20/07/2018

Life After Coal: The South Australian City Leading The Way

The Guardian - 

It was a coal town, predicted to be wiped out by the closure of two ageing power plants. Now Port Augusta has 13 renewable projects in train

The largest solar farm in the southern hemisphere lies on arid land at the foot of the Flinders Ranges, more than 300km north of Adelaide. If that sounds remote, it doesn’t do justice to how removed local residents feel from what currently qualifies as debate in Canberra.
As government MPs and national newspapers thundered over whether taxpayers should underwrite new coal-fired power, mauling advice from government agencies as they went, residents of South Australia’s Upper Spencer Gulf region have been left to ponder why decision-makers weren’t paying attention to what is happening in their backyard.
What’s happening here is going to be happening on the eastern seaboard in the next 10 years.
Sam Johnson, mayor of Port Augusta
In mid 2016, this region was on the brink, hit by the closure and near collapse of coal and steel plants. Now it’s on the cusp of a wave of construction that investors and community leaders say should place the region at the vanguard of green innovation – not just in Australia but globally. There has been an explosion in investment, with $5bn spread over the next five years. There are 13 projects in various stages of development, with more than 3,000 construction and 200 ongoing jobs. The economy of this once-deflated region has been transformed and those who live here are starting to feel hopeful again.
The Port Augusta mayor, Sam Johnson, a 32-year-old former Liberal member, is continually surprised at how resistant some are to the idea that the energy environment has changed. “You might choose to ignore what’s happening here now because we’re out of sight, out of mind, but the reality is that what’s happening here is going to be happening on the eastern seaboard in the next 10 years,” he says.
In simple terms, the Upper Spencer Gulf transition story goes like this. Port Augusta was a coal town, home to the state’s only two lignite – or brown coal – plants, Playford B and Northern. Playford B, ageing and failing, was mothballed in 2012. Northern, the larger and younger of the two, closed in May 2016 when owner Alinta Energy decided it was no longer economically viable. The Leigh Creek mine that supplied it, by then offering up mostly low-quality coal, shut at the same time. About 400 workers at the plant and the mine lost their jobs. Roughly a third retired, a third found other employment locally and a third had to leave town to find work.
At the same time, further around the gulf, the steel town of Whyalla was teetering precipitously after the owner, Arrium, put the mill in voluntary administration facing debts of more than $4bn.
A worker, Ben Williams, inspects the interconnector under construction to service the Lincoln Gap wind farm. Photograph: The Guardian 
 Yet as the doom hit, there were also rays of hope as several clean power projects were mooted for the surrounding area.
Two years on, the Port Augusta city council lists 13 projects at varying stages of development. And Whyalla has unearthed a potential saviour in British billionaire industrialist Sanjeev Gupta, who not only bought the steelworks but promised to expand it while also spending what will likely end up being $1.5bn in solar, hydro and batteries to make it viable.
Gupta says the logic behind his investment in solar and storage is simple: it’s now cheaper than coal.
Johnson says he expects the Upper Gulf region to receive $5bn in clean energy investment over the next five years. “My gut feel – and I’m an optimist – is that they will all go ahead,” he says. “They are different technologies and they are playing in different markets, so they are not competing for power purchase agreements.”
By any measure, the Bungala solar power plant is vast. Once its second stage is complete, 800,000 photovoltaic modules will cover an area the size of the Melbourne central business district. The scale is neatly summarised by Chris Rowe, the plant’s operations manager and, with maintenance officer Andrew Bartsch, our tour guide around the site. Both men recently returned to Port Augusta after working away to take up positions with Enel Green Power. One day Rowe decided to stroll back from the 275MW farm’s outer edge, weaving in and out of the rows of panels as he went. By the time he got back to his office, he had covered 12km. “At that point I thought, ‘gee, this is really something’,” he says.Bungala is nearing completion, with work on the $425m plant expected to be finished by January. Its first section started feeding into the national electricity grid in May. Further west, ground has been broken on the 59-turbine, 212MW Lincoln Gap wind farm, though progress has temporarily stalled after developer Nexif Energy discovered unexploded ordnance from historic military testing on site.
Australia's renewable energy capital
Some major projects under development or proposed for the Upper Spencer Gulf 
As Guardian Australia visited the region, the South Australian Liberal government gave final approval for a $600m hybrid wind-and-solar energy park on the south-eastern edge of Port Augusta that proponent DP Energy says will be the largest development of its kind in the country. A second stage with more solar and a 400MW battery is slated to follow.
At Cultana, just north of Whyalla, Energy Australia is investigating building the country’s first saltwater pumped hydro energy storage plant. It would draw water from the Spencer Gulf, pump it uphill when energy is plentiful and cheap, and convert it to hydro electricity at times of high demand. A decision on the project is expected in 2019.
All are potentially agenda setting, but none are as anticipated as the Aurora solar thermal power station. It is the culmination of a push that began in 2010. A research paper by advocacy group Beyond Zero Emissions formed the basis for the creation of Repower Port Augusta, a community group that built widespread support for bringing the developing technology to the region among councils, business and unions
US developer SolarReserve took notice. It plans to use a field of mirrors to heat a molten salt system inside a 234-metre tower. It will both generate electricity and store eight hours of energy that can be sent out when the sun isn’t shining. The company says the $650m plant, to be built at the Carriewerloo sheep station about 30km north of Port Augusta, will be the world’s largest solar tower with storage and provide 5% of the state’s energy needs.
The planned Aurora solar thermal plant will both generate electricity and store eight hours of energy that can be sent out when the sun isn’t shining.
 The SolarReserve vice-president, Mary Grikas, stresses the plant will operate “just like a conventional coal or gas power station, reliably generating electricity day and night – except without any emissions”.
With the increasing emphasis on “firming” power to back up variable renewables, solar thermal is seen as a potentially major player in filling the gaps, along with other fast-starting options such as pumped hydro, lithium-ion batteries and peaking gas. The 150MW Aurora plant is underpinned by a 20-year power supply contract with the South Australian government, but the company is still to finalise a $110m concessional loan with the federal government, the result of a deal with former senator Nick Xenophon in return for his support for company tax cuts.
Dan Spencer worked on the solar thermal campaign as an activist with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and Solar Citizens, relocating from Adelaide for six months to help build local support. Now a campaigner with the Australian Services Union, he is still pinching himself that it is set to become a reality. “The transition from coal hasn’t been perfect, but in a couple of years we will be seeing this incredible project that people not that long ago thought was just pie in the sky,” he says. “The local community really deserves the credit.”
Aurora is not the only solar-thermal project linked to the region. Port Augusta is already home to a small concentrated solar-thermal plant owned by Sundrop Farms that it uses to run a hydroponic greenhouse that provides Coles with tomatoes.
Also on the horizon, and just as unique design-wise, is a proposal by Solastor, chaired by former Liberal party leader John Hewson. It promises new graphite-based technology to capture solar energy and store it in a load-shifting battery. Hewson says it will be a world-class project. “Solar thermal will take the market, there’s no doubt about that,” he says.
Why are developers choosing the Upper Spencer Gulf? Investors say it has several things going for it: great sunshine; a history of electricity generation that left strong connections into the national grid; nearby industry – particularly mine developments – demanding reliable energy; strong facilitating support from the Weatherill Labor government that has continued under the new Liberal premier, Steven Marshall.
Ross Garnaut is a former Labor climate policy adviser who is now the president of Zen Energy, a solar and battery firm that has projects in the region and is 51% owned by Gupta.
“The Upper Spencer Gulf happens to be a very good place to start,” Garnaut says. “Some coal generation regions have good renewables and others don’t, and no others have them as good as Port Augusta. [But] the Port Augusta developments could be replicated in any region that has good solar and wind resources.”
The inclusion of solar thermal is crucial as it means jobs on a semi-industrial scale. Wind and solar photovoltaic plants bring plenty of jobs in construction, but few in operation. Solar thermal has more in common in operation with coal, using steam to spin a turbine. SolarReserve expects to have a 50-strong permanent workforce at the Aurora plant.
It is an important point. While enthusiasm about the new projects in the gulf is high, the shift away from coal has not been seamless – less a transition than a period of loss followed by rebirth. There remains significant disappointment, in some cases anger, about what some consider the unnecessary pain caused by a failure to plan for life after coal.
‘My advice is: learn from the Port Augusta experience. I wish the federal government would,’ says Port Augusta mayor Sam Johnson. Photograph: Che Chorley for the Guardian 
Gary Rowbottom is a case in point. A mechanical technical officer at the town’s power stations for 17 years, he joined the Repower Port Augusta campaign in 2012 and became the public face of the campaign. He was persuaded that solar thermal was the future and hopeful Alinta would be persuaded to embrace the technology to replace coal. He says he was naive about how easy that would be. When the company announced Northern’s closure earlier than expected, he was 55 and left hunting for work.
Fifty job applications and 11 interviews later, he was still looking. After about 18 months he left town to take a position on a coal plant in central Queensland. He now sees his wife, Debbie, only every couple of months.
“It’s not been ideal,” he says. “I did my best to get a job that would have kept me home. I guess it was hurting me financially, watching my redundancy steadily getting eroded away, and I had a growing sense of failure. I worry that others are going through the same thing.”
Rowbottom is buoyed by the developments under way at home, and hopeful the Aurora solar thermal plant will provide his ticket back. “It’s great it is happening. We just wish it could have happened a bit sooner,” he says. “What is hard for many of us to understand is why the closure couldn’t have been organised as a proper transition.”
Johnson, who ran unsuccessfully for Xenophon’s SA Best party at the state election, says Port Augusta is set to be the renewable energy capital of the country, with more ongoing jobs if all proposed projects in the Upper Spencer Gulf go ahead than at the former coal plant.
But he says both the former Labor state and current Coalition federal governments failed to offer the community the support it needed when the coal plant closed. The ramifications of the rapid closure were significant. Some small businesses and shut. Dirt and coal ash continue to blanket Port Augusta when the wind blows from the south-east because the former coal plant site was not properly rehabilitated. Wholesale electricity prices across the state increased more than they would have had more significant replacement generation been readied earlier.
“I’d love for people to learn from what’s happened here [about] what not to do when you’re closing a power station,” Johnson says.
Whyalla seems to have fewer issues in the wake of Gupta’s arrival in July 2017. Seeing a business opportunity that governments and publicly listed companies did not, he promised to initially spend $1bn to double the steel mill’s production and convert it to a “green steel” model he has applied in other countries. This includes using more recycled steel and investing heavily in clean energy close to the plant. He is spending $700m building two farms of solar panels, a cogeneration plant to convert the waste gases from steel production into electricity, the country’s largest lithium-ion battery and up to three pumped hydro plants in disused mining pits in the Middlebank Ranges. He says more will follow.
Both Gupta and Johnson say the message for the rest of the country is: embrace change.
Gupta says: “Be braver. Be more entrepreneurial. Take risks … It is very difficult to change things in Australia. Everyone is too stuck in their ways.”
Johnson says: “You can resist change as much as you like, but the reality is, if you’re in a community that has a coal-fired power station, its days are numbered. The market is dictating that change whether we like it or not.
“My advice is: learn from the Port Augusta experience. I wish the federal government would.”

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Judge Throws Out New York Climate Lawsuit

New York Times - John Schwartz

A federal judge has dismissed a suit brought by the city that would have forced fossil fuel companies to pay for some costs of climate change.
A power plant in Brooklyn viewed through the Manhattan Bridge. A judge ruled that climate change must be addressed by the executive branch and Congress, not by the courts. Credit Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock
A federal judge has rejected New York City’s lawsuit to make fossil fuel companies help pay the costs of dealing with climate change.
Judge John F. Keenan of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York wrote that climate change must be addressed by the executive branch and Congress, not by the courts.
While climate change “is a fact of life,” Judge Keenan wrote, “the serious problems caused thereby are not for the judiciary to ameliorate. Global warming and solutions thereto must be addressed by the two other branches of government.”
The 23-page decision is a second defeat for local and state governments seeking to use the judiciary to address problems caused by climate change. The first was in a case brought by San Francisco and Oakland that was thrown out last month by Judge William H. Alsup of Federal District Court in San Francisco.
The cases, which have generally been considered long shots, rely on the area of public nuisance under state common law, which allows courts to hold parties responsible for actions that interfere with the use of property.
Earlier attempts to use nuisance claims in lawsuits about climate change have been brought unsuccessfully under federal law in cases like American Electric Power v. Connecticut. In a unanimous 2011 decision, the Supreme Court said that the Clean Air Act displaced the federal common law of nuisance and gave jurisdiction over the issues to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The cases brought by New York, San Francisco and other governments around the country have taken a different route, pursuing nuisance doctrine at the state level. The cases argue that state common law has not been similarly displaced.
In Thursday’s New York decision, Judge Keenan ruled that the city’s federal common law claim was, in fact, displaced by the Clean Air Act, and he rejected the notion that state law could be used to address the issue, writing that it would be “illogical” to allow the claims under state law “when courts have found that these matters are areas of federal concern that have been delegated to the executive branch as they require a uniform, national solution.”
Using domestic courts to litigate issues of international greenhouse gas emissions, he wrote, “would severely infringe upon the foreign-policy decisions that are squarely within the purview of the political branches of the U.S. government.”
Judge Keenan sounded skeptical in a hearing about the case last month, arguing with a lawyer for the city, Matthew Pawa, over the role of users of fossil fuels in causing climate change — including, the judge stressed, the city itself.
“I mean, aren’t the plaintiffs using the product that is being the subject of the lawsuit and haven’t they been using it and aren’t they continuing to use it?” he asked. He cited the city’s tens of thousands of police cars, sanitation trucks, fire trucks and more. “If you go out the door and over to Foley Square,” he said, “you’re going to find police cars.”
The companies did not deny in their filings that climate change is occurring or that humans are to blame, and Judge Keenan’s opinion reflected this scientific evidence. He acknowledged that “climate science clearly demonstrates that the burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of climate change.” He also noted that the industry knew the risks of climate change from the 1950s onward, but “engaged in an overt public relations campaign intended to cast doubt on climate science.”
Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., the lead lawyer for Chevron in these suits, said “Judge Keenan got it exactly right.Trying to resolve a complex, global policy issue like climate change through litigation is ‘illogical,’ and would intrude on the powers of Congress and the executive branch to address these issues as part of the democratic process.”
In addition to Chevron, the defendants in the case were BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell.
This is not the end of the line of cases. San Francisco has announced that it will appeal Judge Alsup’s decision.Other local governments around the United States have filed similar suits, and Rhode Island this month became the first state to begin litigation.
Seth Stein, a spokesman for the New York City, said: “The mayor believes big polluters must be held accountable for their contributions to climate change and the damage it will cause New York City. We intend to appeal this decision and to keep fighting for New Yorkers who will bear the brunt of climate change.”

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Pay More Attention To Forests To Avert Global Water Crisis, Researchers Urge

Mongabay - 
  • According to a new report, the growing human population and climate change are exacerbating a looming global water crisis that has already hit home in places like Australia’s Murray Darling basin — but the crisis could potentially be averted if humans paid more attention to the links between forests and water.
  • Despite the links between the global climate, forests, people, and water, international bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have tended to view carbon sequestration as the chief role of forests and trees.
  • Report co-editor Meine van Noordwijk, chief scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Indonesia and a professor of agroforestry at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, warns that we ignore the importance of water in the climate debate at our own peril.
A paddle boat on the Murray River in South Australia
Australia’s Murray Darling basin covers more than a million square kilometers, 14 percent of the country’s landmass. It’s the site of tens of thousands of wetlands, but increasing demand for water has stretched its resources to the limit.
Many of the basin’s wetlands and floodplain forests are declining — several former wetlands and forests have even been consumed by bushfires, which are becoming more frequent every year. Yet when Australian officials sought to introduce strict water allocation rules, they met with fierce resistance from farmers in the region who depend on irrigation for their livelihood.
This is just one example of the ongoing conflicts over ecological water allocations featured in a new report released by the Global Forest Expert Panel (GFEP) on Forests and Water, an initiative led by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO).
More than seven-and-a-half billion humans currently occupy planet Earth together with an estimated three trillion trees, and both of these populations require water. According to the GFEP report, the growing human population and climate change are exacerbating a looming global water crisis that has already hit home in places like the Murray Darling basin — but the crisis could potentially be averted if humans paid more attention to the links between forests and water.
“This international effort to highlight the interlinkages between forests, water, people and climate is very timely, given the pressures we now face on both human society and natural ecosystems,” Caroline Sullivan, an environmental economist at Australia’s Southern Cross University who contributed to the report, said in a statement. “For example, here in Australia, we are facing water shortages, massive loss of biodiversity, rising incidence of floods and droughts, and loss of economic capital and human wellbeing.”


Riparian vegetation and landscape in Mongolia, a country where freshwater resources are scarce. © Alexander Buck.
Despite the links between the global climate, forests, people, and water, international bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have tended to view carbon sequestration as the chief role of forests and trees. GFEP co-chair Meine van Noordwijk, chief scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Indonesia and a professor of agroforestry at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, warns that we ignore the importance of water in the climate debate at our own peril.
“In view of the vital role water plays, even in facilitating the continuous sequestration of carbon in standing forests, a lack of understanding of landscape-scale effects amongst the forest and water science communities and policymakers is of increasing concern,” Noordwijk said in a statement.
The GFEP report finds that water should be key to discussions of the interactions between forests and the global climate, especially in areas of water scarcity, because strategies focused entirely on carbon sequestration can still have drastic and unintended consequences for water resources. For example, reforestation projects need to take into account the water needs of new foliage and prioritize the use of species that are adapted to local conditions, per the report.
Irena Creed of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada is the other co-chair of the GFEP and co-editor of the report along with Noordwijk. She says that, just as it is missing from the climate debate, water is often overlooked as an important component of forest management.
“[N]atural forests, in particular, contribute to the sustainable water supply for people in the face of growing risks,” Creed said in a statement. “And it is also possible to actively manage forests for water resilience.”
For instance, the report spotlights the example of the various countries in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region that have revived dried-up springs by applying water-sensitive land management strategies in recharge zones.
Creed added that the future impacts of climate change introduce a level of unpredictability that we will also have to learn to deal with. “Natural disturbances and human activities influence forest and water relations with their impacts, depending on their timing, magnitude, intensity and duration,” she said. “Under a changing climate, these influencing factors vary more than ever, sometimes in unanticipated ways. Forest management for the future must therefore factor in uncertainty.”
Noordwijk notes that, “In our assessment, we focused on the following key questions: Do forests matter? Who is responsible and what should be done? How can progress be made and measured?” Because the answers to those questions depend heavily on regional context, Noordwijk, Creed, and their co-authors seek to identify “globally relevant information on forest-water interactions” and highlight implications for international policymakers in the report. Specifically, they look at how a better understanding of the climate-forest-people-water connection can help achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) laid out by the UN in its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
“Governments and all stakeholders wanting to achieve the SDGs need to understand that water is central to attaining almost all of these goals, and forests are inseparably tied to water,” Hiroto Mitsugi, assistant director-general at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, said in a statement. “Policy and management responses must therefore tackle multiple water-related objectives across the range of SDGs, and take a multiple benefits approach.”
The report concludes that governance of water and forests as resources can be improved “to reduce the identified hydro-vulnerability in the context of all SDGs, and the persistent and growing threats arising from climate change. Failure to place water at the centre of discussions on forest-climate interactions and diverse forestation strategies, will have important negative impacts on policy effectiveness and ultimately on the provision of water.”
International governance can play a “highly important” role, the report states, by creating norms such as the SDGs, and providing opportunities for those norms to be discussed, negotiated, and agreed upon. “National level governance can also be radically improved,” the report adds, “in particular, by beginning to bring together competing sectors of the economy into national level institutional frameworks that encourage cooperation and negotiation across the broader scope of forest and water interactions.”
Blue Nile falls in the Tis Abay, Ethiopia. © iStock: Joel Carillet.
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National Farmers Federation Says Electricity Best Place To Make Emissions Cuts

Fairfax - Nicole Hasham

The National Farmers Federation has taken a veiled swipe at the Turnbull government's signature energy plan, suggesting proposed emissions cuts in the electricity sector lack ambition and may have unfair consequences for agriculture. 
The comments add weight to criticism that the National Energy Guarantee shifts the burden of climate action to other parts of the economy where emissions reduction is more expensive and difficult.
The new national energy policy would set emission caps and and reliability standards for electricity retailers. The government says this will reduce the risk of blackouts, curb dangerous greenhouse gas emissions and deliver lower electricity prices by encouraging more investment and supply.
The National Farmers Federation has suggested emissions reduction imposed on agriculture could have unfair consequences. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer
It would impose a 26 per cent emissions reduction target on the electricity sector by 2030, based on a 2005 baseline.
In submissions to the Energy Security Board, which devised the policy on behalf of the government, the Farmers Federation acknowledged that the target was in line with Australia’s international obligations.
But current and future conditions meant emission reductions in the electricity sector “will be larger than 26 per cent by 2020 and that further reductions in the electricity sector are likely between 2020 and 2030,” it said.
“The [federation] urges governments to be guided by the many credible and independent studies on what is likely in the electricity sector,” it said.
Reputex modelling has concluded the National Energy Guarantee will allow coal to continue its market dominance and drive up prices. Photo: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg
“Given the current trajectory of the electricity sector, opportunities for further emission reduction are available, provided they continue to meet the reliability and affordability thresholds that headline the NEG.”
Agriculture emissions largely stem from livestock and manure, and the release of nitrous oxide from pastures and crops through fertiliser use. Reducing such emissions is considered challenging and costly.
The federation’s submission said the government "should appreciate the agriculture sector has taken significant steps in reducing its carbon emissions footprint".
It said a robust emissions target “is about fairness” and the electricity sector represented “the most cost-effective ways to reduce our emissions”.
“Other sectors of the economy, such as farmers and small businesses, are price takers and would not be able to pass on the cost of an imposed emissions reductions scheme,” it said.
The federation stopped short of calling for more stringent emissions cuts for electricity but said 26 per cent “should be the minimum target”.
The Agricultural Industries Energy Taskforce echoed the concerns, saying when emissions targets were set “it is important that appropriate consideration be given to outcomes which do not unfairly shift the burden of reductions onto other sectors”.
The taskforce comprises prominent agriculture bodies including the National Irrigators Council and Cotton Australia.
Labor's spokesman on climate change and energy, Mark Butler, said the NEG would place an unfair burden on other sectors. Photo: Joe Castro
Labor’s climate change and energy spokesman Mark Butler said the 26 per cent target ignored the fact that electricity emissions had fallen since 2005 due to the renewable energy target, while other emissions in other sectors had risen.
“Under the government’s approach, the electricity sector - which has the opportunities for the least cost pollution cuts - does 10 times less than sectors like agriculture and manufacturing, that don’t have many cost effective options to cut pollution,” he said.
“This is not only unfair, it is economically irresponsible and even the electricity sector itself is calling for more ambitious pollution cuts.”
Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg said the 26 per cent target was “a pro-rata contribution out of the electricity sector as part of our overall Paris agreement”.
“We have a strong track record on meeting our international emissions reduction targets,” he said, adding that required emissions reductions to meet the 2030 target fell by 60 per cent over the past two years.
Meantime, analysis by energy market consultants Reputex, to be released on Friday, claims coal will continue to dominate the electricity market under the national energy guarantee and the 26 per cent emissions reduction target will not lower power prices.
The modelling, commissioned by Greenpeace, also found that the 45 per cent target proposed by Labor would imply a constraint on coal-fired emissions and encourage renewable investment, pushing wholesale prices down.

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