17 March 2017, Energy & Climate Unit UK; Tilting at windmills: The energy debate down under. Battlelines have been firmly drawn in Australia’s power debate, with politicians backing their favoured energy sources like a die-hard footy fan his team. Against a backdrop of record temperatures, blackouts and high prices for consumers, the greatest casualty has been good policy. As a breezy sun-baked country with plenty of space, Australia is in many ways the perfect environment for renewable energy. Its steady growth over the past decade in particular has cut deeply into the business model of coal-fired power stations, which have previously been the mainstay of energy generation, but are largely coming to the end of their working lives. The coal industry is fighting for its existence, and the onslaught against the inevitable advance of renewable energy has been fierce. Cost and reliability Maximum temperature anomalies (difference from long-term average) for Australia from 31 January to 13 February 2017. Image: Australian Bureau of Meteorology The main lines of attack on renewables are two-fold: cost and reliability. Neither of these has much basis in reality. In terms of cost, the fact of the matter is that retail electricity prices in Australia have more than doubled in the last 10 years. Many people are struggling to pay bills, and disconnections have particularly hit the poor. The rise of renewable energy has frequently been blamed for the increased prices. However, analysis from the Australian National University comparing electricity prices across the states shows this is simply not the case. The ANU study shows absolutely no correlation between increased renewable energy penetration and rising cost. In fact, Queensland, the state with the highest proportion of coal and gas generation, also faced the highest growth in electricity bills. The state with the lowest increase in bills, Tasmania, also has the lowest levels of thermal power generation. Of course, price rises are not just related to generation, whether that be coal, gas or renewables. In sparsely populated Australia, network costs – the transmission towers and poles and wires – account for over 50% of bills. To a large extent, the gold-plating of network infrastructure has driven increases in cost. Read More here
Tag Archives: coal
9 March 2017, The Guardian, Renewable energy spike led to sharp drop in emissions in Australia, study shows. A sharp drop in Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions at the end of last year came courtesy of a spike in renewable energy generation in a single month, according to a new study. Australia’s emissions fell by 3.57m tonnes in the three months to December, putting them back on track to meet quarterly commitments made in Paris after a blowout the previous quarter. The fall is the largest for the quarter since the government began recording emissions in 2001. The report’s authors said this was entirely due to record levels of hydro and wind generation in October. This brought emissions for the year to December to below the year to December 2015. But projected emissions for the December quarter were still 6.89m tonnes over levels demanded by scientifically based targets set by the government’s Climate Change Authority. And, long term, the results show Australia is set to run more than 300m tonnes over what is required to meet its Paris targets in 2030. Read More here
8 March 2017, Renew Economy, Queensland govt slaps down LNP, Murdoch over renewable scares. The Queensland government has attacked the LNP opposition and the Murdoch media for unfounded, baseless and “lazy” criticism of its plans to source 50 per cent of its electricity needs from renewable energy by 2030. The conservative LNP has been getting a big run in the Murdoch press with a new anti-renewables campaign, which has wound up significantly since the start of the year with a host of new solar projects that will add 1GW of solar power to the state’s grid….. That means that the Queensland government will not be in the same position as South Australia, which has had to watch with growing frustration as the private owners of the biggest gas plants in the state decide not to switch on during high demand periods, claiming they can find no economic incentive to help keep the lights on for their customers. On the subject of South Australia, premier Jay Weatherill said the state had no intention of rowing back on its 2025 target of 50 per cent renewables, saying to do so it would have to effectively “physically prevent” developments in their tracks. That much is true, because the build-out of the Hornsdale wind farm and the Tailem Bend solar project will take the state to 50 per cent wind and solar by the end of this year. Weatherill says the biggest threat to power prices in South Australia is the lack of competition among generators, something that can addressed by having more renewable energy and other technologies such as battery storage. Read More here
3 January Jeremy Leggett Blog, State of The Transition: As fossil fuel diehards take over The White House, the evidence of a fast-moving global energy transition has never been clearer. As captains of the fossil fuel industries and their lobbyists prepare to take over the White House – appointed by a President elected by a minority, claiming to represent the people on an anti-elite ticket yet possessing by far the highest cumulative wealth of any cabinet ever – they will face evidence breaking out all around them of a fast-moving global energy transition threatening to strand the fossil fuels they seek to boost. “World energy hits a turning point”, a Bloomberg headline read on 16th December. “Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity,” the article marvelled. Analysis of the average cost of new wind and solar in 58 emerging-market economies – including China, India, and Brazil – showed solar at $1.65 million per megawatt and wind at $1.66. Google leads the giant corporations eagerly going with this flow. The largest corporate buyer of renewable energy announced on 6th December that it expects to hit its target of 100% renewable power in, wait for it, 2017. Google is a huge consumer of power, and going solar means deep emissions cuts, especially when solar infrastructure is hooked up with all the digital efficiency-enhancement fandangoes that Silicon Valley giants are zeroing in on in the fast emerging era of artificial intelligence in an internet of things. Read More here