30/11/2017

Why South Australia Must, And Will, Lead World On Renewables

RenewEconomy - 


When Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk held a party in late September to celebrate a connection agreement for the already half complete Tesla big battery in South Australia, and declared the installation to be “not just talk but reality”, the timing would not have been lost on premier Jay Weatherill.
It was a year and a day after the state-wide blackout that put the whole idea of turning the state into a renewable energy laboratory into question. It was painted as a black day for wind and solar, but it turned out to be a reality check about Australia’s ageing and dysfunctional grid.
On Friday, at the start of what could be a long, hot summer, Weatherill and energy minister Tom Koutsantonis will preside over the official opening of the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery, and they are not backing off or slowing down.
When they say they intend to make the state “self sufficient” in energy, and even promise to “go it alone”, they are not kidding.
While the long-term renewable energy transformation is stalled at federal level by ideology, ignorance and plain bloody-mindedness, Weatherill and Koutsantonis are going hard into to the future that may not have seemed so easy to grasp when the lights went out last year.
What is clear now is that, having got to 50 per cent wind and solar, nearly a decade before they intended, it would be too late to turn back now. It would leave a project half baked, and allow the major generators to continue to extract their oligopoly rents, and consumers to suffer.
The Weatherill and Koutsantonis strategy is to embrace new technologies, cheap wind and solar and storage, smart software and smarter management, and put into practice the sort of scenarios envisaged by the CSIRO, Energy Networks Australia and more recently by the storage review commissioned by chief scientist Alan Finkel.
And the formal opening of the world’s biggest lithium ion battery into the world’s most elongated grid, in the state with the highest penetration of wind and solar, is the start of a whole series of ground-breaking and world-leading projects coming in the next few years.
The Tesla battery will be quickly followed by two more – at the Wattle Point wind farm (by May, 2018) and Lincoln Gap wind farm in 2019.
And on Wednesday, as we report here, South Australia announced funding for four “next wave” storage projects including lithium-ion and flow batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, thermal storage and a range of concepts and applications.


Then there is Australia’s first large-scale solar tower and molten salt facility to be built near Port Augusta, the site of the last coal-fired power station, accompanied by what could be the country’s biggest wind-solar hybrid project, with battery storage added.
Even more dramatic is the decision by the new owners of the Whyalla steelworks to build up to 1GW of solar, battery storage, pumped hydro and demand management to slash their costs and turn the argument that you can’t power heavy industry with renewables on its head.
Elsewhere, there are another two pumped hydro storage proposals, any number of new solar projects – both big and small – and other ambitious but less certain projects such as Lyon Group’s solar and storage facilities.
ElectraNet, the state’s major transmission line, estimates that there are already 650MW of what they consider “committed” wind and solar projects to add to the 1800MW of large-scale solar, and the rapidly growing rooftop solar PV capacity (already at 730MW and growing at 100MW a year).
It seems hardly fazed by the inferred jump in renewable share towards 70 per cent of local demand within the next five years. In fact, if you add in Whyalla, Aurora, and DP Energy, then the amount of wind and solar is likely to be at least doubled in the next five years.
And nor is the Australian Energy Market Operator overly fazed. Cautious yes, and since the blackout it has had reason for a wholesale rethink about its own practices and the way it manages the grid.
What was ignored in the blackouts (preventative action like dialling down the interconnector, putting plants on standby, reading weather reports) is now standard practice when a potential threat emerges.
And for all the hand wringing about the impact of wind and solar on the grid, AEMO says that once the potential shortfalls this summer are negotiated, it sees no major red flags on the horizon.
The report by The Australia Institute’s energy analyst Hugh Saddler, you can read it here, bears testimony to that – the state grid has been running at more than 63 per cent wind and solar in the last two months, with barely a glitch.
“Welcome to the 21st century,” Koutsantonis likes to say. And the state government says it will not be held back by the stalling and name-calling in Canberra, and the complete lack of any policy vision that could take advantage of Australia’s huge wind and solar resources.
Koutsantonis recently gave one of the outstanding speeches on the energy transition at a conference sponsored by what is now known as the Smart Energy Council.
We reported on some of its contents here – his take down of the Federal government’s weak-kneed and totally useless national Energy Guarantee – but the remainder of the speech is also worth noting.
In it, he pointed to the state’s troubled history, of near total reliance on local brown coal, imports, and local gas generators. It was almost entirely dependent on other states, and at the mercy of a private energy oligopoly, and dirty fossil fuels.
That’s what he wants to change. The coal is gone, and the addition of storage to the state’s huge fleet of wind farms and the highest penetration of rooftop solar will start to tip the tables against the incumbents.
He speaks of the monopoly rents extracted by the privately owned gentailers through their deliberate policy of scarcity, shutting down generation in order to increase the price of electrons.
“It’s a deliberate policy of scarcity ….Had it not been for renewable energy providing cheap affordable power, imagine the monopoly power those companies would have now.”
Koutsantonis says South Australia recognises that the next stage is storage, and points to the government tender where the 150MW Aurora solar tower and molten salt storage project in Port Augusta beat off a host of competing gas proposals.
“Don’t underestimate the shock waves that tender sent through the fossil fuel industry, not only in Australia but round the world,” he said.
It was a groundbreaking contract – and ingenious; not because it suddenly lowered the cost of solar thermal technology, but because it recognised the value of storage. And by doing that, the benefits flow through to the customer, which in this case is the government.
“Wherever you go people in industry are asking themselves: How did that solar thermal plant beat gas-fired generation in a tender for a 20-year contract?” Koutsantonis said. “They did it, and they did it hands down, and they did it without subsidy.”
The idea of self sufficiency promoted by the Labor government does not mean cutting the connection to Victoria – it couldn’t manage that. But Koutsantonis is in no hurry to build a new connector to NSW, as many suggest, including the two main transmission line owners.
He wants, first, to bring more renewables into the market, initially to reduce the reliance on that connection to Victoria, and secondly to break the oligopoly of the big gen-tailers in his own state.
Once that is done, then he might support a new link to NSW – mostly to export South Australian wind and solar resources eastward, rather than the other way.
That view was supported by US-based AES Systems, one of the biggest battery storage operators in the world. Mark Leslie, its Asia-Pacific head, says storing excess wind and solar energy in South Australia makes sense.
“We have had a very 19th Century view of how that reliability should be delivered – based around centralised generation and long power lines,” Koutsantonis said in his speech. “But we will get more reliability and at a fraction of the price with solar and storage.
“The key question is where those savings go – into the pockets of retailers and asset owners, or shared with consumers. South Australia is said to have the most expensive electricity prices in the world.
“Whether that is true enough or not does not matter. The price of electricity in Australian cities is hugely inflated – not because of the cost of the technology, but the monopoly rents of the major players.
“That is the fight of the 21st Century: How to share in those savings of increased behind the meter solar and storage, and more renewables. It will ultimately save our economy in unnecessary interconnection.
“We want to stabilise our market first, start the transition and then start exporting.
“That is our goal – we can marshal our vast resources so we can export – and we can run Olympic Dam (mine), Karapateena (mine), the Cooper Basin (oil and gas), with solar and storage resources, pumped hydro, hydrogen, and other forms of storage.
“There are lots of opportunities. Do we keep on building billion dollar transmission lines or do we start investing behind the meter?
“To me the answer is clear: virtual batteries where neighbourhoods can share, community grids, micro grids – this is way for the future.
“The difficult part is how to regulate it, and distribute the benefits. It is a difficult question but we are up for it.”
Sadly, that’s not the sort of vision you hear much from other states, and particularly not the Coalition parties.
And when, unexpectedly it is – as it was by NSW energy minister Don Harwin earlier this year when he debunked the myth of baseload – there is no follow through.
Which is ironic, because NSW is potentially at a greater threat of outage this year than South Australia, precisely because it is so dependent on 20th Century technology.

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It’s 30 Years Since Scientists First Warned Of Climate Threats To Australia

The Conversation - 

The Barossa Valley in 1987 – the year that Australians (winemakers included) received their first formal warning of climate change. Phillip Capper/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
Keen students of climate politics might recognise November 30 as the anniversary of the opening of the historic Paris climate summit two years ago. But you might not know that today also marks 30 years since Australian scientists first officially sounded the alarm over climate change, at a conference hailed as the dawn of the ongoing effort to forecast and monitor the future climate of our continent.
November 30, 1987, marked the start of the inaugural GREENHOUSE conference hosted by Monash University and attended by 260 delegates. The five-day meeting was convened as part of a new federal government plan in response to the burgeoning global awareness of the impending danger of global warming.
The conference’s convenor, the then CSIRO senior research scientist Graeme Pearman, had approached some 100 researchers in the months leading up to the conference. He gave them a scenario of likely climate change for Australia for the next 30 to 50 years, developed with his CSIRO colleague Barrie Pittock, and asked them to forecast the implications for agriculture, farming and other sectors.
As a result, the conference gave rise to a book called Greenhouse: Planning for Climate Change, which outlined rainfall changes, sea-level rise and other physical changes that are now, three decades on, all too familiar. As the contents page reveals, it also tackled impacts on society – everything from insurance to water planning, mosquito-borne diseases, and even ski fields.
Internationally, awareness of global warming had already been building for a couple of decades, and intensifying for a couple of years. While the ozone hole was hogging global headlines, a United Nations scientific meeting in Villach, Austria, in 1985 had issued a statement warning of the dangers posed by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Pearman wasn’t at that meeting, but he was familiar with the problem. As he wrote after the 1987 conference, the strength of the Villach statement was “hardly a surprise, as recent evidence had suggested more strongly than ever that climatic change is now probable on timescales of decades”.
Meanwhile, the Commission for the Future, founded by the then federal science minister Barry Jones, was seeking a cause célèbre. The Australian Academy of Science organised a dinner of scientists to suggest possible scientific candidates.
The commission’s chair, Phillip Adams, recalls that problems such as nuclear war, genetic modification, artificial intelligence, were all proposed. Finally, though:
…the last bloke to talk was right at the far end of the table. Very quiet gentleman… He said, ‘You’re all wrong – it’s the dial in my laboratory, and the laboratories of my colleagues around the world.’ He said, ‘Every day, we see the needle going up, because of what we call the greenhouse effect.‘
Summit success
The GREENHOUSE 87 conference was hailed as a great success, creating new scientific networks and momentum. It was what we academics like to call a “field-configuring event”.
British magazine New Scientist covered the conference, while the Australian media reported on Jones’s opening speech, the problems of sea-level rise, and warnings of floods, fire, cyclones and disease
The GREENHOUSE conferences have continued ever since. After a sporadic first couple of decades, the meetings have been held biennally around the country since 2005; the latest was in Hobart in 2015, as there wasn’t a 2017 edition.

What happened next?
The Greenhouse Project helped to spark and channel huge public interest in and concern about climate change in the late 1980s. But politicians fumbled their response, producing a weak National Greenhouse Response Strategy in 1992.
The Commission for the Future was privatised, the federal government declined to fund a follow-up to the Greenhouse Project, and a new campaign group called Greenhouse Action Australia could not sustain itself.
Meanwhile, the scientists kept doing what scientists do: observing, measuring, communicating, refining. Pittock produced many more books and articles. Pearman spoke to Paul Keating’s cabinet in 1994 while it briefly pondered the introduction of a carbon tax. He retired in 2004, having been reprimanded and asked to resign, ironically enough for speaking out about climate change.
As I’ve written previously on The Conversation, Australian policymakers have been well served by scientists, but have sadly taken little real notice. And lest all the blame be put onto the Coalition, let’s remember that one chief scientific adviser, Penny Sackett, quit mid-term in 2011, when Labor was in government. She has never said exactly why, but barely met Kevin Rudd and never met his successor Julia Gillard.
Our problem is not the scientists. It’s not the science. It’s the politics. And it’s not (just) the politicians, it’s the ability (or inability) of citizens’ groups to put the policymakers under sustained and irresistible pressure, to create the new institutions we need for the “looming global-scale failures” we face.

A South Australian coda
While researching this article, I stumbled across the following fact. Fourteen years and a day before the Greenhouse 87 conference had begun, Don Jessop, a Liberal senator for South Australia, made this statement in parliament:
It is quite apparent to world scientists that the silent pollutant, carbon dioxide, is increasing in the atmosphere and will cause us great concern in the future. Other pollutants from conventional fuels are proliferating other gases in the atmosphere, not the least of these being the sulphurous gases which will be causing emphysema and other such health problems if we persist with this type of energy source. Of course, I am putting a case for solar energy. Australia is a country that can well look forward to a very prosperous future if it concentrates on solar energy right now.
That was 44 years ago. No one can say we haven’t been warned.

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Banks Warned Of 'Regulatory Action' As Climate Change Bites Global Economy

The Guardian - 

Australian Prudential Regulation Authority says it is quizzing companies about their actions to assess climate risks
Australia’s banks have been urged to start adapting to climate change. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP
Australia’s financial regulator has stepped-up its warning to banks, lenders and insurers, saying climate change is already impacting the global economy, and flagged the possibility of “regulatory action”.
Geoff Summerhayes from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (Apra) revealed it had begun quizzing companies about their actions to assess climate risks, noting it would be demanding more in the future.
Apra also revealed it has established an internal working group to assess the financial risk from climate change and was coordinating an interagency initiative with the corporate watchdog Asic, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and federal Treasury to examine what risks climate change was posing to Australia’s economy.
In February, Summerhayes put banks, lenders and insurance companies on notice, urging them to start adapting to climate change and warning that the regulator would be “on the front foot on climate risk”.
Now, in the first significant update to Apra’s thinking on the topic since that speech, Summerhayes said Apra’s view was that climate change and society’s response to it “are starting to affect the global economy”.
In an extended version of a speech to the progressive Centre for Policy Development, and circulated to journalists ahead of its delivery, Summerhayes said a shift occurring in the global economy was increasingly being driven by commercial imperatives – investments, innovation and reputational factors – rather than what scientists or policymakers are saying or doing.
“Apra is not a scientific body and I can’t say with 100% conviction to what extent scientists’ predictions of increasing temperatures, rising sea levels, more frequent droughts and more intense storms will impact the Australian economy,” Summerhayes said.
“But what I can tell you with absolute certainty is that the transition to a low-carbon economy is underway and moving quickly.”
Summerhayes reported that a Sustainable Insurance Forum meeting in December was told that “that keeping the planet on track to meet the Paris agreement’s two-degree target could reduce fossil fuel revenues globally by a cumulative $33 trillion by 2040”.
“So while the debate continues about the physical risks, the transition to a low-carbon economy is underway and that means the so-called transition risks are unavoidable,” Summerhayes said.
He noted that Apra would be conducting a survey of entities it regulated over the next few months, to find out what the emerging best practice was, and that there is a global trend towards a requirement for companies to disclose climate-related risks.
Summerhayes said Apra had already begun scrutinising the financial sector in this regard and had begun coordinating with other agencies.
He said the regulator had already been asking questions of companies about what they have done in relation to his comments in February and said over time they will expect “more sophisticated answers, especially from well-resourced and complex entities”.
He said the inter-agency initiative created between Apra, Asic, the RBA and Treasury would investigate whether companies are taking steps to protect themselves and their customers from the physical, transitional and liability risks caused by climate change.
The involvement of Asic in the initiative is interesting following advice from Noel Hutley SC last year finding company directors who do not properly consider the material impacts of climate change on their business risk personal liability for breach of duty.
“So whether due to regulatory action or – more likely – pressure from investors and consumers, Australia’s financial sector can expect to see more emphasis on discourse around climate risk exposure and management,” Summerhayes said.

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A Poison In Our Island

ABC Foreign Correspondent - Mark Willacy

Rising seas caused by climate change are seeping inside a United States nuclear waste dump on a remote and low-lying Pacific atoll, flushing out radioactive substances left behind from some of the world’s largest atomic weapons tests.
The dome comes into view
The size of the dome on the sliver of land it sits on can be seen in this aerial shot. ABC: Greg Nelson

“We call it the tomb,” says Christina Aningi, the head teacher of Enewetak’s only school.
“The children understand that we have a poison in our island.”
It’s “Manit Day” on Enewetak Atoll, a celebration of Marshall Islands culture when the Pacific nation’s troubled past seems a distant memory.
Schoolchildren sit cross-legged on the coral sands as they sing of the islands and atolls, the sunshine and the breeze; “flowers and moonlight, swaying palm trees”.

A schoolgirl holds a sign reading "Happy Manit Day", a Marshall Islands' national celebration. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
A colourful sign welcomes visitors to Enewetak Atoll. ABC News
Kids have grown up on Enewetak but some of their parents can remember returning to the island. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
Locals hope their return to Enewetak will not be short lived, but climate change threatens to change that. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
They were born decades after the last nuclear explosion ripped through the warm Pacific air with a thunderous roar. But it’s hard to escape the long echo of the bombs.
“Gone are the days when we live in fear, fear of the bombs, guns and nuclear,” they sing.
“This is the time ... this is my country, this is my land.”
But those old fears, thought to be long buried, are threatening to reawaken in their island paradise.


On an atoll in the far-flung west of the Marshall Islands, halfway between Australia and Hawaii, sits “the dome”. Approaching from the water, it’s hard to appreciate the true scale of the concrete vault, with its shallow profile obscured by palm trees and scrub. But from the air it looks like a giant flying saucer has crashed on the tip of a deserted island. Buried beneath this vast disc is 85,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste — a toxic legacy from the dawning of the thermonuclear age.

In the late 1970s, Runit Island, on the remote Enewetak Atoll, was the scene of the largest nuclear clean-up in United States history.
Highly contaminated debris left over from dozens of atomic weapons tests was dumped into a 100-metre wide bomb crater on the tip of the uninhabited island.
US Army engineers sealed it up with a half-metre thick concrete cap almost the size of an Australian football ground, then left the island.
Now with sea levels rising, water has begun to penetrate the dome.

A shot of the dome in the 1970s, shortly after it was constructed. Supplied: Ken Kasik
Soldiers digging nuclear waste on Enewetak Atoll. Supplied: Ken Kasik
Getting checked by the Geiger Counter. Supplied: Ken Kasik
A report commissioned by the US Department of Energy in 2013 found that radioactive materials were leeching out, threatening the already tenuous existence of Enewetak locals.
“That dome is the connection between the nuclear age and the climate change age,” says Marshall Islands climate change activist Alson Kelen.
“It’ll be a very devastating event if it really leaks. We’re not just talking the Marshall Islands, we’re talking the whole Pacific.”
The dome on Runit Island with a crater left behind by another nuclear test. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
Looking straight down on the dome and its nearby water-filled crater. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
The dome is unguarded on a low-lying Pacific atoll. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
The United States detonated 43 atomic bombs around the island chain in the 1940s and 50s.
Four of Enewetak’s 40 islands were completely vaporised by the tests, with one thermonuclear blast leaving a two-kilometre-wide crater where an island had been just moments before.
Enewetak’s population had been re-located to another island in the Marshalls ahead of the tests.
A nuclear explosion on Runit Island, Marshall Islands. Supplied
Marshall Islands climate change activist Alson Kelen, who is worried about the future of the dome. ABC: Greg Nelson     
Residents would only be allowed to return home more than three decades later — some on the island today can still recall returning to Enewetak as children.
As part of the clean-up process, Washington set aside funds to build the dome as a temporary storage facility, and initial plans included lining the porous bottom of its crater with concrete.
But in the end, that was deemed too expensive.
“The bottom of the dome is just what was left behind by the nuclear weapons explosion,” says Michael Gerrard, the chair of Columbia University’s Earth Institute in New York.
“It’s permeable soil. There was no effort to line it. And therefore, the seawater is inside the dome.”
“That dome is the connection between the nuclear age and the climate change age.”
“That dome is the connection between the nuclear age and the climate change age.”
Marshall Islands climate change activist Alson Kelen
The sun sets in a riot of gold over the Pacific with Enewetak Atoll in the foreground, Marshall Islands, October 2017. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
Locals rarely set foot on Runit Island. They’re fearful of the lingering radiation from the dome and because it’s been ruled off-limits.
To this day, only three islands along Enewetak Atoll’s slender rim are considered safe enough for human habitation.
“[The other islands were] too hot, too radioactive to worry about,” says Giff Johnson, publisher of the Marshall Islands Journal, the country’s only newspaper.
“There was no point [cleaning them up].”
After the fall-out from the atomic testing, life for the people of Enewetak went from a traditional existence of fishing and subsistence living to one where the waters that once supported their livelihoods were now polluted.
Two girls smile for the camera on Enewetak. Across the atoll's blue lagoon, a few hours by boat, lies the dome. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
On the main island, where most of the atoll’s few hundred people now live, concerns about the radioactive contamination of the food chain has seen a shift away from a traditional diet of fish and coconut.
The US Department of Energy has even banned exports of fish and copra from Enewetak because of the ongoing contamination.
The vast bulk of foodstuffs are now brought into the island by barge, and that means islanders are reliant on imported canned and processed goods like Spam that have triggered health problems such as diabetes.
The shelves of Enewetak’s only store are largely filled with American brand chocolate bars, lollies and potato chips.
A rusty hulk offshore from a green, palm tree-clad island. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
US Army equipment is a reminder of Enewetak's nuclear past. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
Grave stones amid the palm trees. ABC News
Locals sometimes visit Runit to scavenge from scrap copper left behind by the Americans, selling it for a few dollars to a Chinese merchant.
For 30 years, Jack Niedenthal has helped the people of neighbouring Bikini Atoll fight for compensation for the 23 atomic tests conducted there.
“To me, it’s like this big monument to America’s giant f--k up,” says Niedenthal.
“This could cause some really big problems for the rest of mankind if all that goes underwater, because it’s plutonium and cement.”
Some of the debris buried beneath the dome includes plutonium-239, a fissile isotope used in nuclear warheads which is one of the most toxic substances on earth.
It has a radioactive half-life of 24,100 years.


From the top of the dome, the view is dominated by ocean — the rolling waves of the Pacific to the east, the calm azure surface of the atoll lagoon to the west. A deep bomb crater from another atomic test is carved into the coral just a few metres away. Despite Runit Island being officially off-limits, the dome lies unmarked and unguarded. Its position on the very edge of the shoreline reinforces just how vulnerable and exposed this nuclear waste dump is.

Christina Aningi, the head teacher of Enewetak's only school. ABC: Greg Nelson     
Cracks are visible in the dome’s surface and brackish liquid pools around its rim.
“Already the sea sometimes washes over [the dome] in a large storm,” says Columbia University’s Michael Gerrard.
“The United States Government has acknowledged that a major typhoon could break it apart and cause all of the radiation in it to disperse.”
While Professor Gerrard would like the US to reinforce the dome, a 2014 US Government report says a catastrophic failure of the structure would not necessarily lead to a change in the contamination levels in the waters surrounding it.
“We call it the tomb. The children understand that we have a poison in our island.”
Christina Aningi, the head teacher of Enewetak's only school
Locals gather inside the church on Enewetak Island. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
A comforting note of assurance stapled to the wall. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
A new generation faces an uncertain future on the island. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
Locals gather around a police ute. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
“I’m persuaded that the radiation outside the dome is as bad as the radiation inside the dome,” says Professor Gerrard.
“And therefore, it is a tragic irony that the US Government may be right, that if this material were to be released that the already bad state of the environment around there wouldn’t get that much worse.”
But that is cold comfort to the people of Enewetak, who fear they may have to be relocated once again if the dome collapses or crumbles.
“If it does [crack] open most of the people here will be no more,” says Ms Aningi.
 “This is like a graveyard for us, waiting for it to happen.”
Sunset on the beach on Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands, October 2017. Foreign Correspondent: Greg Nelson
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