ITER Forum Website Update 4.2012 (early)
B.J.Green (1/4/12)
1. State's wind farms help debunk a few myths
BY: GILES PARKINSON, GREENCHIP From: The Australian March 16, 2012 12:00AM
IS wind energy as useless as its critics say it is? Is it really so expensive and ineffective that its emissions abatement is achieved at 10 times the cost of gas-fired generation?
That was the conclusion of a British study sponsored by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, chaired by former Conservative chancellor and noted climate sceptic Nigel Lawson. Wind power upsets a few people, not least the climate sceptics who simply can't comprehend its utility.
But reports such as Lawson's are also a red rag to the bull of the wind industry itself, which sees itself as cost-competitive with fossil fuels in most Western countries and as a major contributor to the task of reducing greenhouse emissions.
But rather than consider the merits of the arguments of the anti-wind lobby versus the pro-wind lobby and to set aside the debate about visual amenity and noise, it's probably most worthwhile to consider what the Australian Energy Market Operator, the organisation responsible for co-ordinating the contributions of various energy sources and for keeping the lights on, has to say about the matter.
It should go a long way to settling the fears. While Lawson's report was based on a hypothetical case unique to Britain, Australia can draw on real-life experience in South Australia. And it serves to debunk a few myths: wind does not need like-for-like back-up, or anything near it. It does achieve abatement, it does displace fossil fuel generation, and it is not anywhere near as expensive as some claim. The AEMO says wind accounts for more than 20 per cent of SA's electricity consumption, making it the second largest in percentage terms in the world after Denmark, and the highest on a per capita basis.
It had 1150MW of capacity in 2010-11, growing to 1203MW with the anticipated completion of the Hallett 5 wind farm late last year. Interestingly, wind accounted for 20 per cent of nameplate capacity (installed capacity) and the same percentage of production.
As the accompanying graph shows, most of that wind capacity and production has come in the past five years.
The AEMO data shows that very little peaking gas plant has been built during that period -- 200MW versus 760MW of wind -- and this has been built almost exclusively to deal with rising peak demand, which has grown by more than 350MW over the period (and by 40 per cent over the last decade).
And although wind is highly intermittent -- it contributed as little as 60MW in some peaks and as much as 873MW in others -- the amount of peaking gas generation used over the period has actually fallen in the past five years, from 501 gigawatt hour to 325GWh, despite the increased capacity and the rising peak demand.
Overall, the use of locally sourced coal and gas-fired generation (both baseload and peaking) has declined, and the state has been a lot less reliant on imported energy from Victoria's brown-coal generators.
In some years, that need has been totally eliminated. The overall share of coal-fired generation has fallen to 32 per cent from 42 per cent in 2003 and gas to 47 per cent from 57 per cent. It met its 20 per cent target three years ahead of its own schedule and nine years ahead of the federal mandate. Far from causing a 10-fold increase in prices, AEMO reports that in 2010-11 wholesale electricity prices in the state averaged $34/MWh, their lowest since the National Electricity Market began more than a decade ago. During the same period, emissions have been reduced from 0.72 tonnes of CO2 to 0.55t/CO2.
The biggest losers in this, in terms of displaced capacity and slumping wholesale energy costs, and therefore earnings, have been the Victorian coal-fired generators, which is why they have lobbied hard against expanded renewable energy targets, and for upgrading the interconnector between the two states.
The AEMO data shows that SA's imports of electricity have fallen sharply, but its exports (mostly wind) have increased dramatically.
The cost of "firming" wind is estimated at 0.66c/MWh, less than 2 per cent of the retail energy cost in SA, and less than in NSW, which has negligible amounts of wind generation.
Firming refers to the need to have other power sources on standby to support the grid and provide power in case of interruptions.
AGL Energy, which owns both wind farms and brown coal-fired generators, said in an analysis of the SA wind deployment that the "hidden costs" of wind, such as firming, were negligible. There is, however, some debate about how far SA's wind capacity can grow without an upgrade to links to other states. The state's target for 2020 is 33 per cent renewable energy. Some suggest more than mid-20s penetration will be problematic. Linking with the wider grid is the key.
A recent International Energy Agency analysis of Denmark found that the country could go as high as 63 per cent wind penetration, using existing flexible resources to balance supply. It benefits from being able to import and export from neighbouring grids in Scandinavia and Germany.
"The report concluded that power systems have a greater capacity to handle variable renewable electricity (wind, solar, tidal and wave power) than commonly believed," the IEA said.
There was no doubt that wind energy could be challenging to incorporate, but it could be done. Interconnection, however, was critically important.
Denmark plans to lift the share of wind to 50 per cent by 2000. By 2050 it expects to be free of fossil-fuel energy sources, altogether.
As recently as the early 1990s, it sourced around 90 per cent of its electricity from fossil fuel sources. Because it still relies on fossil fuel sources for around half of its energy, its emissions per capita are above the OECD average.
Retail electricity costs are high, caused by taxes that account for 60 per cent of its cost, but industrial users enjoy some of the lowest rates within the EU, the IEA says.
Bright outlook
ROSS Edwards, the head of business development and one who is in charge of new gas and renewable projects at TRUenergy, says any new peaking plant built in Australia over the coming decade will essentially be for meeting peak demand, not for acting as a back-up to wind.
TRUenergy will need to build or commission about 2500MW of renewable energy capacity over the next eight years to meets its obligations under the 20 per cent renewable energy target.
Most of this will come from wind, he says, although solar PV (photovoltaic) will likely come into the equation in the second half of the decade.
Edwards echoes recent comments by Origin Energy chief Grant King, who believes there is no need for baseload power generation for the rest of the decade, with the possible exception of Queensland, and that most investment will be in wind to meet the MRET, and in open-cycle gas to meet the peak demand.
Isn't the open-cycle gas being deployed to match the intermittency for wind, Greenchip asked. "No, it's really to match peak demand," Edwards said.
The good news for the renewable developers is that Edwards predicts TRUenergy will be back in the market, building its own wind farms or writing contracts for third parties, by the end of the year.
The company's first project, the 120MW Stoney Gap wind project in the Clare Valley in South Australia, was likely to be ready for final investment decision this year, and TRUenergy would likely need a couple of such projects a year to meet its commitments. Edwards says that while wind will dominate the MRET in the next few years, it is possible that solar PV will become cost-competitive in the latter half of the decade, particularly as costs of panels and modules continue to fall.
TRUenergy is hopeful that it will succeed with its proposed 150MW Mallee Solar Farm project in the recalled Solar Flagships tender, and says it has proposed a substantial reduction in costs.
Giles Parkinson is editor of reneweconomy.com.au
2. 400 years in the making, felled by bid to be green
BY: GRAHAM LLOYD, ENVIRONMENT EDITOR From: The Australian March 15, 2012 12:00AM
TREES more than 400 years old that grow to 90m and measure 2m across could be fed to the furnace to generate electricity as a result of independent MP Rob Oakeshott's plan to extend renewable energy subsidies to native forests.
The Karri trees -- Western Australia's tallest and among the world's tallest -- are already classified as forest waste and turned into woodchips for a market that no longer wants them. For anyone who doubts it, examples of the trees are stacked up at the Diamond chip mill in Manjimup in Western Australia's southwest.
Forest campaigner Jess Beckerling said carbon dating had shown that 430-year-old trees were being sold as firewood for as little as $9 a tonne.
"There is no economic rationality in it," Ms Beckerling said.
Manjimup is a reflection of what is happening in state forestry nationally as the industry has moved increasingly to plantation timber and the export market for woodchips has collapsed.
Mr Oakeshott's proposal to provide a subsidy for burning forest "waste" is considered a potential lifeline for foresters and a new flashpoint for environmentalists around the nation.
Long-standing plans for a bio-energy plant in Western Australia's southwest have struggled to get off the ground. The plant has approval to burn residue from plantation timber. But the location for National Power's proposed 45 megawatt power station has been shifted to the Diamond mill site away from blue gum plantations in state forest operations.
Mr Oakeshott said his motion would not result in additional logging and rely only on residues now burnt in the field. But environment groups fear extending the renewable energy certificate scheme to include electricity generated from forest waste would be a repeat of the export woodchip experience of the 1970s. It would radically change the economics of producing electricity from the forest and accelerate the clear felling, they claim.
Granting valuable renewable energy certificates for electricity generated from state forests was specifically excluded from the federal government's clean energy legislation. But Mr Oakeshott has lodged a disallowance motion to this specific clause in the legislation. If the disallowance motion is not challenged in federal parliament before March 21, the clause will cease to apply and forest timber will automatically qualify for renewable-energy subsidies.
Mr Oakeshott has the support of the bio-energy industry, which says a biomass plant would get its main supply from plantation forestry and urban woody biomass and that any native forestry biomass used would be minor.
Environment groups reject claims that only waste left behind would be burnt because the legislation is not specific. "Residue is whole logs," Ms Beckerling said. "The idea that they are somehow going to feed a furnace from mill waste is completely ridiculous."
Neil Bartholomaeus, a former head of Work Safe Western Australia, said he had seen it all before.
He is a marron farmer, trout fisherman, long-time resident and forest campaigner. "You end up with the situation where, effectively, the tail -- the residue being burnt for biomass fuel -- would be wagging the dog," he said.
Manjimup Shire president Wade DeCampo supports Mr Oakeshott's disallowance motion.
Local businesses are concerned a bio-energy furnace would threaten the clean food image of an area that produces twice as much as the Ord River scheme.
3. Scientists who trade in doubt
BY: MIKE STEKETEE From: The Australian March 17, 2012 12:00AM
CARBON dioxide levels in the atmosphere have ranged between 170 and 300 parts per million across most of the past 800,000 years, according to the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.
Last year they reached 390ppm and they are increasing at 2ppm a year. Should we be worried? Not according to sceptics such as Bob Carter, a former head of James Cook University's school of earth sciences. He says he has seen no evidence that the climate change that is occurring is caused by human activity or is dangerous.
How does this square with the overwhelming majority of expert scientific opinion? It doesn't.
In their joint report this week on the state of the climate, the CSIRO and BOM argue "that the dominant cause of the observed CO2 increase is the combustion of fossil fuels" - that is, it is not due to natural variation. They arrive at this conclusion from looking at the change in the composition of atmospheric CO2, as measured through isotopes; that is, different forms of a chemical element.
This identifies the burning of fossil fuels as accounting for more than 85 per cent of CO2 emissions caused by human activity, with the next biggest factor, land use change, mainly deforestation, responsible for less than 10 per cent.
The CSIRO-BOM report concludes that, although both natural and human factors have affected the climate during the past century, "it is very likely that most of the surface global warming observed since the mid-20th century is due to anthropogenic (human-induced) increases in greenhouse gases", including CO2.
Even though this is now widely accepted, to critics such as Carter it creates enough doubt to provide an opening. The evidence that he demands really is absolute proof, an impossible test given the complexity of the world's climate, as well as other areas of science.
If 90 per cent of people receiving a vaccination develop immunity, this is not proof the vaccine works. But it does seem likely, even if some will continue to argue against its effectiveness.
Confidential documents leaked last month show Carter receiving $US1667 ($1590) a month from the Heartland Institute, an American organisation that campaigns against action on global warming.
He is described as a co-editor on the non-governmental international panel on climate change - a project designed to challenge the UN body of a similar name, whose reports are accepted as authoritative by governments across the world, despite occasional errors.
What's wrong with that? Nothing, necessarily. Carter confirms that he is doing the work, though he won't comment on the amount he is being paid. "I am retired from the university," he tells Inquirer. "I have no salary and I sometimes do consulting work."
However, Carter's biography on his website says: "He receives no research funding from special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments." Isn't the Heartland Institute a special interest organisation? "Of course not," says Carter. "They are a think tank."
Whatever it is, it devotes a great deal of its time to lobbying and public advocacy. The Heartland documents show it spending $US4.2 million of its planned $US6.6m budget for this year on editorial, government relations, communications, fundraising and publication. Heartland describes the project on which Carter is working as "the most comprehensive and authoritative rebuttal of the United Nations IPCC reports".
Another Heartland project, in which Carter is not involved, is developing a curriculum for schools. "Many people lament the absence of educational material suitable for K-12 students on global warming that isn't alarmist or overtly political," one of the documents says. Proposed teaching modules include "whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy".
Carter argues that, as a professional scientist, he does not take positions, other than to base whatever he says on scientific evidence. But he does not always sound so dispassionate. In a review for Quadrant of the climate debate last year, he wrote that "the political year yielded a spectacular display of chicanery, scientific malfeasance, media bias and economic and social irresponsibility, all underpinned by a confusion of both purpose and morality".
Alongside Carter as co-editor on Heartland's climate change panel is Fred Singer, a physicist and one-time senior US government figure with a long track record as a contrarian, as documented by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their 2010 book Merchants of Doubt.
He was the co-author of a report, funded by the Tobacco Institute, attacking the findings of health risks from passive smoking.
In 1982, as a member of a panel appointed by the Reagan administration, he argued against taking action on acid rain, the sulphur and nitrogen emissions from industries and motor vehicles that destroyed soils and waterways.
The strategy that Oreskes and Conway identified as common to all these debates, and climate change, was "doubt-mongering".
In one of the documents made public in litigation against tobacco companies, an industry executive wrote in 1969: "Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the body of fact that exists in the minds of the public." This, wrote Oreskes and Conway, was the tobacco industry's key insight: "that you could use normal scientific uncertainty to undermine the status of actual scientific knowledge".