AS MANY farmers emerging from one of the worst droughts on record only to find
themselves in an increasingly erratic climate, many of them are paying more
attention to regenerative farming techniques.
The term regenerative agriculture means many things, but at its core,
regenerative farming aims to increase the number of micro-organisms in the
soil, which in turn increases the amount of carbon, water and nutrition of the
soil.
Healthy Soils Australia chairman Tom Nicholas said for every extra gram of
carbon in the soil, there was an extra eight grams of water.
"Regenerative farming is allowing nature to do its thing," Mr Nicholas said.
"We want to arm people with the knowledge to put this stuff into practise."
There are five basic principles of regenerative farming.
►First Principle
First
and foremost is "don't disturb the soil" and employ no-till agriculture
techniques.
►Second and Third Principles
The second and third principles are to keep cover or "amour" on the
soil - preferably green growing cover - and to keep living roots in the soil
much as possible.
"Growing something is very important, because it's the plants that feed the
soil micro-organisms," Mr Nicholas said.
►Fourth Principle
The fourth principle is to create as much diversity as possible."Diversity in
root ecology means more diversity in soil ecology, and the end result of that
is more carbon," Mr Nicholas said.
Many regenerative farmers use a multi-species cover crop that may only be in
the ground for eight or nine weeks, before being rolled or crimped to make way
for the cash crop.
"Multi-species cover crops have been scientifically proven to be three times
more water efficient than a mono-culture crop, and they draw in three times
the amount of carbon," Mr Nicholas said.
►Fifth Principle
The fifth principle is to then integrate animals into the system.
A common regenerative farming practise is to move livestock around more
frequently in smaller paddocks, to give the soil and grasses more time to
recover.
"Bovine animals evolved to manage the grasses, there is a real symbiosis there
if they're managed properly," Mr Nicholas said.
Although the concept of regenerative farming has been around for decades, it's
recently enjoyed more attention, with many farmers suddenly open to a new way
of doing things after back-to-back tough years.
"They're not angry
anymore - in the past talking change got them angry, but they're past that,"
Mr Nicholas said.
"Many of them know what they're doing isn't working in the long term.
"Industrial ag is heading for a cliff. It's on this treadmill designed by
chemical companies, who lock farmers into a system."
The thing that will drive change quicker than anything else is money, Mr
Nicholas said.
"It's a no brainer - farmers doing this stuff produce more food off same area,
food of better quality and building the system as their doing it," he said.
"On top of that, if you're a farmer, and every morning you wake up and think
about what do for the day, most of the time you're spraying something to kill
something.
"I can get you into space where you wake up and say 'how am I going to keep
something alive, or make things live better'.
"Where would you rather be? It's as simple as that."
Mr Nicholas recommend anyone interested in learning more about regenerative
farming readDirt to Soil
by Gabe Brown and
Call of the Reed Warbler
by Charles Massy.
As we kick off 2021, state governments are embracing decarbonisation to
popular acclaim
‘In 2020 the residential solar sector smashed all previous records,
no doubt buoyed by housebound families turning their attention to
their homes and yet another year of falling system costs.’
Composite: Carly Earl
In his
speech
to the Smart Energy Summit in mid-December 2019, New South Wales energy minister
Matt Kean fired a shot that has reverberated all year.
As Kean spoke, smoke from the bushfires enveloping Sydney permeated the hotel
conference room such that a cone of illuminated particulates appeared to hang
beneath every ceiling light.
“This is not normal and doing nothing is not a solution” said Kean, breaking
ranks with his federal counterparts. “We need to reduce our carbon emissions
immediately”.
Kean’s ambitious moves, which prepare NSW for the coming wave of coal power
station retirements, received almost no pushback from conservative media.
Whimpers of protest from federal energy minister Angus Taylor barely registered.
(To nobody’s surprise, a recent poll of AFR readers
voted Taylor “worst minister”
of 2020.)
Labor-led governments haven’t sat still either. Victoria announced a “humongous”
new battery for Geelong, a huge housing energy efficiency program and
development of six renewable zones. Queensland committed to developing three new
zones and appointed a minister for renewables and hydrogen.
Refreshingly, Australia’s conservative media have largely bitten their
collective tongues. It is now politically safe to pursue clean energy.
Globally, the decarbonisation drumbeat has become impossible to ignore.
Oil companies
conceded
that oil’s best days are behind us.
The International Energy Agency
declared
solar as “the new king” of electricity. US president-elect Joe Biden has made it
clear that he’ll be aggressively pursuing climate action and will
rejoin the Paris agreement on day one.
Watch Morrison gradually reposition on climate in 2021, just as Howard
did before the 2007 federal election
Our three biggest coal customers — Japan, China and South Korea — each committed
to net-zero emissions. And with the pool of debt, equity and insurance providers
shrinking, the long-term decline of our coal sector is now certain. Australia’s
energy transition continues apace.
In 2009 Kevin Rudd’s government
extended the Howard era renewable energy target (RET) to a nominal “20% by
2020”.
Worried that the RET would be too successful, Tony Abbott
took an axe to the scheme in 2015, cutting about 40% of the remaining demand.
Despite years of sustained attacks, and thanks to states, corporates
and literally millions of households and their solar panels, we’ve blown past
Rudd’s target.
In 2020 more than 26% of energy in the national
electricity market (NEM) was delivered by renewables.
2020 marked the lowest coal use in the NEM this century and the lowest gas usage
since 2006 — so much for the “gas led recovery”. It’s increasingly clear that
multiple coal power stations will close this side of 2030.
In 2020 the residential solar sector smashed all previous records, no doubt
buoyed by housebound families turning their attention to their homes and yet
another year of falling system costs.
South Australia continued to power ahead with an average of 59% of demand met by
wind and solar. In earlier years, renewable generation exceeded the state’s
total demand for moments — in 2020 it did so for 10% of the year. In a marked
turnaround, over the last half-year South Australia recorded the lowest
wholesale energy prices in the country.
Despite dire warnings from (inexpert) pundits, record heat and fire-related
transmission outages, our grid performed exceptionally well over summer.
A freak storm at the end of January knocked out a major power line
between Victoria and SA.
Thanks to new levels of preparation and
conservatism in the wake of the 2016 blackout, this time SA didn’t skip a beat,
and ran “islanded” from the NEM for 17 days straight.
Sadly, Audrey Zibelman, CEO of Aemo, the electricity market operator and system
planner, returned to the US. Zibelman leaves behind a transformed organisation,
no longer struggling with the pace of change, but one approaching the transition
with the rigour required to manage such a critical service.
One of Zibelman’s crowning achievements at Aemo is the integrated system plan,
one of the most detailed network planning processes globally.
The
ISP models multiple “least cost” development pathways for our national grid.
The “step change” scenario, arguably the most plausible, has our
grid at 96% renewable energy in 2042 — solving the energy trilemma of
affordable, reliable and clean power.
Between the 26GW Asian Renewable Energy Hub (which plans to
produce cheap power for the Pilbara and massive quantities of green hydrogen for
export) and the 10GW Sun Cable project (which aims to send power by undersea
cable to Singapore) the projects would increase total electricity generation in
Australia by more than 50%.
Australia’s energy transition continues to play out between the states,
business and households
Despite our great progress in greening the electricity system, Australia is
floundering in the transport sector. Preliminary 2020 sales numbers indicate
flat growth in electric vehicle sales, in stark contrast to much of the rest of
the world.
While a growing number of countries are introducing future bans on new
fossil-fuelled car sales and have provided subsidies on EVs for years, Australia
has no federal electrification policies and disincentivises with high taxes on
electric vehicles.
Without federal electrification policies, states and territories are going their
own way. At one end of the spectrum, the ACT is removing taxes and providing
interest free loans for EVs. Victoria, on the other hand, is planning to impose
a new tax on EVs. Given the mess, it’s no surprise that Volkswagen has
chosen to pass over Australia
for their new EV range.
When Matt Kean prodded Scott Morrison to sharpen up his climate stance a year
ago,
the prime minister shot back
dismissively that “most of the federal cabinet wouldn’t even know who Matt Kean
was”.
As we kick off 2021, every cabinet member has seen how Kean and his state
counterparts have deftly transcended the party’s historical opposition to
renewable energy and are instead embracing decarbonisation to popular acclaim.
The emergence of centre-right advocacy group Coalition for
Conservation and thinktank the Blueprint Institute have emboldened MPs acutely
aware the party’s position is untenable.
Credit where credit is due, the government dropped plans to apply Kyoto carbon
credits against our Paris agreement commitments and re-committed to funding
clean energy research and development, including for the nascent hydrogen
industry.
But after seven years in government, the federal
government still has no credible emissions reduction plan, so it was no surprise
that when UK prime minister Boris Johnson held the Climate Ambition Summit in
December, Morrison was denied a speaking slot.
For all his failings, Morrison knows how to read the room. His many
“micro-pivots” indicate that he knows coal’s best days are behind us, that his
advisors over-egged the promise of gas, that renewable energy is extremely
popular and climate science denial a major turn-off.
Watch Morrison gradually reposition on climate in 2021, just as Howard did
before the 2007 federal election, and for the same reasons.
The need
for economic stimulus provides Morrison with the perfect opportunity to complete
his slow pivot and the conservative media appear ready to give him the requisite
leeway.
In the meantime, Australia’s energy transition continues to play out between the
states, business and households.
Veteran environmentalist Bill McKibben makes the point that, on climate action,
winning slowly is the same as losing. Are we winning fast enough? No, but we are
accelerating.
Charlie Wilson is Reader, School of Environmental Science,
University of East Anglia
Caroline Zimm
is Research Scholar, Transition to New Technologies,
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
(IIASA)
Simon De Stercke
is Research Associate, Engineering, Imperial College,
London
Massive amounts of public money are being mobilised to kickstart economies
out of COVID-induced recessions. Many countries are allocating parts of
their stimulus packages towards ensuring the recovery is green.
As we emerge from the COVID shock and try to accelerate progress on
decarbonisation, should we prioritise larger or smaller-scale solutions?
A million 1 kilowatt solar panels or a single 1 gigawatt nuclear
reactor?
250 electric bikes or a single tram on a light transit system?
£150 smart thermostats or £50,000 whole-home energy-efficient retrofits?
There are many low-carbon ways to supply energy, provide mobility in cities
and heat homes. These solutions vary on what we have called the
granular-lumpy continuum.
More granular options are relatively small in size, low in cost, and modular
– they scale through replication. More lumpy options are relatively large,
costly and non-divisible – they scale by growing larger.
For a study published in
Science
earlier this year, we collected data on a wide variety of energy
technologies along the granular-lumpy continuum and then tested how well
they performed against nine characteristics of accelerated low-carbon
transformation.
We found that more granular technologies have nine important advantages over
more lumpy alternatives. These advantages set clear priorities for
policymakers deciding how to allocate limited resources.
Faster and cheaper energy supply
The first three are all essential ingredients of a rapid technological
transformation of how we supply and use energy in
buildings, transport and industry. With the UK and the world falling well behind on
progress towards net-zero emissions, speed is of the essence.
First, we found more granular technologies deploy faster, with lower cost
barriers and less specialised capital requirements. Whereas it takes
decades and billions
to get a nuclear power station up and running, the energy equivalent in
distributed solar power can be deployed in years for a fraction of the cost.
Second, we found more granular technologies are less risky for investors,
with lower cost overruns and construction delays.
Third, we found more granular technologies improve faster in cost and
performance, as they provide more opportunities for experimentation and
learning. Learning rates, which measure the percentage cost reduction for
each doubling of cumulative experience, are twice as high for smaller-scale
technologies.
Big projects create inertia
The second set of advantages of granularity all help contribute to escaping
inertia or “lock-in” in our current energy system with its long-lived,
slow-to-change and ever-expanding infrastructure.
Powerful but inert.
Drone Motion Stock / shutterstock
Fourth, we found more granular technologies have shorter lifetimes, enabling
quicker turnover of existing capital stock. In contrast, power stations, jet
aircraft and skyscrapers once built will last decades or centuries creating
inertia to change.
Fifth, we found more granular technologies offer more opportunities for
efficiency improvements that downsize the magnitude of the decarbonisation
challenge.
Sixth, we found more granular technologies are less complex, enabling more
rapid innovation cycles. This means product and process improvements move
faster from lab to market.
Widely shared benefits
The final three advantages all recognise that climate action and climate
justice go hand in hand. Rapid decarbonisation is not possible without the
social and political legitimacy that comes from widely shared benefits and
jobs.
Seventh, we found more granular technologies are more equitably distributed
among the world’s population. You’re eight times more likely to have access
to a mobile phone than to a car.
Eighth, we found more granular technologies provide higher social returns on
every public dollar invested in innovation. More economic productivity, more
air pollution benefits, more energy security.
And ninth, but not least, we found more granular technologies mean more
jobs. Per unit of power generated, a solar plant creates ten times the net
employment of a fossil fuel or nuclear power facility.
In our study, we are careful to point out that these nine advantages of
granularity do not fall like manna from heaven. They are the result of
concerted research, innovation, investment, standardisation, mass
manufacturing and policy advocacy.
It can also be challenging to integrate lots of granular technologies into
existing infrastructure: heat pumps and solar panels need to connect into
electricity networks, electric vehicles into charging stations, insulation
products into building envelopes.
Nor can granularity outcompete lumpiness in all contexts. There are no
like-for-like alternatives to some lumpy technologies. Think jet aircraft
flying long-haul
or iron, steel, and cement manufacturing.
In other cases, more granular options are available but offer a different
type of service. Bicycles and SUVs can both get us around cities but with
different implications for speed, comfort, health, convenience, status and
more besides.
So while not a black-and-white picture, we still found compelling evidence
that more granular energy technologies tend to deploy faster, improve
quicker, offer more ways to escape carbon lock-in, are more equitably
accessible and create more jobs.
