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Australian energy prices doubled in the last 6 months.

I'm not sure who would ever use the Australian market as a model, other than "under no circumstances follow suit".




Energy prices everywhere are up. That is what happens when the global economy is bouncing back from a pandemic and one of the biggest energy suppliers in the world decides to embark on the first major land war in Europe in over 70 years.


With the energy industry making record profits [1], my naive self has extreme trouble believing that's the whole story.

https://energycommerce.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/pal...


Why do you think that people who sell a commodity that has increased demand wouldn't make more money?

There's no need for a conspiracy. The people who make money from the gas extracted and exported from Australia will profit at the expense of the average Australian who pays more for the gas extracted from under their own soil. You could vote to have them distribute the windfall profits to the people, if they didn't have such a stranglehold on your politicians.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/australias-east-coas...

This is the same as many historical famines, where people starved to death while the crops grown in the same country were exported and sold overseas because rich, non-starving people can pay more than poor starving farmers. Banning or limiting exports might have helped in a roundabout way, but just not intentionally letting poor people starve to death would have been a simpler policy to implement.


Australia tried that whole voting for the profits to be distributed thing.

The CIA gave them a new government that wouldn't be so silly as to enact public will.

Then murdoch came along to make sure noone would vote based on reality anymore.


So you're saying Russia made sunshine more expensive?

Or did we secretly build nothing but gas power plants because renewable are so intermittent nothing else can be turned on and off fast enough, leading to rising electricity prices world wide even before the latest shock?


Russia is cutting gas supply, there's shortage for electricity generation and storage for winter, when a lot more of gas is used to heat buildings. Russia began cutting gas supply in june 2021 IIRC


The reason for that is because of high natural gas prices. And the reason that increases overall prices is because they are treated as a single purchase so renewable sources (who are obviously well aware of gas prices) push their prices up to match.

This is so obviously a bad idea that even the CEO of a major energy firm has suggested the purchase market be split between renewable and fossil, so there are effectively two markets, and everyone can take advantage of cheap renewable prices.

You should learn about this stuff rather than parroting the nuclear fanbook.


It was the already the highest electricity price in the developed world before the start of the war.

You should learn about this stuff rather than parroting the renewable fanbook.


I do know about this stuff which is why I know reasons for things instead of mindlessly repeating talking points. You explain to me why cheaper sources of energy led to high prices. If you can? May require thinking.


>You explain to me why cheaper sources of energy led to high prices. If you can? May require thinking.

Sure.

Sun doesn't shine at midnight.

The end.


So solar farms don't sell to the grid at midnight. You really don't know how any of this works, do you?


I guess we can just shut off unimportant things like refrigeration and life support at night.


No, you buy expensive electricity at night and cheap solar during the day. You were about to explain to me how buying the expensive electricity all the time worked out cheaper than that. Have you thought it out yet?


Where do you store the electricity? The world's largest battery can run the grid it's attached to for about 10 minutes.


Who said anything about storage?

And battery storage on a grid is not for running the whole grid for any time.

Seriously, you don't understand any of this. Stop assuming you do and try asking some intelligent questions instead.


Anything else happened the past six months that might, say, affect the LNG prices and thus electricity prices overall?

European prices are up far far higher than 2x

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-23/european-...




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