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Wind power – the state of play

wind-power-state-of-play — Image: www,pexels.com

I thought it high time I wrote about wind power generation, given this region’s burgeoning reputation as Queensland’s Green Energy Hub. The Southern Downs already earned this cachet by building a 64 megawatt solar farm near Warwick. As power-generating capacity goes, this was by far upstaged by the MacIntyre Wind Farm, tipped to become the world’s largest onshore wind project.

More about Acciona’s 1.025MW wind farm later, but first, a history lesson. Just about any company with an interest in wind power generation has latched on to the quote from former US President Abraham Lincoln. Old Abe was a bit of a closet scientist, known for being the first US president to have an invention patented in his own name. Of wind power, President Lincoln said (in 1860): “As yet, the wind is an untamed and unharnessed force; and quite possibly the greatest discovery hereafter to be made, will be the taming, and harnessing of it.”

Not just Abe, though. As a blog by UK energy firm NES Fircroft explains, the idea of using wind power occurred to humans as early as 5000 BC, when wind was used to push boats along the Nile.

In the Middle East and Persia (now Iran), windmills were used to grind grain. In China around 200 B.C., they were used to pump water.

During the 9th century Persia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, wind-powered machines were developed to mill cereals and pump water. This technology progressively made its way to Europe. Windmills have been used since the 14^th century by China, Italy and the Netherlands. It may also occur to readers that Australian farmers sought to harness the wind to pump water on remote properties.

Professor James Blyth of Anderson’s College, Glasgow, Scotland is credited with creating the first wind turbine in July 1887. He used to power to light his holiday cottage, but his offer to share the excess electricity with the nearby village was knocked back as his creation was deemed to be ‘work o’ the de’el’ as my Da would have said).

Also in 1887-88, American Charles F. Brush created the world’s first automatically operated wind turbine generator mounted on an 18-metre-high tower. The machine was slow and its 144 blades produced only 12 kW. It was used between 1888 and 1900 but subsequently fell into disrepair. That seemed the fate of a lot of early wind projects, most of which were experimental and none were able to attain a commercial rate of power generation.

It wasn’t until 1941 that a wind turbine was developed that could generate more than 1 MW of electricity.

Fast forward to 2023 and Acciona Energía’s 1,026-MW MacIntyre project is the company’s biggest renewable energy facility and one of the largest onshore wind farms in the world.

Developed in partnership with CleanCo, the Queensland Government’s newest renewable energy generator, the $1.96 billion wind farm is expected to be operational in 2024-2025.

Acciona’s wind farm when completed will have 180 5.7-MW turbines, each standing up to 230 metres in height.

The economies of Goondiwindi, Toowoomba and the Southern Downs are direct beneficiaries of an estimated $500 million spend during the construction phase. As work continues on the leased 36,000 hectare property 50kms south-west of Warwick, Acciano is increasing the number of on-site accommodation units to 550, to take pressure off the rental property markets in nearby towns. The end game is to generate enough power for 700,000 homes.

While all this large-scale construction and planning is going on less than 50 kms from town, I was intrigued to hear a local chap tell me he is looking at installing a domestic wind turbine on his property. What? I had no idea.

Yes, it appears that competition, improved technology and economies of scale are opening up a new green industry to help home owners who are aiming for self-sufficiency. A home wind turbine system can cost between $10,000 and $20,000. There are technical issues and obstacles in terms of local government by-laws and whether it is a suitably windy location. They pay-back period is lengthy.

If you were an early adopter of solar energy, you may well remember that in the beginning, the entry price was prohibitive. The upside only became apparent when governments agreed to provide incentives. There does not appear to be a lot of research done in Australia into small-scale wind turbines or much enthusiasm. Not so in the US, where climate writer Michael J Coren, writing in the Washington Post, found there was a 30% tax credit for home wind turbines.

The official advice from the Australian government website YourHome is that wind generators are not suitable for most homes.

“Household wind systems are much more expensive than solar PV systems, and wind turbines must be situated where they can catch smooth, strong, consistent winds. Few homes in Australia have such locations.”

In 2020, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) announced funding to install small wind turbines at 10 remote Australian communication sites as part of a new project to boost the uptake of the technology.

Newcastle University startup Diffuse Energy has invented a blade-less turbine which doubles the capacity of wind power generators. Their Hyland 920 turbine is capable of producing 500W of electricity.

ARENA said at the time it was funding the project on the basis it would provide a renewable alternative to diesel generators, reducing energy costs and improving resilience against bushfires and other natural disasters.

While implementation of this project ran into the usual setbacks caused by Covid-19, Diffuse Energy’s founders have their eye on the global telecommunications market. They predict it will spend more than US$3.4bn on distributed energy generation by 2024.

At the end of 2018, ARENA said there were 94 wind farms in Australia, delivering nearly 16 GW of wind generation capacity. The cost of utility-scale wind energy in Australia is expected to continue falling, with new wind farms delivering electricity at around $50-65/MWh in 2020 and below $50/MWh in 2030.

Scrolling through the highly technical Australian Energy Statistics for 2022, I discovered these references.

Renewable generation increased 18% in 2020–21, contributing 27% of total generation. Solar and wind contributed 10% and 9% per cent of total generation respectively. About 17% of Australia’s electricity was generated outside the electricity sector (by industry and households), including 7% small-scale solar PV.

It’s a long way from the 1970s (when Telstra first used solar panels to power infrastructure). Few private homes had solar then and if so, they were usually in remote locations far from power lines. According to US group Dash Energy, solar technology cost around $20 per watt in the 1970s with around 14% efficiency. Today’s solar panels average between 15-18% efficiency. Costs can be as low as $0.20 per watt. On this basis you’d expect domestic wind turbine systems to become comparably more affordable (and more efficient).

Meanwhile, work carries on at Acciona’s wind farm site where 41 turbines have been fully installed, according to its July update. And 34% of a planned 70km network of paths connecting the turbines has also been completed. Acciona will be taking (free) community bus tours out to the MacIntyre site on several dates in September, November and December. The first one is already booked out.

Proposed Sun Tax Riles Solar Users

solar-sun-tax — Caloundra Uniting Church – a subliminal message for today’s story about a proposed Sun Tax

If you are one of the prudent people who installed solar panels over the last decade, you may end up being penalised by new energy market rules. The Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) has recommended that energy retailers be given the option to charge solar owners a fee to export surplus energy to the grid.

Lobby group Solar Citizens wasted no time dubbing the proposal a ‘Sun Tax’ and it’s hard to see it any other way.

Solar Citizens says the proposal is ‘iniquitous’, as big coal and gas producers do not have to pay to send electricity to the network.

According to the AEMC, the levy will not greatly reduce the credits solar users earn from the network. AEMC’s modelling showed that the proposal would reduce the annual benefits for a typical solar household (4 to 6 kilowatts) from $970 to $900.

Households without solar will be better off by about $15 a year as the fee/levy/tax adjusts inequities in the system.

Electricity producers and retailers are seeking a solution to the ‘traffic jams’ caused by a two-way energy flow.

The nature of the domestic solar network means that electricity suppliers often receive surplus power when it is not needed, leading to power surges and blackouts. In other words, the network providers are looking to develop more efficient ways of handling the extra power. Some electricity utilities have already blocked solar users from exporting to the grid, or are restricting them to a narrow time band.

One might ask how the network got into this state – it’s not like solar power was invented yesterday.

But the AEMC says doing nothing is not an option, given that solar users will be financially penalised by being blocked from the grid. For example, a solar user who is blocked 50% of the time would lose about $300 a year in benefits.

The AEMC compiled a report on this sensitive topic in 2017, concluding then that the sun tax proposal be abandoned.

“Further work is needed in order to understand whether distributed energy resources create benefits, or impose costs on the distribution network,” the report said.

It would now seem the AEMC has decided the latter applies. The AEMC’s chief executive Benn Barr said traffic jams and blackouts were occurring now and would get worse as more solar connects to the grid.

“The grid infrastructure was built when power only flowed one way. Within 10 years half of all energy users will be using home energy options like solar.”

“We want to reassure solar customers that we’re not proposing they should all start paying export charges,” he said in a statement. “We expect networks to deliver pricing proposals in close consultation with consumers, which may include options where they don’t have to pay for exports.”

Opponents of this proposal say it is coming at a time when feed-in tariffs (the price paid for surplus solar power), are dropping.

It seems improbable now to look back at our first home solar system (2004) when the feed-in tariff was 54c per kilowatt hour. This has now dropped to an average of 8c kWh. I always thought the dual purposes of a solar system was (a) to cut greenhouse emissions and (b) reduce power bills as close to zero as possible.

Choice Magazine investigated this topic when it sent 10,000 domestic power bills to be analysed by Solar Citizens. The conclusion was that retailers are paying many Aussie households below ‘spot market’ rates for their excess solar (the spot price being the wholesale market).

Choice being Choice, the article suggests monitoring prices paid for excess generation and be prepared to switch retailers when there is a better deal on offer.

Energy economist Bruce Mountain told Choice there is no obligation on electricity retailers to pay for the power that is fed in to their network.

“Some offer nothing while others offer very high rates because they want to attract customers with solar.”

On the most recent data (2018-2019), Australia has 2.6 million households with PV solar systems. FOMM would like to think the main reason people decided to install solar is to lower our collective greenhouse emissions. In truth, solar has become more affordable and the competition to strike a deal is red-hot. Also, solar converts no doubt assumed they will at least reduce the cost of power (by earning credits from surplus power fed to the grid) or even have a zero power bill and be ‘in credit’.

CanStar Blue’s survey of household power bills in 2020 highlighted the reason for increased demand for solar. The average annual power bill for a non-solar household is $1614. In our first year with a 6 kilowatt solar panel system, our power bills were less than 20% of that. Now, according to She Who Pays the Bills, we are in credit to the tune of $108.

“Can we cash that out?” I asked hopefully, heart set on a new set of Hohner harmonicas. (Wait til winter’s over.SWPB)

Energy Locals founder Adrian Merrick advised Choice readers to use all their solar energy generation before feeding in to the grid.

The best way for households to use as much of the energy they produce is to use energy-hungry appliances like washing machines and dryers during daylight hours.

Merrick also suggests investing in emerging technologies such as solar diverters and buying storage batteries as battery prices come down.

If you have been thinking this is much ado about nothing, consider how governments are continually working to increase tax revenue, openly or by stealth.

Who would have imagined the four-year punitive regime Spanish solar owners endured. In 2015, Spain’s conservative Popular Party introduced a new tax ‘Impuesto el sol’ which, as you’d guess, is a Sun Tax.

Spain’s Photovoltaic Union (UNEF) said in 2015 that self-consumers would pay double tolls for each kWh imported from the grid, compared to non-solar users.

“The new law makes it uneconomic for households and businesses to install PV with the latter endangered to lose in competitiveness too,” UNEF said.

The law also prohibited PV systems up to 100 kW from selling electricity. Owners were required to donate the extra electricity to the grid for free.

Fortunately, a new Spanish government scrapped the ‘Sun Tax’ in late 2018. In its place, as Forbes magazine reported, was a system to encourage ‘collective self-consumption’.

The new energy regulation brought Spain in line with its European neighbours and closer to achieving the EU’s energy targets for 2030.

It also encourages collaborative solar ventures between neighbouring buildings – easier to do in population-dense Europe.

We might be drawing a long bow citing Spain here, but consider this insight on the AEMC proposal from Victoria Energy Policy Centre economist Bruce Mountain.

“It is like arguing that bicycles should be charged for using the roads,” he told Renew Economy’s Giles Parkinson.

“The uptake of solar was the one big success we have had in the energy transition.”

The AEMC is seeking submissions on its proposal, with a May 13 deadline.

FOMM back pages: https://bobwords.com.au/solar-no-easy-energy-fix/

Further reading https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-tax-networks-will-be-able-to-charge-households-to-export-solar-power-to-grid/

Life on the planet in 2040

Vision-for-2040 — Melbourne school strike, photo by Takver https://flic.kr/p/2dfY9tt

On days when the woes of the world are too much with us, do you ever think what life on the planet in 2040 will be like? That’s the year the Doomsayers say will be the End Times or the Apocalypse. The theory is that by 2040, planet earth will no longer be able to sustain its estimated population of nine billion.

There are serious arguments for that proposition – extreme weather events caused by climate change, lack of sufficient food and water and ever-worsening pollution. There is the ever-present threat to life on the planet of nuclear war and a rolling series of civil wars which have driven millions of refugees into other countries, with consequent social and political disruption.

Imagine 2040, then. I’ll be 91, Nibbler will be 29 (which is old for a dog); Donald Trump will be 94, ex-wife Ivana 91 and current wife Melanie a spritely 70. Sir Paul McCartney will be 97 (should his long and winding road last that long), and Justin Bieber just 46!

More importantly, children being born now will be 21 in 2040 and quite angry about the state of the world they have inherited from their parents. Those who currently are angry teenagers will already be in their mid-to late 30s and maybe producing children of their own.

The key concern for life on the planet in 2040, just 21 years away, is the ever narrowing prediction about the effect of climate change on weather patterns and sea levels.

Most scientists and some futurologists will say the No 1 problem (I call it the giraffe in the wood shed), is over-population. Bluntly, the world just will not have the resources to feed nine billion people. Already futurists are saying that in the not-too-distant future, we’ll be getting our daily protein from faux meat and insects.

It’s tempting to lean towards flippancy in a 1,200-world commentary on what the world could be like in 2040. Let’s imagine two affluent Poms meeting for breakfast at a café in downtown London 2039 (having got there in minutes by Vactrain from their bucolic suburbs 60 kms away). Smashed avocado on toast will cost something like 29 Europounds, a flat white about 8 Europounds. The waiter already has the order as Paul texted (by thought) while Vactraining. Henry will want to talk about the EU and how long can it last – surely one more year? Paul, feeling guilty about a story he read on the Vactrain newsfeed about six million Brits living in poverty, mutters about Brexit and what a disaster it was.

“That’s ancient history, Paul,” says Henry, adjusting his virtual-specs so he can scan headlines while having a conversation, as you do. Meanwhile the waiter returns (on his hover board) to say there are no avocadoes, despite reports of a glut, but they can do smashed grasshoppers.

Someone with a flair for satire could easily take a similar lead from the occasional quirky statistical forecast in futuretimeline, a community database/blog maintained by futurologist William James Fox.

For example, the autopsy report for Elvis Presley will be made public in 2027, thus scuppering the obsessions of the Elvis-lives club. By 2035, Millennials will be enjoying an inheritance boom, just ahead of a 2039 forecast that scientists will have found a cure for ageing!

By 2039, Alzheimer’s will be fully curable. This will be too late for some people already affected, but should I start to become forgetful at 87, whoever is in charge can take me along to the clinic. Hopefully, it will be bulk-billed.

Flippancy aside, most serious science-based forecasts focus on climate change, because of its potential to ruin everything.

Forecaster quantumrun.com cites an optimistic number for 2040 – the rise in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels will be 1.62 degrees. That’s just above the 1.5 degrees limit recently set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

That won’t impress Sweden’s Greta Thunberg or her generational cohort. Born in 2001, she is part of what Forbes Magazine calls Generation Z, people born between the mid-1990s and early 2000s. In 2015, Gen Z represented 25% of the US population, a larger group than both Baby Boomers and Millennials.

Then aged 15, Greta sparked an international movement when she started a 20-day strike outside Sweden’s parliament in August 2018. News travelled fast on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. By November 30, the movement had gone viral. In Australia, 15,000 schoolchildren went on strike to call for action (despite much blustering in Parliament). In January this year, 35,000 European teens invaded the European Parliament in Brussels. Over the next fortnight more than 50,000 Belgian teens walked out of their classrooms.

You’ll see more of this next Friday (March 15), when the Youth Strikes for Climate movement stages a global walk-out.

Thunberg, who has since been the target of social media abuse accusing her of being a Green plant (har har), resolutely dug in. In an editorial published in the Guardian Weekly recently she told readers “Adults need to act like their house is on fire – because it is.”

She has pledged to continue her protest until global leaders act to meet the IPCC call to reduce carbons emissions by at least 50% within 12 (now 11) years.

Greta’s lone vigil outside Sweden’s Parliament led to her being invited to give a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in Switzerland.

“Some say we should not engage in activism,” she told delegates. “Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will?”

Meanwhile I’ve started watching Season Two of a Netflix political thriller, ‘Occupied’. The plot (set in the near future). envisages a ‘silk glove’ occupation of Norway by Russia (in cahoots with the EU), to ensure Norway’s oil and gas pipelines continue to service Europe.

In the first episode of Season One, Norwegian PM Jesper Berg announces that Norway will no longer produce or export fossil fuels, instead favouring thorium* energy plants. The series (based on an idea by Norwegian thriller writer Jo Nesbo), shows how conflicts might arise should a brave, futurist politician defy the status quo.

*thorium is a weak radioactive element that can be used in a new generation of nuclear reactors.

Climate change aside, one of the great challenges for life on the planet in 2040 is what to do with old farts like me! In 2017 the United Nations estimated the number of people in the world aged over 60 will double to 2.1 billion by 2050. The UN also expects the cohort of people aged 80 years or over to increase threefold to 425 million by 2050.

Susan Muldowney, writing for CPA Australia’s newsletter, said that by 2040, one in five Australians will be aged over 65 and 1.2 million of them will be older than 85.

“Australia’s aged-care sector has been largely government-funded and dominated by not-for-profit providers,” Muldowney wrote in the accounting association’s newsletter, In The Black.

“However, this may change over the next decade. The number of private, for-profit start-ups is expected to grow in line with the new regulatory push toward consumer-directed aged care and the generational shift from the frugal post-Depression generation.

“The culture-changing baby boomers are used to having choice – even if they have to pay for it,” she added.

Right, then, I’m off up town to order smashed avo on toast. Enjoy it while you can, I say.

John Hewson and integrity in a post-truth world

Photo of John Hewson – Crawford School of Public Policy

Nobody can call out an errant politician better than former Liberal Opposition Leader John Hewson. In the 22 years since he resigned from politics, Hewson has become a respected academic, the darling of TV panel shows like Q&A, and a regular on the celebrity speakers’ circuit. Yesterday, Hewson was a keynote speaker at Griffith University’s two-day summit, Integrity20.

Who better to address the opening topic “Post-Truth, Trust and the Ethics of Deceit?” Hewson has been speaking out about fake news and the propensity of politicians to stray from the facts, long before Donald Trump made it a catch phrase. He is also an advocate for evidence-based public policy, often identifying where politicians have used models and commissioned reports to suit their version of the facts.

So to Hewson’s opening address yesterday, where he used the climate change debate to support his argument for ‘evidence-based public policy’.

“We had a very hard-line position as a response to the climate challenge back in the early 1990s. I was calling for a 20% cut in emissions by the year 2000 off a 1990 base. We are yet to know how we are getting the 5% reduction in emissions by 2020 off a 2000 base. And of course, we’re committed under the Paris Accord to cut emissions by 26% to 28% by 2030.

“What’s happened over that period is drift – the issues have been left to drift. Housing affordability’s been left to drift, the climate response has been left to drift and the final line of that drift is the mess we have in the energy sector. Electricity and gas prices are running away to the point where the average household is struggling to afford to pay its power bills.

“These are the outcomes of negligent government over a very long period of time.”

Hewson believes the situation can be turned around, but it will take some years to reverse the damage. He said what the country needed was an honest debate about leadership.

“And leadership is going to be about telling people honestly the way it is. To get good policy up we have to educate people to accept the magnitude of the problem.

“But we don’t have any debate now in this country – it’s all negative. One side puts its hand up and says let’s do X and the other side immediately says no.”

One in three voted for someone else

He said people had lost faith in the two-party system. In the last election, one in three people did not vote for one of the major parties. The protest vote was not just something that had happened only in Australia, he added, citing Brexit, the US, France and Germany as recent examples.

“It’s a longer term trend and it will get worse before it gets better.”

The path to restoring voter confidence, he said, was by focusing on the issues that affect people – the cost of living, health, housing, childcare and education.

But the main problem was that the ‘wrong people’ were in government.

“If you asked them why they went into politics, they’d say to make a difference and leave a better world for their grandchildren.

“And then they do the opposite.’

Hewson, who will be 71 next Sunday, had a distinguished career in politics. He was leader of the Australian Liberal Party and Leader of the Opposition between 1990 and 1994. Before and after politics he has worked as a senior economist for organisations, including the Australian Treasury, the Reserve Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

In this context, it seems uncharitable to recall that in 1991 he advocated an unpopular goods and services tax. He lost the 1993 election to Paul Keating over the “Fightback Package”, of which GST was a central element. Ironically, Paul Keating (who first advocated a GST in 1985), shamelessly exploited public opinion to thwart Hewson.

All that aside, Hewson at least clearly outlined what he was going to do in 1991-93 and stuck to it. He is known still as a straight shooter, a man who once said he lived in hope of ‘spin-free politics’.

Day one of the Integrity20 Summit was not just about politics and truth. ABC presenter James O’Loghlin chaired a panel discussion about solving the world’s problems through innovation.

Inventor and futurist Mark Pesce showed a short video of a robot working on a farm in Indonesia. He described it as just two wheels, an axle and a smartphone on the end of what looks like a selfie stick, collecting data and producing crop reports. These robots cost about $2,500 and can be shared around a farming community. He also demonstrated how 3D printers, aligned with a simple robot used in smart phone technology, can reproduce all the plastic parts to build another 3D printer. Eventually, robots will also be able to assemble the printers – and that’s just the edges of the innovations universe.

CSIRO scientist Stefan Hajkowicz said the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the future of work had been greatly over-stated. He thought there were many areas where robots and humans would work side by side – in hospitals for example. The robot would do the blood test and the nurse would soothe the patient’s concerns.

But it turns out robots are crap at irregular tasks we humans take for granted, A robot cannot tie your shoelaces, for example. And, as Hajkowicz added, they can’t fold towels. They tried to get a robot to fold a towel. It took 20 minutes and did the job badly.

Today I attended the final full-day session of Integrity20, hastily scribbling notes and pressing stop/start on my hand-held recorder. You may wonder how I met my deadline – marvel at my prowess.

M.Y Prowess (sub-editor): “Isn’t it time I had a byline?”

BW: Ghost writers should be read and not heard – and try using commas instead of dashes – please – some of my readers find it tiresome.”

Next week: Bryan Dawe on satire, media censorship and the global rise of populism.

Renewable energy vs climate sceptics

Have you ever noticed, after giving your dog a bath, how it will head straight for the nearest patch of renewable energy? Ours has a favourite sunny spot next to the dining room table where he will happily bask, while our solar-powered camping lamp, calculator and torches are recharging on the window sill.

Free sunshine – what’s not to like? As it happens, we have been preparing our little caravan for a weekend music festival in the bush. The 160 watt portable solar panel slides snugly under the bed. At $159, this has proved to be a worthy investment for our outback and bush music weekend adventures. It means you can keep topping up the caravan’s battery (if the sun is shining) and go to bed early if it’s not.

We are not expecting rain. No-one is expecting rain.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed the winter just past was the hottest since records began in 1910. It was also the 9^th driest winter on record. The average maximum temperature was almost 2 degrees above the long-term average.

Meanwhile, Texas is suffering unprecedented flooding courtesy of Hurricane Harvey, the reporting of which has somewhat overshadowed devastating monsoon flooding in South East Asia. So far, in the latter disaster area, 1,200 people have been killed and almost two million children were unable to get to school.

As we ironically say in the privacy of our own home – “Just as well there’s no such thing as climate change, then!”

Now all, some of, or only a small part of these extreme weather events could be ascribed to global warming/climate change, which, 97% of scientists agree, is mostly caused by human activity.

Despite this consensus on behalf of an apparently overwhelming majority of scientists, sceptics disagree. I happened to read that former Prime Minister Tony Abbott is set to deliver a speech, “Daring to Doubt,” at an annual climate sceptics group meeting in London on October 9.

You might remember Tony Abbott – his reign as PM at one year and 361 days (cumulative terms), was longer than that of Harold Holt and Billy McMahon, but not by much. Abbott the Climate Change Sceptic is infamous in some quarters as the man who canned the government-funded Climate Commission as part of a Budget cost-cutting exercise.

The Climate Commission bounced back as the privately-funded Climate Council. A new report by the Climate Council concludes that the individual States are going their own way, with mixed results.

South Australia is a clear leader in the renewable energy field, the stakes raised by the government’s decision to replace ageing coal-fired power stations with a 150 megawatt solar thermal power plant.

FOMM foreshadowed this in 2014, when the SA government was trying to negotiate the future of the coal mine which fed its Port Augusta power stations. Now, after five years of lobbying and debate, the SA government is aiming to invest $650 million in renewable energy.

It hardly seems worth mentioning that 1,900 kilometres away, the Queensland Government, in a contrarian move, remains committed to the country’s largest Greenfield export coal mine. The Carmichael mine, which includes a dedicated railway line to take coal north to Abbott Point, is deeply unpopular among environmental groups because of the potential damage it could cause to the Great Barrier Reef, both by the number of ships traversing the narrow channels, and through coral bleaching as a result of human-induced temperature increases.

On the other hand, Queenslanders’ love affair with domestic solar panels is demonstrated by the fact that 32% of households are covered in 2017. Lobby group Solar Citizens (almost 100,000 members), welcomed last week’s decision by the Queensland Government to increase the regional feed-in tariff (FiT) program. This will allow solar systems up to 30kW to receive 10.1c per kWh – six times more than what was previously agreed.

Solar Citizens has an ambitious target of one million solar roofs by 2020.

“Queenslanders know a sensible idea when they see it – with 520,000 solar homes, our State has the highest rooftop solar uptake in the country,” a spokeswoman said.

However, critics of domestic solar energy say the flaw is that those who can afford to become self-sufficient do so, and those who cannot end up paying disproportionately more for energy.)

This week, the Climate Council presented its annual ‘state of the States’ renewable energy report. CEO Amanda McKenzie said the State survey showed a major step up from last year. All States and Territories (apart from WA), have strong renewable energy or net zero emissions targets. South Australia is building the world’s largest lithium ion battery storage facility, and over 30 large scale wind and solar projects are under construction across Australia in 2017.

“The good news is that many States are surging ahead and doing the heavy lifting for the (Federal) government.”

Last week, the Victorian government flagged new legislation which would increase its renewable energy target to 40% by 2025. There is also an intermediate plan to lift Victoria’s clean energy target to 25% by 2020.

So yes, it does seem as if individual States (and Councils) are setting their own renewable energy policies, in the absence of clear leadership at a national level.

Noosa Mayor Tony Wellington did not miss an opportunity to talk up his region’s commitment to solar panels. Noosa Shire, which de-merged from the larger Sunshine Coast Regional Council (SCRC), claims 9,000 households in Noosa Shire have solar installations, which is better than the State average. Cr Wellington told the Sunshine Coast Daily Noosa’s goal was to be ‘carbon neutral’ by 2050.

Not to be overshadowed, the SCRC opened a 15 megawatt solar farm in July. The SCRC was the first local government in Australia to offset 100% of its electricity consumption with energy from a renewable source.

But what can humble citizens do, as pro-coal lobbyists clash swords with the solar and wind farm warriors? The go-it-alone mentality arises from a failure on the part of our Federal Government to stimulate investment in the renewable sector. Australia has already promised, under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% on 2005 levels by 2030. But Tony Abbott’s call as PM to reduce the renewable energy target (and now he advocates scrapping it altogether), was unhelpful.

Whatever way you judge it, a former PM addressing the Global Warming Policy Foundation is not a good look. The last Australian PM to do so was John Howard in 2013 (when he claimed global warming had stalled and was sceptical about the possibilities of an international agreement on climate change).

There have already been reports in the UK media which seized on old quotes by Mr Abbott referring to climate science as ‘bullshit’ and recycling his coal is ‘good for humanity’ comment.

As readers will know, we spent a week out at Carnarvon Gorge in July, a time of year when it is common for the temperature to dip below zero at night. We packed accordingly, then spent four nights kicking off the doona and keeping each other awake as the mercury stayed above 15.

It should be cool at night for the Neurum Creek Folk Festival, but I packed my shortie pyjamas, just in case there is such a thing as climate change.

Solar no easy energy fix

solar-energy-power — Solar-panels-energy Photo by Bob Wilson

Solar energy is great – we’ve got eight panels on the roof, a hot water system and a portable panel in the caravan. Pretty useless on Thursday, though, with ex-cyclone Debbie sending heavy rain our way. It would be great if we’d had a battery bank under the house to store the energy from the sunny weeks we’ve been having.

But battery bank technology is yet to become affordable for the 1.6 million Aussies who have solar PV panels.

I recently wrote about Australia’s troubled National Energy Network. We cited economist Professor John Quiggin, who suggested governments buy back the power grid and give the people what they want: cheap and reliable energy. Continue reading “Solar no easy energy fix”

Government buyback could solve power crisis

Wilpena-Pound-Power-Station — Wilpena Pound solar/diesel power station SA Photo by Bob Wilson

“If you’ve got money in your pocket and a switch on the wall, we’ll keep your dirty lights on.” So goes a song by American alt-country singers Darryl Scott and Tim O’Brien about coal mining and power generation.

Their album Memories and Moments includes a version of John Prine’s Paradise, which remains the definitive song about the downsides of coal mining.

That seemed a noteworthy way to introduce the potentially dry topic of energy, be it coal-fired, hydro, nuclear or solar/wind power. Continue reading “Government buyback could solve power crisis”