter,
As you know I’m only questioning their assumptions regarding WORLD oil production going forward, and how that will affect pricing. I’ve been trying to find “ABARE, Additional information, 27 November 2006.” which apparently details the economic modelling they add to the basic Geoscience Data. I’ve seen the USGS do this as well, encoded into phrases that explain oil production will increase due to demand increase and ‘non-technical reasons’. In other words, because we want more God will just whack some more oil in the ground!
So I have failed to find the relevant source documents that the Senate enquiry drew referred to when they said:
I was hoping to share both the economic influences of “ABARE, Additional information, 27 November 2006” and the effect on the actual Geoscience Australia reports that the Senate enquiry investigated when they made the comment above.
Anyway, this quote from their projection to 2029-30 demonstrates my concerns. From December 2006.
http://www.abare.gov.au/interactive/energy_dec06/htm/chptr_4.htm
For the rest of the projected period? What, till 2029? Wow. When are we going to see $40 oil again?
(Probably after the NEXT GFC, the big one, as shown on 4 Corners last night. But that won’t be due to production increases).
Peter wrote:
This is the crux of questions 7 and 8 in my peak oil Top 10. Who actually reports to who? How do we know what is going on in OPEC? You’d be amazed at the reality.
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Stephen Gloor,
Your all belief and bluster. You made statements, including mis quoting me, and I asked you to back your your statements. Why don’t you answer the questions I put to you? Do you have any integrity?
If you think ABARE’s projections of energy efficiency improvements have been wrong, and others have done better consistently, then please post your evidence.
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John Bennetts,
Did you mean to address your comment to me? If so, I am not sure what it is relating to.
I do not deny that we must do all we can, that makes sense, to improve energy efficiency. What I am arguing is that the Green extremists continually over estimate what can be achieved, and they overestimate by orders of magnitude. ABARE already includes their projections of increasing energy efficiency in its demand projections. And ABARE has tended to over estimate rather than underestimate the rate by which the energy efficency improvements, DSM, etc. can be implemented. My point is that the magic pudding projections, advocated by Amory Lovins, Mark Diesendorf, Mark Jocobson. Greenpeace, WWF, FoE, ACF and the consultants that are being funded to provide supporting studies, are unrealistic and have been demonstrated to be wrong for the pst 20 years at least. So, I’d prefer to rely on ABARE’s projections, which have continually been closer to the mark, than the ideologically driven projections of the Green advocates.
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John Bennetts,
Further to my previous comment, and just to clarify, what I am saying is that energy efficiency improvements, demand side management etc, will make little additional difference at best compared with what ABARE already has included in its projections. And Renewable Energy will make even less difference. History to day would suggest ABARE has overestimated both. Therefore, we should not be focusing on renewable energy nor on energy efficiency. Both will be small bit players. What we should be focusing 80% to 90% of our attention on is what we can do to bring low cost nuclear energy to Australia as quickly as possible. That is where our main focus should be. That is the point I am attempting to get a cross.
As DV82XL pointed out before he left, there is a determined effort by RE advocates (such as Stephen Gloor, Neil Howes) to divert attention from realistic solutions to RE and other issues that are ‘down in the weeds’ as far as being able to make any significant contribution to cutting GHG emissions.
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Peter wrote:
That’s a bit rich Peter, given the blind eye you’ve turned to all my questions and sources from 4 Corners through to the Australian Federal Senate. Please answer my Top 10 if you’re going to take this tone with Ender. You have the skills to do it far better than I can, but will you? Or do your political presumptions prevent it?
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Eclipsenow,
I’ve attempted to deal with your assertions. I prepared the document at the top to address your assertions. You’ve now headed off on a different track. But there is no point in discussing that with you here because you have not been prepared to do the homework. You have no understanding about what you are talking. You are continually trying to compare apples and oranges, which is totally pointless. I tried to point this out up thread, but you either ignored me or didn’t understand. I asked you questions up thread to try to clarify issues, but you did not answer them. So I see not point in trying to continue. If you want to continue, please go back and answer the questions I asked you. Don”t try to divert onto something else like projections of oil prices (answered by me and others) and peak oil. peak oil is a highly complex issue, and cannot be tackled on a discussion thread like this.
My main question to you was provide evidence of an organisation that has done better projections than ABARE, over decades, on the parameters it is required to provide projections for. If you can’t do so then you should apologise.
And. if Stephen Gloor cannot provide such evidence he should apologise too.
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Peter, sorry about the confusion. The comment was intended to be for the thread.
Peter is absolutely correct, so far as I am concerned, in his estimation of the RE and DM options. IF, and a very big if it is, demand management and renewables have been shown to be worth x% reduction in power consumption in California (Reference, please!), then I am all for achieving the same here.
I agree that 90% seems to be about the correct amount of effort that should be diverted to nuclear in Australia, with the ideal starting point being about 40 years ago.
I came to this conclusion somewhat reluctantly after a period of optimism about RE, especially solar thermal and PV. Wind never appeared to me to be other than La-la Land due to capital cost, inability to scale up and environmental footprint.
Tidal power inevitable brings with it stuffed estuaries, which is too high a price for the biosphere to pay for mankind’s toys.
Surely the combined brainpower of our citizenry, our politicians and our professionals can unite to achieve this one greatest objective of our lifetime – low impact energy sources!
Even the hydrogen fuels currently are derivatives of fossil fuels. The only ethical world-wide options for land transport fuels seem to me to include large slices of (1) nuclear power sourced hydrogen for cells and/or direct injection into conventional engines and (2) nuclear power sourced batteries for personal conveyance over short distances.
Many thanks to this site and to others like it for providing a window onto the data and the technologies. My mind has been changed and I am not going back any time soon.
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This is dishonest. My contention with ABARE has always been with their GLOBAL oil supply modelling, which should be apparent from the 4 Corners quotes I provided you that led to this article in the first place! I have *occasionally* made reference to how this affects my trust of their Australian supply modelling, but I am gaining new respect for the work put in by GeoScience Australia as a result of my browsing through ABARE’s summary data.
The Federal quotes I have repeatedly offered lead me to continue to suspect some of ABARE’s future Australian oil production modelling. I have seen such ‘econometrics’ stuff up other oil supply modelling in other organisations as well, such as the USA DOE’s EIA. But that is not my main concern.
Right from the beginning I have questioned their estimates for GLOBAL PEAK OIL!
You asked me to convert wood into OEE! Sorry, but that’s just whacky, completely irrelevant. You’re just sprouting utter nonsense now to divert and distract.
As Kim Beazley would say: “Let me be perfectly clear”.
Given that my initial problems with ABARE were mainly to do with global peak oil, your entire article above us UTTERLY IRRELEVANT to my concerns. If you can’t see that, I don’t know what to make of your powers of comprehension, or personal integrity.
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Eclipsenow,
The discussion is pointless because you want to change the subject. You’re being all emotional. You waon’t address the questions I put to you, which if you did might help you to understand the problem.
you say:
Sorry that is nonsense on many counts.
First I said no such thing. Yoiu made that up. You asked what are PJ because you don’t understand them. I, and ohters explained why we have to use energy units (ie PJ). You ignored, or didn’t understand.
Second, you haven’t answered the qurestions I asked you. You’ve ignored them. But you are trying to make out that this is the question you didn’t answer. That is being deceiptful. I’d suggest you look through and answer all the questiosn I posed to you.
The most important is:
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John Newlands,
If Australia decides to build NPPs there will be no need for “Enrichment” based on gas centrifuges or lasers. Nor will there be any need for wet reprocessing (e.g. PUREX). These are very expensive technologies that make no sense if the goal is to generate electricity. There has been far too much enrichment and wet reprocessing already leading to large inventories of bomb grade fissile materials across the world.
Arriving into nuclear power 60 years late, Australia has the advantage of hindsight that will enable you to choose processes that will consume bomb grade materials and the higher Actinides produced by Gen I & II NPPs that are currently destined for geologic storage.
This website is a great place to exchange ideas on nuclear power and spread a positive message to the public at large. We can show the public how investments in “Renewables” compare with investments in NPPs. The main criteria should be $/MVA for plant construction and $/MVAh for electricity delivered absent of subsidies.
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Usually I disagree with “eclipsenow” but some recent criticism has been a little harsh. He admits that his technical understanding is limited as is the case for 99% of the population. We need to hone our arguments to the point that they make sense to that wider audience.
Eclipsenow is providing us an opportunity to see our arguments from a less technical perspective. If we can’t communicate with him, we are going to end up speaking exclusively to a small “‘In” group.
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Agreed totally, gc! Although eclipsenow can get a little too emotive (by his own admission), he does provide a good sounding board for what most members of the public are like — at least the ones with the open minds. He changed his views on nuclear, and I think a little more of the ‘gentle art of persuasion’ rather than dismissive deflection might not go astray here, either.
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gallopingcammel,
I accept your point. However ….
in this case, I’ve tried, and tried, and tried, and I’ve given up. Eclipse now is not taking any notice of what I and others write to him. He wants to change topics to now talk about peak oil. But that is a really big topic and cannot be addressed on a thread like this. Barry suggested Eclipse now write a 500 word article outlining the topic he wants to discuss, presenting his case and supporting it with evidence. But that is not the topic here. I know it cannot be covered here and I know that nothing we say will satisfy Eclipsenow, because he has made up his mind on the basis of the web sites he has been reading. Some of his beliefs are so entrenched, but so seriously flawed, that there is simply no point in trying to address it. Eclipsenow’s assertion on a previous thread was that ABARE’s projections are biased towards fossil fuel interests, and a stack of other unsupported assertions. So I did some work to test the assertion and summarised the results in the lead article. Any balanced assessment, not only of this article, but also the fact that ABARE is the undisputed authority, shows that their projections are widely accepted as the best available.
That needs to be acknowledged as a first step. Otherwise, EW should show that another organisation is doing better, on an ongoing basis. Clearly that is not the case or ABARE would have the responsibility taken from them and given to another organisation, or they would be restructured or something.
Silly, hair-shirt arguments such as they didn’t even consider peak oil are just ridiculous.
Believing that an upward trend will suddenly change to a downward trend in the year of the projections is silly.
Believing that no new reserves will be found, from this year on, is silly.
Some of what EW is falling for is mixing production from existing wells with the overall production we get from basins as we continue to develop them and as we find more deposits. EW is confusing that, and many other issues.
These matters cannot be explained to him because he is fixated on what he now believes. He has a religious-like belief and is stuck with it until someone can get through to him.
And just to repeat, I am not disagreeing that peak oil is an important issue.
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Barry, I accept this too. But I have to back off for a while and let others have a go at answering Eclipsenow.
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I have repeatedly tried to point out that we have been talking at cross purposes. This all started back in the ZCA critique thread when I initially said:
From 17 August 2010: 19:15
You could easily have misunderstood my argument with ABARE to be something to do with projected energy efficiency gains. I could have been interpreted as contributing to something Ender was contesting about using ABARE energy demand projections to back either an RE or nuclear position.
If you read my post again, you’ll see it was none of the above!
I don’t think the ZCA thread is an excuse to forget that oil is a global commodity traded on a global marketplace and subject to global supply and demand issues.
So your request that I…
…would fail a Year 10 English essay because you are not answering the ACTUAL QUESTION!
In my mind you’ve made an OK case that ABARE are ‘pretty good’ at estimating energy demand growth under business as usual assumptions.
But what happens when peak oil hits is another thing entirely. It could throw those BAU assumptions right out! I expect petrol rationing within 5 to 10 years, and then a civilisation-wide rush to New Urbanism, public transport, and nuclear power.
I quoted their 2006 guesses at the oil price, and we are still double their estimates from now until 2030. They’re already 100% off track!
If ABARE are the agency informing the Australian government about world oil price issues, we are in trouble, pure and simple. But fortunately I think some members of the Senate have revealed some of ABARE’s econometric assumptions about oil increases. More devastating was the Senate committee on peak oil interrogating the goose in charge of ABARE. Somehow he thinks he can model oil prices without considering global peak oil! Nice one! ;-)
My only concern is how many Senators from that committee still have their jobs, and still even remember the incident… or the subject for that matter. Maybe it will come back to them when we hit $200 a barrel!
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gc I take you are saying Australia either use forms of NP that don’t need enrichment or if needed buy in enriched fuel. Ironic since I understand the laser SILEX process was invented here. In Australia the Greens Party will control the Senate from July 2011. Some of their hardline members would prohibit import of medical isotopes. I’m not sure of their view on material produced by the big cyclotron in Victoria.
FWIW I agree with most of what eclipsenow has to say. Oil depletion is going to hit us like a ton of bricks and soon. Where I disagree is that the price is a good indicator. Consider that the oil price was $147 in July 2008 and $72 in August 2010 yet crude production is declining, partially offset by other liquid fuels (e.g. ethanol, tar sands) with less net energy. I predict between now and 2015 Peak Oil will change everything. If I’m wrong I’ll admit it but the PO community is enormous with the Oil Drum website getting 30,000 hits a day I believe. Some people who post in the safe refuge here should take them on.
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I’ll leave off for now with this reminder:
The article was intended to address the assertion that ABARE’s projections are crap!
I believe the assertion is demonstrably false. If someone feels they can demonstrate the assertion is true they need to provide evidence of an organisation that has consistently provided better projections than ABARE, over decades, on the parameters ABARE is required to provide projections for.
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EN, that is just one of your statements about ABARE projections being crap!. Selected again to suit your point.
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EN,
You keep making the point about prices. But I and others said up thread that prices of anything are extremely hard to predict and I’ve never viewed it as a priority area of ABARE’s projections anyway. Saying that ABARE was out by 100% is totally irrelevant as far as I am concerned. I don’t care if their prediction are out by orders of magnitude (as we can be with measuring permeability). Unless you can show that some other organisation has done consistently better than ABARE, then your points about being out by 100% are totally meaningless. Sorry, I am fed up with your nonsense assertions and not being prepared to take any notice of what I’ve said repeatedly.
And yes to all those saying back off on EN. I understand. I’ll take a break.
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Can you please show where I’ve said this? I think you’re actually having a meltdown and confusing me with Ender.
Not if I saw the head of ABARE say it himself. But please, show me where they discuss global peak oil and I’ll recant!
Um, what? What are you straw-manning me for now?
Now I know you for a straw-manning fool.
Who is “Eclipse W”… I’m EN or Eclipse or Eclipse Now. EW could be mistaken for someone else. But otherwise now you’re just ranting. If you can answer my Top 10 questions I’ll be interested, but right now you’ve just failed Year 10 English and, well, I don’t care what you think. You’ll soon find out your right-wing preconceptions about the wonders of the marketplace can easily be undercut by that same marketplace’s lack of respect for the inevitable laws of physics gently ebbing away at our daily oil production.
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EN, you’re doing it again. Statements like “You’ve just failed Year 10 English”, and being silly about Peter typing “EW” instead of “EN” are no more helpful that Peter saying your points are “totally meaningless”. This gets us nowhere, on both fronts, and lowers the tone of BNC. Please cease and desist, and try and rebuild a constructive conversation on this thread and others.
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Hi John,
Good comments. I didn’t know The Oil Drum were that popular, but aren’t they getting a bit doomer over there? I’ve read about shonky editorial decisions and pro-nuclear comments being deleted without reason. EngineerPoet has a few pieces on it.
http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/2010/05/enforcement-of-orthodoxy-at-oil-drum_09.html
On price: I agree that price is not a good indicator of long term oil security. The boom and bust in prices over the last few years have probably been due to speculation and then the GFC more than any immediate peak oil concerns. But the upwards trend is interesting as geological supply issues seem unable to keep up with the roaring demand from China and India.
My main focus on price was that this is how the Senate Committee highlighted ABARE’s failure to even consider global peak oil — straight from the horses mouth! The Senators were all quite unimpressed with Dr Fisher as he said this. It really stood out as a moment of national embarrassment that we were so uninformed about such a potentially catastrophic worldwide challenge.
(Peter Lang will no doubt again spank me for not analysing the wonders of ABARE’s demonstrated history of successes over the past 20 years in predicting *domestic* consumption and production trends. But I can’t help that.
Peter apparently has a strong case of Aspergers, and only feels comfortable within the confines of the Australian domestic resources and the wondrous charts that demonstrate ABARE’s wondrous “woundrous-ness”. I can see him rocking on his chair like Rain-man, “Must analyse domestic resource trends, must analyse domestic resource trends” — “need 12 cheetos at lunchtime…”. It’s sad, but maybe one day he’ll realise this time he is the one that needs to learn to actually answer the REAL question and issues for once!)
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Barry, I give up. I didn’t read your email until I had just posted the above, but if Peter Is going to behave like such a pig and completely ignore the ACTUAL issues I’m talking about, there is absolutely no point in my being here. Peter’s last posts just straw-manned my position again.
EG:
Barry, have I or have I not conceded some ground in this thread about ABARE being reliable in some areas? Did my last post define where I might respect ABARE, and where I have issues with them? Yet Peter refuses to hear the distinctions! He refuses to address the issues, and I can only take it that he is unwilling to admit that all of this started because he failed to understand my actual concerns with ABARE in the first place.
Peter, be a man. Admit that your article actually defends ABARE from charges I never made against it! If I did happen to curtly reply “Projecting demand, good, projecting supply, SUCKS!” somewhere above, that was about their global projection issues.
Just try being honest this once.
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My interest at the moment is in discussing these assertions.
I say ABARE is competent at what it does and is not biased. I say ABARE provides the best projections available in its area of responsibility.
I say if someone disagrees with that, substantiate your claim. That is, show what organisations have produced better projections on an ongoing basis.
World Peak Oil is a separate debate for another time. It is an enormous and controversial discussion all of its own and a diversion from the central topic of this thread.
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Peter,
On the ZCA thread I said:
You replied:
So right at the beginning you seemed to understand that I was discussing peak oil, which is a global discussion about world prices super-spiking and world oil markets rationing.
As to which authority I feel is more authoritative than ABARE? Well, right now as ABARE don’t seem to bother with discussing global peak oil, how about ME?
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