Tag Archives: Renewables

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5 August 2015, The Nation, Why Are Americans Switching to Renewable Energy? Because It’s Actually Cheaper. Fossil fuels have become an economic liability—for both consumers and energy companies. Deborah Lawrence had been watching a once-empty parking lot near Midland-Odessa, Texas, fill up with idled drilling rigs usually at work plumbing for oil in the nearby Permian Basin. In January she noticed 10 rigs, then 17 a few weeks later. As winter turned to spring, the number climbed to 35. That trend has continued across the country. By the end of July, the nationwide rig count had slipped 54 percent since the same time a year ago, indicating distress in the oil and gas industry. The most obvious culprit is the precipitous drop in crude prices. But the trouble goes deeper, as Lawrence knows—and she isn’t just a casual observer. Lawrence is a former Wall Street financial consultant who now runs the Energy Policy Forum, helping to identify and analyze trends in the industry. Read More here

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30 July 2015, The Conversation, Fact Check: Would Labor’s renewable energy plan cost consumers $60 billion? (It) will mean a massive bill, perhaps A$60 billion or more, that will have to be carried by the consumers of Australia. – Prime Minister Tony Abbott, speaking to reporters about Labor’s plan to source half the nation’s power from renewable energy sources by 2030, July 27, 2015. Abbott’s quote, a response to the new Labor policy to set a goal of 50% renewable energy by 2030, appears to be drawing on reported comments by Paul Hyslop, chief executive of ACIL Allen – the company used by the government’s Warburton review into the existing Renewable Energy Target (RET). The prime minister’s office sourced the A$60 billion figure to an article in The Australian last week that quoted Hyslop saying of Labor’s 50% renewables pledge that: If this were met by wind power it would require 10,000 to 11,000 additional turbines… with capital costs for the turbines alone of $65 billion. Hyslop’s ACIL Allen colleague, Owen Kelp, told Sky News this week that the A$60 billion was a “fairly simplistic, back-of-the-envelope calculation”. When asked by The Conversation for a copy of any calculations to see how the A$65 billion capital costs figure was reached, Hyslop said the internal analysis was not publicly available, but explained that: To get to the 50%, you need about another 80,000 gigawatt-hours… To build that with renewables, the current cheapest technology would be wind. We estimate between 10,000 and 11,000 additional wind turbines with a bottom end estimate of around $65 billion in capital costs… Would it have an impact on consumers? It really depends on the trade-off on the cost of funding the subsidy versus the downward pressure on electricity prices. We don’t know exactly what that would look like. That would be a significant piece of modelling. Read More here

 

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30 July 2015, The Guardian, Queensland solar farm faces legal challenge from sugar cane proponents: Planning minister, Jackie Trad, considers using ‘call-in’ power that would give her final approval which could not be challenged. The Queensland government is considering stepping in to head off a legal challenge to one of Australia’s largest planned solar farms in the state’s northern sugar belt. The Spanish renewable energy developer FRV has approval from the local council and a deal with a cane farmer to build a 130-megawatt facility on his property in Clare, where the company says there is some of the most powerful sunlight in the country. But a local cane harvester and sugar mill oppose the plan on the grounds it will take up “good quality agricultural land” in conflict with the state’s planning policy. The prospect that the project could become tied up in a planning court case led FRV and Burdekin shire council to ask the deputy premier and planning minister, Jackie Trad, to “call in” the development. This week Trad announced she would consider a “call in”, giving her the final decision on the project which would then be immune to legal challenge. It came after the energy minister, Mark Bailey, vowed last week to match federal Labor’s commitment to achieving 50% renewable sources for Queensland’s power network by 2030. Read More here

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27 July 2015, The Guardian, Malcolm Turnbull undermines Abbott’s ‘electricity tax scam’ claim over ETS,. As the PM ramps up attack on Labor’s promised emissions trading scheme, the communications minister admits all emission reduction policies come at a cost: Malcolm Turnbull has cut through the slogans and semantics dominating the climate policy debate – pointing out that all policies to push low-emission electricity generation come at a cost to households, including the ones the government supports, and that the cost of renewables is falling. Tony Abbott on Monday unveiled a new three-word slogan to attack Labor’s promised emissions trading scheme – saying it was an “electricity tax scam”. The prime minister also labelled Labor’s promise to source 50% of electricity from renewables by 2030 “bizarre” and “unnecessary”, said it would cause “a massive overbuild in windfarms” and claimed it could cost “$60bn or more”. At his party’s national conference over the weekend, Labor leader Bill Shorten said Labor’s promised ETS was not a tax because it would have a floating price and would not begin with the fixed price like the former government’s scheme. “Let me say this to our opponents, in words of one syllable: an ETS is not a tax,” he said. Read More here