Australian Drought Starting To Cut Electricity Generation - SMH

The water shortage across eastern Australia is now so acute it has begun to affect power supplies, and the country is at risk of electricity shortages next year. "I think we are in denial, and are going to have brownouts in NSW if we don't get snow this winter," a source within the electricity market said. Coal and hydro power generation require very large amounts of water, and the Snowy scheme depends on it for 86 per cent of its generation capacity. "Last year we had the lowest snowfall ever recorded. If this happens again we are in trouble," the source said. He declined to be named because electricity pricing and supply is a politically charged subject.

Prices are already tipped to double in South Australia. The news comes amid calls for the Government to adopt a carbon emissions trading scheme. This would have the effect of making alternative forms of energy generation - such as solar, wind and geothermal - more competitive with coal-fired power stations. It would also offer greater certainty to those looking to develop power assets.

Reports that the Government is close to adopting a scheme with nations in the Asia-Pacific region have come under fire, with Labor's environment spokesman Peter Garrett arguing it has come too close to an election to be credibile. It's understood carbon trading will be on the agenda at the APEC summit in September, when the leaders of 21 countries meet over three days.

"Obviously we're open minded about it, but it comes on the back of 11 years of inaction, of denial and of doing nothing on the part of the Howard Government in relation to climate change and global warming,'' Mr Garrett told reporters in Sydney today. "Frankly it comes a little late ... to have a great deal of credibility.''

EDIT

http://www.energybulletin.net/29830.html

have to do to fix this problem, right?

It's a big, big, big problem.

The shutting of coal plants in Australia on the other hand would be a negative feedback loop.

In the ideal case, Australia would build nuclear power plants along its coast using the waste heat for desalination purposes. That may be their only shot.

Australia only needs 500,000 wind turbines to provide 100% of almost half the energy they need! (That's based on 1992 figures.)

They can easily get 30% of the other half during daylight hours in February by using a mix of solar power, white vinegar and bicarb, limiting hangovers until noon, taking the rear seats out of their cars and shaving some of the tire treads down, recycling shampoo and pop bottles, putting a brick in the loo, banning Tom Cruise from ever setting foot on Australian soil, making rockers promise to turn their amps up no higher than 9, going to year-'round Daylight Time at night, lowering the age of puberty to 10, re-setting the gravity from 32-feet-per-second-squared down to an even thirty, and feeding Foster's to dingos and sticking hoses up their arses to collect the methanogenous fartage issuing therefrom.

NuKKKular energy is ... KKKorpr0ate! DicKKK Cheney! 9-11! Chernobyl! It's bad, I'm tellin' ya, mate. It'll make yer testosteroonies shrivel up an' fall off, it will! I heard that there's a town in the States where it's so radioactive that all the people walk around bloomin' starkers! And think nothin' of it! They all drive Cadillacs but never have to use any gasoline! Their cats are all named Whiskers an' they all speak Esperanto! An' they've grown gleaming metal scales so they can pop the tab off a beer with their arse! (The people, not the cats. The cats dip snuff, instead.)

That's what yer nuclear energy will do. Take me word for it ...

Crikey! All the nuclear radiation has made me mutate into a CRAZED AUSSIE!

--p!
If I couldn't laugh, I wouldn't even stick around for the Apocalypse.

...would ya?

:rofl:

Limit hangovers until noon? It'd never work. The rest of it sounds like a typical Friday night at Didyabringyagrogalong.

Although they hold the largest share of the world's terrestrial uranium ores, the Australians are not going to be able to rely on river water for cooling if they begin using that uranium domestically - at least they <em>shouldn't</em> do so.

In any case, it would seem that the Australians are in hot water.