11/02/2019

Australia Could Be 100% Renewables By 2032 At Current Rate Of Wind And Solar Installs

Renew Economy - 



Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of Renew Economy, and is also the founder of One Step Off The Grid and founder/editor of The Driven. Giles has been a journalist for 35 years and is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review.
A new study from the Australian National University school of electrical engineering says Australia could reach the equivalent of 100 per cent renewables by 2032, if the current rates of installation of wind and solar continued.
The research, led by Professor Andrew Blakers and Dr Matthew Stock, says the technology and infrastructure needed to support that amount of wind and solar can also be put in place within that time frame.
The most important thing the government of the day can do is to get out of the way, although it will need some considerable facilitation and co-ordination to get everything built and in place in time.
The ANU study says Australia is installing solar PV and wind 4-5 times faster per capita than China, Japan, the EU and the US, and is on track to reach 50 per cent renewable electricity by 2024 – far ahead of Labor’s federal target date of 2030, which the Coalition government describes as “reckless.”
Blakers says this has important implications for Australia. It would mean that not only would the electricity sector meet its “share” of the current Paris climate commitment within a few years, something that is already locked in, but could also meet the economy-wide target of 26-28 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030.
It’s important to note here that other experts question this assumption on economy wide emissions and whether this would be enough to deliver Australia’s weak Paris treaty emissions target,  and they point out that Australia will be under pressure to increase its target in coming years.

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See this Tweet above from Dylan McConnell from the Climate and Energy College, and a response from ANU climate expert Frank Jotzo below which worries about complacency, particularly given that energy minister Angus Taylor reacted to the research by claiming it was proof the government was doing enough.

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Jotzo writes in more detail here about the challenges facing Australia on emissions and what the government needs to do.
In any case the study’s authors make the point that because of the low cost of renewables, it could do achieve its emissions reductions at little or no additional cost to business as usual.



“There is a large PV and wind pipeline which augers well for continued deployment of PV and wind at rates above 6GW per year,” Blakers and Stock say in their report.
“We anticipate that this will continue for many years, provided that energy policy is not actively hindering development of renewables.”
That assumption that the government is minded to “get out of the way” and facilitate this deployment, is a very big “IF”.
The current Coalition government has done the opposite, and analysts warn that the industry risks “falling off a cliff” with the current government.
It engineered a capital strike and an investment trough from 2013 to 2016 by threatening to scrap the renewable energy target, and then finally reducing it. The current wind and solar boom has come despite the government’s intentions, rather than because of it.
And it appears keen to repeat the dose.
Energy minister Angus Taylor insists there is already too much wind and solar in the grid, and his policies – the “big stick” proposal to control prices and force divestment, and the proposed tender for 24/7 power – are being criticised by virtually everyone for being rushed, ill-thought-out and likely to delay investment rather than encourage it.
Blakers says that because of the falling cost of solar PV and wind energy, it is now clearly below the cost of building a new coal or gas plant, and similar to the cost of some existing coal plants – an assumption that is also shared by the CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator.
“The net cost of achieving deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions is approximately zero,” the researchers say, although they note that large-scale renewable transition entails tens of billions of dollars to be spent in rural Australia.”
Blakers and Stock say that stabilising the electricity grid when it has 50-100 per cent renewable energy is straightforward using off-the-shelf technologies already widely used in Australia, including storage (pumped hydro and batteries), demand management and stronger interstate transmission (to smooth out the effects of local weather).
The ANU researchers have previously produced studies that illustrate how that can be done, and have also prepared detailed reports on the prospect of pumped hydro across the country.
Numerous projects – including Snowy 2.0, Tasmania’s “battery of the nation”, and any number of smaller pumped hydro developments in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia – are on the drawing boards and having feasibility studies done.
“Most developing countries lie in the low-latitude sunbelt and can readily follow the Australian renewable energy path rather than go through a fossil fuel era – a bit like Africa skipping landline phones and transitioning directly to mobiles,” the researchers say.
“Renewable energy offers real hope for massive avoidance of greenhouse emissions and preservation of a livable planet.”
The ANU research notes that the current policy boost, the large-scale renewable energy target, will be met by 2020 (if not earlier), but deployment could still continue at rapid rates because:
Large-scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) will continue to be issued to accredited new generating capacity by the CER after 2020 out till 2030. (Although one has to question what value those LGCs will have).
Renewable investment opportunities are broadening beyond the wholesale market, with companies increasingly realising the economic and environmental credential benefits of renewable energy supply contracts.
For example, Sanjeev Gupta has announced that he will add 1GW behind the meter at the Whyalla steelworks and Sun Metals in Townsville has already installed 125 MW of solar generating capacity.
The price of wind and PV will continue to fall rapidly, opening up further market opportunities, as well as placing downwards pressure on electricity prices.
Increased deployment of electric vehicles in place of internal combustion vehicles and increased deployment of electric heat pumps in place of gas for water and space heating is expected to increase electricity demand.
Since nearly all new generation capacity in Australia is PV and wind, a sharp increase in demand is expected to be met by a large increase in the deployment rate of PV and wind.
Retiring existing coal power stations will be replaced by PV and wind.
“This paper demonstrates that Australia’s renewable energy industry has the capacity to deliver deep and rapid emissions reductions,” the authors say.
“Direct government support for PV and wind would help enhance industry capability but is no longer critical. What is crucial is government policy certainty that will enable the renewable industry to realise its potential to deliver deep emissions cuts.
“The most useful support that the government could provide is provision of high voltage interconnectors between states and to renewable energy zones (containing large numbers of PV and wind farms).
“This is akin to government provision of toll roads to resolve road traffic bottlenecks and the NBN to resolve internet traffic bottlenecks.
“Support for storage would also be very useful, for example through Snowy 2.0 or similar schemes.”
The scenario painted by ANU is based on capacity factors of 40 per cent for wind, just 21 per cent for solar (DC), and 15 per cent for rooftop solar. Blakers notes these are conservative estimates.
Behind-the-meter installations also play a crucial role, continuing at its current quick rates and accounting for around one-third of all generation by the early 2030s – again, this is quite consistent with other studies.
The ANU report says the techniques for balancing and managing a 100 per cent renewables grid are relatively straightforward, and not as expensive as many suggest.
“The cost of hourly balancing of the Australian electricity grid is modest: about $5/MWh for a renewable energy fraction of 50%, rising to $25/MWh for 100% renewables,” it says.
“Thus, the cost of the required storage and transmission is considerably smaller than the cost of the corresponding wind and solar farms. Australia’s coal power stations are old and are becoming less reliable, and transition to a modern renewable energy system can improve grid stability.”

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The Truth About Big Oil And Climate Change

The Economist - Editorial

Even as concerns about global warming grow, energy firms are planning to increase fossil-fuel production. None more than ExxonMobil
Luca D'Urbino
In America, the world’s largest economy and its second biggest polluter, climate change is becoming hard to ignore. Extreme weather has grown more frequent. In November wildfires scorched California; last week Chicago was colder than parts of Mars.
Scientists are sounding the alarm more urgently and people have noticed—73% of Americans polled by Yale University late last year said that climate change is real. The left of the Democratic Party wants to put a “Green New Deal” at the heart of the election in 2020. As expectations shift, the private sector is showing signs of adapting. Last year around 20 coal mines shut. Fund managers are prodding firms to become greener. Warren Buffett, no sucker for fads, is staking $30bn on clean energy and Elon Musk plans to fill America’s highways with electric cars.
Yet amid the clamour is a single, jarring truth. Demand for oil is rising and the energy industry, in America and globally, is planning multi-trillion-dollar investments to satisfy it. No firm embodies this strategy better than ExxonMobil, the giant that rivals admire and green activists love to hate. As our briefing explains, it plans to pump 25% more oil and gas in 2025 than in 2017. If the rest of the industry pursues even modest growth, the consequence for the climate could be disastrous.
ExxonMobil shows that the market cannot solve climate change by itself. Muscular government action is needed. Contrary to the fears of many Republicans (and hopes of some Democrats), that need not involve a bloated role for the state.
For much of the 20th century, the five oil majors—Chevron, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Total—had more clout than some small countries. Although the majors’ power has waned, they still account for 10% of global oil and gas output and 16% of upstream investment. They set the tone for smaller, privately owned energy firms (which control another quarter of investment). And millions of pensioners and other savers rely on their profits. Of the 20 firms paying the biggest dividends in Europe and America, four are majors.
In 2000 BP promised to go “beyond petroleum” and, on the face of it, the majors have indeed changed. All say that they support the Paris agreement to limit climate change and all are investing in renewables such as solar. Shell recently said that it would curb emissions from its products. Yet ultimately you should judge companies by what they do, not what they say.
According to ExxonMobil, global oil and gas demand will rise by 13% by 2030. All of the majors, not just ExxonMobil, are expected to expand their output. Far from mothballing all their gasfields and gushers, the industry is investing in upstream projects from Texan shale to high-tech deep-water wells.
Oil companies, directly and through trade groups, lobby against measures that would limit emissions. The trouble is that, according to an assessment by the IPCC, an intergovernmental climate-science body, oil and gas production needs to fall by about 20% by 2030 and by about 55% by 2050, in order to stop the Earth’s temperature rising by more than 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level.
It would be wrong to conclude that the energy firms must therefore be evil. They are responding to incentives set by society. The financial returns from oil are higher than those from renewables. For now, worldwide demand for oil is growing by 1-2% a year, similar to the average over the past five decades—and the typical major derives a minority of its stockmarket value from profits it will make after 2030. However much the majors are vilified by climate warriors, many of whom drive cars and take planes, it is not just legal for them to maximise profits, it is also a requirement that shareholders can enforce.
Some hope that the oil companies will gradually head in a new direction, but that looks optimistic. It would be rash to rely on brilliant innovations to save the day. Global investment in renewables, at $300bn a year, is dwarfed by what is being committed to fossil fuels. Even in the car industry, where scores of electric models are being launched, around 85% of vehicles are still expected to use internal-combustion engines in 2030.
So, too, the boom in ethical investing. Funds with $32trn of assets have joined to put pressure on the world’s biggest emitters. Fund managers, facing a collapse in their traditional business, are glad to sell green products which, helpfully, come with higher fees. But few big investment groups have dumped the shares of big energy firms. Despite much publicity, oil companies’ recent commitments to green investors remain modest.
And do not expect much from the courts. Lawyers are bringing waves of actions accusing oil firms of everything from misleading the public to being liable for rising sea levels. Some think oil firms will suffer the same fate as tobacco firms, which faced huge settlements in the 1990s. They forget that big tobacco is still in business. In June a federal judge in California ruled that climate change was a matter for Congress and diplomacy, not judges.
The next 15 years will be critical for climate change. If innovators, investors, the courts and corporate self-interest cannot curb fossil fuels, then the burden must fall on the political system. In 2017 America said it would withdraw from the Paris agreement and the Trump administration has tried to resurrect the coal industry. Even so, climate could yet enter the political mainstream and win cross-party appeal. Polls suggest that moderate and younger Republicans care. A recent pledge by dozens of prominent economists spanned the partisan divide.
The key will be to show centrist voters that cutting emissions is practical and will not leave them much worse off. Although the Democrats’ emerging Green New Deal raises awareness, it almost certainly fails this test as it is based on a massive expansion of government spending and central planning (see Free exchange).
The best policy, in America and beyond, is to tax carbon emissions, which ExxonMobil backs. The gilets jaunes in France show how hard that will be. Work will be needed on designing policies that can command popular support by giving the cash raised back to the public in the form of offsetting tax cuts. The fossil-fuel industry would get smaller, government would not get bigger and businesses would be free to adapt as they see fit—including, even, ExxonMobil.

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Floods, Fire And Drought: Australia, A Country In The Grip Of Extreme Weather Bingo

The Guardian -  |

Amid record temperatures, severe flooding and devastation of wilderness, the political message from the government is business as usual
Residents wade through floodwaters in the suburb of Hermit Park in Townsville this week. Photograph: Dan Peled/EPA
The people of Townsville know about heavy rain, but this was new. Over the past fortnight, the northern Queensland city’s 180,000 residents have been hit by a monsoon strengthened by a low-pressure front that dragged moist air south from the equator to Australia’s top end.
It dumped an unprecedented 1.4 metres of rain in less than two weeks – roughly double what falls on London in a year.
The ensuing chaos has wrecked homes and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to property. Two men have drowned and videos posted to social media have shown crocodiles climbing trees and taking to elevated highways in search of shelter.
But amid the deluge, not everyone heeded the evacuation advice.
Mark Parison was one of those who stayed. The tide where he lives in Hermit Park peaked at least two metres high on some homes and the road was decorated with debris – furniture, white goods and children’s toys – pulled from homes as the water receded. But Parison’s traditional Queenslander home, elevated on concrete pillars, remained largely intact.
If anyone mentions [climate change], I’ll punch ‘em.
Mark Parison
As he moved piles of damaged property to the roadside for local authorities to collect, he told Guardian Australia why he ignored the advice to run.
“It was a scary old night [but] this house has been here for a long time. We decided … it’s been here that long, it’s been through some big floods,” he said.
Asked if he was concerned that climate change was making floods more extreme, he was clear: “If anyone mentions that, I’ll punch ‘em.”
“The weather events seem to be getting more extreme. Whether it’s manmade or natural or who knows.
“These people crying about climate change, they’ve got to look at how they live themselves. They’re still driving around in cars, they’re still wearing nice clothes. They’re using mobile phones. So give that up, I’ll start listening to you.
“City people are stalling us. We need the economy here to be boosted.”
In a city with nearly one in ten unemployed his view holds purchase. And so goes some of the public debate in Australia about the impact of rising greenhouse gas emissions.

A historically hostile summer
The north Queensland flooding is far from the only punishing event in what has been, even by the standards of the continent, a historically hostile summer. Internal polling for political parties and environment groups suggests Australians are increasingly concerned that this is linked to climate change and want to see action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a priority at this year’s federal election. It matches public polling that has found a comfortable majority accept it is a significant problem that needs to be addressed.
Mark Parison’s traditional Queenslander home, elevated on concrete pillars, remained largely intact during the floods. Photograph: Ben Smee/The Guardian
But after a decade of political fights and ideological warfare, discussion on the subject is often still a combat zone. The Coalition government would prefer not to talk about it at all.
Australia is, of course, no stranger to extreme weather - bushfire, flooding, rains and skin-peeling heat are central to its history and mythology - but the contrasts this southern summer have been particularly stark. Lesley Hughes, a professor of biology at Macquarie University and councillor with publicly funded communication body the Climate Council, says few parts of the continent have not experienced an extreme weather event in recent months.
More than 3000 kilometres to Townsville’s south, Tasmania is burning. For the second time in four years, dry lightning strikes sparked a series of blazes on the usually cool, temperate island, many of them in the vast world heritage wilderness area that covers nearly half its territory. In one 30-hour period in mid-January, an extended electrical storm danced across the summer sky, sending down more than 2400 lightning strikes without rain.
About 200,000 hectares - 3% of the state’s surface - has been burned, including unique alpine heath landscapes that had not been touched by fire for centuries. The fires are expected to burn for another month at least. Hundreds of people, many of them from in and around the southern town of Geeveston, spent the best part of two weeks camping at evacuation centres. Six homes were destroyed before rain late in the week reduced the threat to communities.
The prime minister is still pandering to the right-wing sceptics in his party
Lesley Hughes
A political battle is also raging over the use of water in the vast Murray-Darling river system that fans across the country’s eastern state agricultural districts, with drought-afflicted downstream communities arguing they are being denied water by a national river plan that did not factor in climate change and has been designed to keep dams full at water-hungry industrial agriculture sites in northern states.
This claim has been backed by a royal commission convened by the state of South Australia, which lies at the end of the river system, and the continuing disaster of up to a million fish having perished in three mass kills in the west of New South Wales due to water deoxygenation, with more deaths predicted.

Inquiry into Townsville flooding
The sense of a country playing extreme weather bingo has heightened as flood and drought collided this week, requiring the defence force to be called in to distribute fodder to cattle that had suddenly found their long-parched home under water. By Friday, it was clear that up to 300,000 cattle had been killed in the floods. With evidence mounting that authorities were unprepared for the extent of the rainfall, the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, announced an independent inquiry.
Australia is no stranger to bushfires but the contrasts this southern summer have been particularly stark. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images 
For most, the most obvious extreme weather shift has been the heat. January was Australia’s hottest month on record by a wide margin, with average national temperatures nearly a degree beyond the previous benchmark and 2.9 degrees warmer than the long-term mean. In New South Wales, the average temperature was nearly 6 degrees hotter than what has been considered normal for the past century.
Blair Trewin, senior climatologist with the Bureau of Meteorology, says: “Even taking into account the sustained long-term warming trend of a degree or so over a century, this is certainly at the far end of expectations.”
It is the heat that seems to be shifting public concern about climate change. Political polling suggests it is registering in the top two or three issues of concern for voters in a way it has not since the 2007 election, when the country was enduring a decade long drought, if not ever. The trend is headed in this direction even in some outer suburban electorates, which have traditionally been more driven by jobs and cost-of-living issues.
But the shift is not universal. The government is hearing similar messages, but there has been no change in messaging from prime minister Scott Morrison. He visited the Tasmanian fires and Queensland floods within a 24-hour period, speaking with people who had been forced to flee their homes, thanking emergency service workers and, in Townsville, was photographed climbing into a tank. He drew no link between the extreme weather and emissions in his public comments and he dismissed as a stunt a suggestion by the Greens that he should apologise for backing coal given there was evidence it was making natural disasters worse.
The Nationals leader and deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, went a step further while visiting the site of the Menindee Lake mass fish kill, choosing language that suggested outright scepticism about climate science.
Dead fish in the Darling River weir pool in Menindee. Photograph: Graeme Mccrabb/EPA
“We are looking at climate, of course, (but) climate has been changing since year dot,” he said, before adding: “We don’t want to go down a path of renewables, which is not going to solve anything apart from de-industrialising Australia and making sure we don’t do manufacturing here and pushing electricity bills into the unaffordable state.”
While concern about climate change is growing, there is evidence this position retains support – Essential Media polling late last year, for instance, suggested a slim majority of voters may back public financial support for a new coal power development than would oppose it, though more than quarter said they did not know what they thought.

Dependent on mining
The suggestion governments may force coal industries to close are particularly challenging issues in Townsville, which is the centre of support for the Carmichael coalmine, the long-stalled greenfield project proposed by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani that has become a proxy for debate over climate change. The mining industry posits itself as a jobs saviour. But, as always, views are split.
Katie McGrath was among the lucky ones in the Queensland floods, having got caught up and seeing her car in a metre of water. A nurse who works in Townsville but lives on nearby Magnetic Island, she had not realised how great the threat was before getting into trouble. “I’ve never seen the island flood like this before,” she said.
Up to 300,000 cattle have been killed in the western Queensland floods. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
McGrath has little doubt that what Townsville has been experiencing is part of a bigger picture, but acknowledges she is out of step with many in her community.
“There’s clearly things happening around the world that are alarming,” she says. “It’s like anything, if you don’t know enough about it then you seek advice from experts, and what they’re telling us is that we’ve got a real problem with climate change and we need to do something about it.”
But despite the experts, Townsville is the epicentre of support for the Adani coalmine. For every flood affected resident who is concerned about climate change, several others share Parison’s views.
Roughly one in 10 people in Townsville are unemployed. About 16% of the population is university educated, compared with 22% Australia wide. People want economic growth and employment opportunities. And, for all the boom and bust cycles places such as Townsville have endured in the past, the mining industry still posits itself as a jobs saviour.
But McGrath believes adequate communication about the opportunities that come with a cleaner economy is missing.
“For those people, work’s been hard to come by for a while and that’s been a real issue for people in Townsville,” she said.
“There’s not really been much put forward, and this region is really dependent on mining. People want to see jobs in mining, they want to see Adani go ahead. That’s the priority for people at the moment. Whether they agree with climate change, care about it or whatever, that’s a secondary priority to making ends meet now.
“I don’t necessarily think people are addicted to coal, or think that coal’s great. We haven’t been offered different information or alternatives about different jobs that are available. At the moment that’s not there.”
Her observations underline the challenge in some parts of the country for the Labor party, which is favoured to win the election with a platform of taking climate change seriously, but beyond the electricity sector is yet to explain what meeting its more ambitious greenhouse targets would mean.
Part of the challenge of communicating climate change is explaining the science, particularly the extent to which any extreme event can be linked to increasing emissions.
Attribution science is a rapidly evolving field. Lesley Hughes, who helped launch a Climate Council report called Weather Gone Wild, says emissions are effectively loading the dice to increase the likelihood of an extreme weather event. “What we are now observing is consistent with the climate science – as the Earth warms up, more extreme weather is inevitable,” she says.
In the case of the floods, a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, which in the event of a storm can mean heavier rain in a shorter space of time.
In the case of the Tasmanian fires, not only has the state become warmer (2.5 degrees above average in January) but low-pressure weather patterns that used to produce rain over the state have also moved further south as the climate has warmed, and evaporation rates have increased. Both increase the risk of dry lightning strike causing a blaze. Hobart, the Tasmanian capital, recorded just 0.4 millimetres of rain in January, the lowest on record.
Hughes says governments can obfuscate for only so long before publicly accepting that climate change is now both a mitigation and adaptation challenge. Failing to acknowledge the role humans are playing is holding back conversations about, for instance, whether Australia needs to invest in fire-fighting aircraft rather than sharing with the US, given the northern and southern fire seasons are increasingly overlapping.
“The prime minister is still pandering to the right-wing sceptics in his party by not talking about climate change. But arguing black is white doesn’t make it so,” she says. “The government has to accept these events are going to get worse over the next few decades and plan accordingly – both to adapt and to be part of the solution instead of the problem.”

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