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East Asia
South Korea & China - Images and Movie
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- Written by: Richard_McKie
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- Category: East Asia
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In June 2013 we visited Russia. Before that we had a couple of weeks in the UK while our frequent travel companions Craig and Sonia, together with Sonia's two Russian speaking cousins and their partners and two other couples, travelled from Beijing by the trans-Siberian railway. We all met up in Moscow and a day later joined our cruise ship. The tour provided another three guided days in Moscow before setting off for a cruise along the Volga-Baltic Waterway to St Petersburg; through some 19 locks and across some very impressive lakes.
As anyone who has followed my website knows, I'm not a fan of using 'Green Hydrogen' (created by the electrolysis of water - using electricity) to generate electricity.
I've nothing against hydrogen. It's the most abundant element in the universe. And I'm very fond of water (hydrogen oxide or more pedantically: dihydrogen monoxide). It's just that there is seldom a sensible justification for wasting most of one's electrical energy by converting it to hydrogen and then back to electricity again.
I've made the argument against the electrolysis (green) route several times since launching this website fifteen years ago; largely to deaf ears.
The exception made in the main article (linked below) is where a generator has a periodic large unusable surpluses in an environment unsuitable for batteries. In the past various solutions have been attempted like heat storage in molten salt. But where there is a plentiful fresh water supply, producing hydrogen for later electricity generation is another option. Also see: How does electricity work? - Approaches to Electricity Storage
Two of these conditions apply in South Australia that frequently has excess electricity (see the proportion of non-hydro renewables chart below). The State Government, with unspecified encouragement from the Prime Minister and the Commonwealth, has offered A$593m to a private consortium to build a 200MW, 100t hydrogen storage at Whyalla. Yet, the State already has some very large batteries, with which this facility is unlikely to be able to compete commercially. Time will tell.
12 July 2011
It's finally announced, Australia will have a carbon tax of $23 per tonne of CO2 emitted. This is said to be the highest such tax in the world but it will be limited to 'about 500' of the biggest emitters. The Government says that it can't reveal which these are to the public because commercial privacy laws prevent it from naming them.
Some companies have already 'gone public' and it is clear that prominent among them are the major thermal power generators and perhaps airlines. Some like BlueScope Steel (previously BHP Steel) will be granted a grace period before the tax comes into effect. In this case it is publicly announced that the company has been granted a two year grace period with possible extensions, limited to its core (iron and steelmaking) emissions.