10 December 2015, Energy Post, The electricity network is changing fast – here is where Australia is heading. The Australian electricity sector is changing extremely fast, writes Paul Graham, Chief Economist CSIRO Energy at CSIRO (the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) in Australia. CSIRO Energy sees solar and storage costs still dropping rapidly. According to Graham, scenarios under which a third of people may be leaving the grid and 25-45% of electricity will be generated on-site are “plausible”. Things are changing extremely fast in the electricity sector. In 2013 the electricity industry and its stakeholders came together in the CSIRO Future Grid Forum to imagine the possibilities for the future of electricity industry to 2050. Electricity demand was falling, solar panels were being adopted en masse, retail prices were rising, and air conditioner ownership had doubled. By 2030, customers with solar panels are expected to be A$150-210 better off on average each year. By 2050 that balloons to $860-$1140 each year. Two years on we’ve updated those scenarios as part of the Electricity Network Transformation Roadmap project with the Energy Networks Association. We expect retail prices to rise further in coming decades, but not as much as we originally thought. Concerningly, we also expect the gap in electricity costs between households with and without solar to increase dramatically. Read More here
Tag Archives: Renewables
9 December 2015, Energy Post, New: renewables can now play important role in industrial development. Thanks to massive cost reduction, renewable energy can now be used by developing countries in their industrial growth strategies, which was unthinkable until recently, writes John Mathews of Macquarie University in Australia in a new publication from UNIDO, “Promoting Climate Resilient Industry“. Mathews notes that renewables can help countries expand manufacturing and create jobs, reduce local pollution, increase energy security and reduce import costs from fossil fuels. Oh, yes – and they reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The necessity to align industrial development strategies with climate change mitigation provides a chance to bring a fresh perspective to both issues. Energy has not been a central concern in industrial development strategies in the past. This was for the simple reason that it was always assumed that countries would industrialize using fossil fuels – in the same way that Western countries had relied on fossil fuels in the 19th and early 20th centuries, followed by East Asian countries as they likewise depended on coal, oil and gas in the second half of the 20th century. Renewable sources are now within reach of almost all industrializing countries, or will be so within a few short years. This changes everything. But a coal-driven industrial pathway does not look so attractive in the 21st century, especially when being pursued at the scale envisaged by China, India and other industrializing giants. One fresh perspective is that renewable energy sources can now be factored into development strategies. This was not even feasible just a few years ago because of concerns that costs were greater than those associated with consuming fossil fuels. But as China and other emerging giants have placed more and more emphasis on renewable sources – with a focus on water, wind and sun – so they have driven down the costs, with global repercussions. Renewable sources are now within reach of almost all industrializing countries, or will be so within a few short years. This changes everything. Read More here
9 December 2015, Energy Post, German grid operator can handle 70% wind, solar before storage needed. The company responsible for more than one-third of Germany’s electricity grid says there is no issue absorbing high levels of variable renewable energy such as wind and solar, and grids could absorb up to 70 per cent penetration without the need for storage, writes Giles Parkinson of Reneweconomy.com. Boris Schucht, the CEO of 50 Hertz, which operates the main transmission lines in the north and east of Germany – and which is 40 per cent owned by Australia’s Industry Funds Management – says the industry’s views of renewable energy integration has evolved rapidly in the past decade. “It’s about the mind-set,” Schucht said at the Re-energising the Future conference in Paris, and later to RenewEconomy. “10 to 15 years ago when I was young engineer, nobody believed that integrating more than 5 per cent variable renewable energy in an industrial state such as Germany was possible.” Yet, Schucht says, in the region he is operating in, 42 per cent of the power supply (in output, not capacity), came from wind and solar – about the same as South Australia. This year it will be 46 per cent, and next year it will be more than 50 per cent. “No other region in the world has a similar amount of volatile renewable energy ….. yet we have not had a customer outage. Not for 35 or 40 years.” Read More here
13 November 2015, Renew Economy, Malcolm Turnbull was right: Direct Action is a climate con. You’ve got to hand environment minister Greg Hunt a capital A for Audacity. Or maybe a capital C for Chutzpah. Round two of the government’s emissions reduction fund – the central plank of its Direct Action plan – has come and gone, another $557 million has been spent making some farmers and carbon traders a lot richer than they used to be, and Hunt is still insisting that it is the greatest success in the history of emissions reductions. Ever. “In the lead up to Paris, this government has once again demonstrated that we can significantly reduce emissions and tackle climate change without a carbon tax and increased electricity prices,” he press released on Thursday. It’s easy to claim a triumph with rhetoric, but not so easy to do so with the numbers. Here is what the government has claimed to have done: It has cherry picked, presumably on the basis of price and authenticity, some 131 projects – mostly in vegetation and savannah burning, but also some in landfill gas and energy efficient lighting – that will deliver 45 million tonnes of abatement at an average of $12.25 each, over 10 years. Hunt – outrageously – says this is a price that is just one per cent of the carbon price under Labor. Dubiously, he says it will deliver on the government’s (modest) emissions reduction targets – minus 5 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020, and minus 19 per cent on 2000 levels by 2030. Everyone involved in this charade is keeping mum – or their hands firmly on the wads of cash now in their wallets – about what they really think. They have been dicked around so much by the coming and going of the CPRS and the carbon price, that they feel they deserve something, and wads of cash from a government auction is fair game. If a government is determined to force money into their pockets for doing something that their clients may well have done anyway (growing trees, not clearing other vegetation, continuing landfill gas operations), then who are they to argue. But here are a couple of key stats to put it into perspective. Read More here