Lethal Heating: 08/04/16

04/08/2016

Solar, Wind, Storage And Big Data: Why Energy May Soon Be Free

Renew Economy - Giles Parkinson

Global investment bank Citi is predicting that the combination of near zero-variable cost energy sources such as solar and wind, along with smart analytics and "big data", may deliver what the nuclear industry promised nearly half a century ago – free energy.
"The notion of free energy came to prominence in the 1960s, as nuclear fusion was touted as a way to provide free energy," Citi writes in the latest of its "Disrutive Innovations" series, in a section focusing on Big Data and the energy industry.
When those claims were made about nuclear fusion, the technology was in the embryonic stage, and it turned out nuclear energy wasn't free at all, but incredibly expensive, and getting more so by the year.
But wind and solar, along with demand and storage optimisation, may finally deliver on that promise, Citi says.
"Big Data and advanced analytics are developing rapidly to improve forecasting, automation, customisation, and the democratisation of energy," it says in its reports.
"The end result is that we are producing more energy with fewer resources ….. the goal of dramatically lowering energy costs for all, with the possibility of free energy in some corners, may finally come to fruition."
Citi is not the only research institution making such forecasts, but it is in sharp contrast to the general public discussion in Australia, which is dominated by those who insist that the old centralised energy system – slow, inefficient and expensive – will not and cannot be replaced by new technologies.
South Australia is now the focus of that debate, and the push-back against wind and solar by conservatives and, of course, vested interests, seeking to protect their sunk assets is striking.
But Australia is already well down the path to this transformation, given its high level of rooftop solar and the fact that it is considered to be the world-leading market for household battery storage, and smart software.
Already, it has more than 1.5 million households and businesses with rooftop solar, totalling more than 5GW, and many will soon add battery storage. Smart software will allow households and businesses to pool their resources, and trade with each other – if regulators allow.
Citi says this "democratisation" of energy could see renewables and distributed energy resources (DERs) proliferate at the local level, and that will mean fewer new power plants.
Consumers could eventually "trade" energy with others, in the form of "transactive energy" – a concept that is already being trialled by utilities and community energy groups in Australia.

This, of course, has profound implications for current energy industry business models. Instead of investing in large fixed assets, as they have done for the best part of a century, Citi suggests the utilities of the future will become distribution service platform providers.
The state of New York is already going down this path through its remarkable REV (Reforming the Energy Vision) program, and some analysts want this model adopted in Australia.
Citi says REV is one of the most ambitious regulations put forth by a regulatory agency in changing the business models of utilities. The focus is entirely on distributed energy, creating the right regulations and rules for the appropriate platform and operations, as well as system integration and operation.
In the distributed, decentralised world, particularly in the electricity space where the supply and demand of electricity has to match instantly, ensuring a smooth and optimal operation of the grid necessarily requires advanced analytics to process the vast amount of data generated.
"Technology companies could provide energy network optimising software or even operate platforms and energy companies that transition to providing services could become asset-light, as they could control how energy is routed and optimised," Citi suggests.
"Third-parties or homeowners would become energy providers through Distributed Energy and auto companies would become service and energy providers (e.g. through their battery technology)."
Citi says the fundamental technologies of solar panels, wind turbines, converters, and energy storage have been around for years, but having nearly half or more of total electricity supplied by wind or solar was previously thought to be impossible due to grid integration issues.
But Big Data and advanced analytics are helping the electric grid to function more seamlessly, enabling wind and solar utilization and penetration rates to rise more sharply, and integrating more distributed generation.
A lot of this comes down to predictive software. "Having more precise estimates of renewable generation allows the grid to schedule in the appropriate amount of backup generation and deploy other measures, such as demand-side management."
One example is the creation of "virtual power plants", which pool the output and resources of numerous solar and storage arrays that could be located in households, businesses, or CBD buildings or factories.
The software can bring these devices together and operate them as if they were a single power plant. Citi says these are critical because they negate the traditional response to rising demand in an area by building a new centralised power plant or adding new infrastructure.
Recently, the New York regulator denied Con Edison's request for a $US1 billion upgrade in resolving equipment overloading. Instead, ConEd created the BQDM (Brooklyn Queens Demand Management) program that relied on both traditional utility and non-traditional customer/utility improvements at a total estimated cost of only $US200 million.
Those sorts of cheaper alternatives are being considered in Australia, but the regulators have been slow to catch on – and when large spending cuts are recommended the regulator is taken to court by the utilities.
Citi says this requires a whole new way of thinking. It would require pricing energy and ancillary services at the neighborhood or an even more micro level.
"What does the future of energy look like?" the Citi report asks.
"Producers could tap previously stranded assets and do it quickly; utilities could be winners but only if they transform with the times; renewables, despite intermittencies, could operate as smoothly as traditional fossil energy; emissions should be limited as energy demand is optimized and renewables proliferate. Trillions of dollars are at stake.
"This is a story of how software will transform a hardware-dominated sector; it is the kind of creative destruction that demands fundamental changes in an entire sector."

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Banks 'Behind The Curve' On Renewable Energy Lending

Fairfax - Angela Macdonald-Smith

The big four banks are still lending billions of dollars to the coal and gas sectors, even after the Paris climate accord. Andrew Quilty

Australia's big four banks have poured almost four times as much money into the fossil fuel industry as the renewable energy sector since the landmark Paris climate accord last December, according to campaign group Market Forces.
The four banks have lent $5.6 billion to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris summit, compared with $1.5 billion for renewables, the group finds.
While lending to new coal projects has dwindled, billions of dollars are still being invested in the sector through corporate loans, refinancing for coal ports in Queensland and NSW, and lending for gas projects, according to Julien Vincent, executive director of Market Forces.
The banks each made an overarching commitment to the 2-degree climate goal before the Paris summit.

But according to the green group Market Forces, Commonwealth Bank has given $2.2 billion of lending support to the coal and gas sector since then. It is followed by ANZ with $2.1 billion, while Westpac has lent $900 million and National Australia Bank $400 million.
Market Forces calculates that since the Paris accord, Westpac has loaned $11.60 to the fossil fuel sector for every $1 invested in renewable energy.

For ANZ the figure is $10.10, and for Commonwealth Bank $4.25. The figures are based on data from project finance databases and other financial information providers.
NAB is the only one of the four to have a positive ratio in terms of lending, even though globally clean energy secured twice as much financing as fossil fuels in 2015, says Market Forces, citing figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The group has released the findings as it steps up a campaign for customers to leave their banks in protest at the lending practices.
It says Australia's major banks are "behind the curve globally", and lagging peers in the US and Europe that have come out with explicit policies to limit their exposure to the coal sector.
An NAB spokeswoman reiterated the bank's commitment to its climate change pledges, but declined to comment on the findings, which it has yet to see.
A Westpac spokeswoman pointed out that the bank's total exposure to the mining sector dropped by $2.6 billion in the six months to March 30, to $11.8 billion, and said the proportion of renewable energy financing had increased in the total generation portfolio to 61 per cent.

Other banks were restricted in commenting due to the blackout period before earnings.
The fossil fuel loans include a $512 million loan arranged by ANZ to Papua New Guinea gas explorer InterOil to drill the Elk-Antelope gas field, an inter-company loan arranged by NAB for the Australian subsidiary of coalminer Peabody Energy, and lending from Commonwealth Bank to US company Cobalt International Energy for the development of the Heidelberg deep-water oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico.
"While banks say they are conducting a whole-of-group assessment as to how best to tackle the issue in all its complexity, we're saying that shouldn't preclude them from taking simple, obvious steps like avoiding loans that expand the size of a sector that clearly needs to contract," Mr Vincent said.
He pointed to examples such as Bank of America, which has committed to reduce its "credit exposure" to coal mining companies and to divisions of diversified miners that focus on coal.

In Europe, Societe Generale's climate policy includes a commitment to end project financing for coal mines and coal-fired power plants in high-income OECD countries. ING also pledges not to finance new coal-fired power plants or accept new clients that earn more than half their revenues from coal-fired generators.

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The Climate Crisis Is Already Here – But No One’s Telling Us

The Guardian - George Monbiot

The media largely relegate the greatest challenge facing humanity to footnotes as industry and politicians hurtle us towards systemic collapse of the planet

'Arctic sea ice covered a smaller area last winter than in any winter since records began.' Photograph: Alamy

What is salient is not important. What is important is not salient. The media turns us away from the issues that will determine the course of our lives, and towards topics of brain-melting irrelevance.
This, on current trends, will be the hottest year ever measured. The previous record was set in 2015; the one before in 2014. Fifteen of the 16 warmest years have occurred in the 21st century. Each of the past 14 months has beaten the global monthly temperature record. But you can still hear people repeating the old claim, first proposed by fossil fuel lobbyists, that global warming stopped in 1998.
Arctic sea ice covered a smaller area last winter than in any winter since records began. In Siberia, an anthrax outbreak is raging through the human and reindeer populations because infected corpses locked in permafrost since the last epidemic in 1941 have thawed. India has been hammered by cycles of drought and flood, as withering heat parches the soil and torches glaciers in the Himalayas. Southern and eastern Africa have been pitched into humanitarian emergencies by drought. Wildfires storm across America; coral reefs around the world are bleaching and dying.
Throughout the media, these tragedies are reported as impacts of El Niño: a natural weather oscillation caused by blocks of warm water forming in the Pacific. But the figures show that it accounts for only one-fifth of the global temperature rise. The El Niño phase has now passed, but still the records fall.

People wait to fill water containers during a drought in Latur, India, April 2016. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Eight months ago in Paris, 177 nations promised to try to ensure the world's average temperature did not rise by more than 1.5C above the pre-industrial level. Already it has climbed by 1.3C – faster and further than almost anyone predicted. In one respect, the scientists were wrong. They told us to expect a climate crisis in the second half of this century. But it's already here.
If you blinked you would have missed the reports, but perhaps the most striking aspect of the Democratic platform (the party's manifesto) approved in Philadelphia last week was its position on climate change. Hillary Clinton's campaign now promises a national and global mobilisation "on a scale not seen since World War II". She will seek to renegotiate trade deals to protect the living world, to stop oil drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic, and to ensure the US is "running entirely on clean energy by mid-century".
There are some crashing contradictions in the platform. To judge by one bizarre paragraph, the Democrats believe they can solve climate change by expanding roads and airports. It boasts about record sales in the car industry and promises to cut "red tape", which is the term used by corporate lobbyists for the public protections they hate. But where it is good it is very good, reflecting the influence of Bernie Sanders and the nominees he proposed to the drafting committee.
Donald Trump, on the other hand – well, what did you expect? Climate change is a "con-job" and a "hoax" that was "created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive". His manifesto reads like a love letter to the coal industry. Coal, it says, "is an abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource". He will defend the industry by rejecting the Paris agreement, stopping funds for the UN's climate change work, ditching President Obama's clean power plan and forbidding the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon dioxide.
What's most alarming about the platform is that Trump didn't write it: the deranged and contradictory bluster of the Republican party leadership is a collective effort. But at least it clears something up. Though boasting of his great wealth and power, he poses as the friend of the common citizen and the enemy of corporate capital. On every significant issue in the manifesto, corporate capital wins. To read it is to discover how the land lies and where the lies land.

'Trump's manifesto reads like a love letter to the coal industry.' A coal-fired power station near Page, Arizona. Photograph: Alamy

Incidentally, Trump's executives don't share his belief that climate change is a hoax. His golf resort in Ireland is seeking permission to build a wall – not to keep out Mexicans, but to defend his business from rising sea levels, erosion and storm surges caused, the application says, by global warming. If you can buy your way out of trouble, who cares about the other 7 billion?
It's not that the media failed to mention what the two platforms said about humanity's existential crisis. But the coverage was, for the most part, relegated to footnotes, while the evanescent trivia of the conventions led the bulletins and filled the front pages. There are many levels of bias in the media, but the most important is the bias against relevance.
In Britain, the media largely failed to hold David Cameron to account for his extravagant green promises and shocking record as prime minister. His successor, Theresa May, has made some terrible appointments, but the new climate change minister, Nick Hurd, an adult among her pet buffoons, is an interesting choice as he seems to understand the subject. The basic problem, however, is that the political costs of failure are so low.
To pretend that newspapers and television channels are neutral arbiters of such matters is to ignore their place at the corrupt heart of the establishment. At the US conventions, to give one small example, the Washington Post, the Atlantic and Politico were paid by the American Petroleum Institute to host a series of discussions, at which climate science deniers were represented. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but the purse is mightier than the pen.
Why should we trust multinational corporations to tell us the truth about multinational corporations? And if they cannot properly inform us about the power in which they are embedded, how can they properly inform us about anything?
If humanity fails to prevent climate breakdown, the industry that bears the greatest responsibility is not transport, farming, gas, oil or even coal. All of them can behave as they do, shunting us towards systemic collapse, only with a social licence to operate. The problem begins with the industry that, wittingly or otherwise, grants them this licence: the one for which I work.

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Turnbull Government Order CSIRO U-turn Towards Climate Science

Fairfax - Nicole Hasham | Peter Hartcher

New Science Minister Greg Hunt has ordered a major U-turn in the direction of the CSIRO, reviving climate research as a bedrock function just months after the national science agency slashed climate staff and programs.
Mr Hunt, the former environment minister, told Fairfax Media he has instructed CSIRO's executives and board to "put the focus back on climate science", adding: "This is not an optional component, it's critical".

Greg Hunt with Dr Peter Czabotar at the launch of the Turnbull government's $500 million Biomedical Translation Fund at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research on Wednesday. Photo: Eddie Jim

The new strategy, to be devised over the next three months, includes 15 new climate science jobs and research investment worth $37 million over 10 years.
"I've issued a ministerial directive … that we will make climate science a core activity, that we will strengthen and build capacity," Mr Hunt said.
The 15 jobs would create a long-term platform for climate analysis and forecasting.
"This is emphasising the importance of long-term climate science as a bedrock function of the CSIRO … this is setting the direction for CSIRO for the coming two decades," Mr Hunt said.
Severe cuts to CSIRO programs announced in February, including massive proposed staff losses in climate change monitoring and modelling, prompted criticism that the organisation had succumbed to a right-wing agenda that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull assumed from Tony Abbott.
The government denied this, insisting the CSIRO was an independent statutory agency, which set its own priorities.
The CSIRO cuts came despite the agency's own projections last year showing Australia could be among the nations hardest hit by global warming at the end of this century.
Justifying the decision in February in an email to staff, CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall said climate change has been established and the agency's focus should move to mitigation and adaptation.
Mr Hunt, who assumed the Industry, Innovation and Science portfolio from Christopher Pyne, said the fresh display of support for climate science was "a shared view of the Prime Minister … no question", and that the directive drew on Mr Hunt's previous environment role.
The new CSIRO strategy will be developed in consultation with the scientific community and Chief Scientist Alan Finkel.
When the CSIRO cuts were revealed, it was initially feared that the Oceans and Atmosphere division, which held the bulk of climate scientists, would lose most of its 140 staff.
However, this figure was whittled down to about 35 climate-science jobs across two key research programs. It is understood some voluntary redundancies have already been accepted.
The pared-back job losses came after sustained criticism, including from top NASA scientist Brent Holben, who said CSIRO risked undermining the world's ability to monitor and predict climate change.
Mr Hunt has met Dr Finkel, Mr Marshall and CSIRO chairman David Thodey to discuss the new direction.
"[Climate science] will be a priority and the senior executive and the board know this now, clearly," Mr Hunt said.
A new Climate Science Centre in Hobart, announced by the CSIRO in April, will form part of the new strategy.
Mr Hunt said he would not "outsource" the science role to his assistant minister Craig Laundy, and indicated he would soon release a significant science statement.
"I will be the minister for science … I want to be the chief science advocate in the government,' he said.
Dr Finkel said in February he only learned of the cuts when they were made public, and told Senate estimates that "Australia needs a continuous and highly effective commitment to climate science, both to meet our national needs and to fulfil our international commitments".
On Wednesday, he told Fairfax Media that "Australia needs a strong climate research capability".
"I welcome the Minister's support to strengthen Australian climate science capacity so we can respond to national and global challenges and inform our mitigation options," he said.

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