Carbon World Cup

How will Australia go in this year's World Cup? That's the big sporting question in Australia at the moment. Other teams in Australia's group are France, Denmark and Tunisia. Statistically, Australia should probably lose all three games.

If the game was carbon pollution, Australia would be the highest scorer by far. Our nation out-pollutes Denmark by 3 to 1, France 4 to 1 and Tunisia 6 to 1. Those scores would be great in soccer, but in climate change they are terrible for Australia - and for the world.

In fact in the hole tournament, the only country that could match us would be host nation Qatar. That's the level Australia is at. As a nation we've got a lot of improving to do - and I don't mean in soccer.

See how your nation compares

What's with these power price rises?

There's been a lot of talk about power price rises here in Australia. So what's causing it?

Short answer: Old coal-fired power stations that keep breaking down.

In detailed terms, here's a chart from finance reporter Elysse Morgan, showing the power output of AGL's coal-fired power stations over the last month or so.

The purple line at the top is what they would normally be producing - if the stations were all functional, and not having "unplanned outages". The difference is around a million homes.

Of course the electricity grid normally makes up for this shortfall by having gas-fired power stations operate as a backup. But this is quite expensive. Perhaps because the shortage is so large. Perhaps because the gas price (globally) is so high at the moment. Perhaps a combination of the two.

The result is that energy costs more, as shown in this graph of energy prices in the states of Queensland (QLD) and Victoria (VIC).

Elysse Morgan points out that Western Australia (WA), as a gas-exporting state, requires companies to provide gas for WA first (at a fixed price).

As a sidenote she also points out that renewables like wind and solar also have a stable and low per-unit cost - as the power source is free.

Ah, if only we'd built more of that earlier. 

Wasn't 2020 bad enough? (without breaking climate records too)

2020 will be remembered for different things - but it was also yet another stinker of a year from a climate perspective.

2020 was the second hottest year on record - just 0.02 degrees Celsius behind 2016's record. That's virtually a dead heat. In Europe and Asia 2020 actually was the warmest year on record.

This is a bit worrying considering that in weather terms it's a La Nina year - meaning that it's cooler than we would otherwise expect.

In the bigger picture, the last seven years (2014 - 2020) are the seven hottest since records began (in 1880).

The ten hottest years have all occurred since 2005.

More worrying still is that many people I know weren't even born the last time we had a regular-temperature year.

Further fascinating graphs

I've done a number of these posts over the years - and it's scary how each record-breaking change in climate change is surpassed by another (as you can see on the above graph). Here are my posts for the years 2009, 2010, 2013, 2014 and 2017.

3 million Aussie solar homes

Australia has now passed the amazing milestone of 3 million solar homes. Even in 2020, around 370,000 homes got solar.

It seems like only yesterday that I was writing a post about Australia reaching 1 million homes.