Lethal Heating: 02/11/22

11/02/2022

(AU Gizmodo) Coal-Loving Australia Just Hit Wind And Solar Power Records

Gizmodo - Molly Taft

Renewables are catching up in a country where coal is still king.

Sheep graze in front of wind turbines on Lake George on the outskirts of Canberra, Australia. Photo: David Gray (Getty Images)

January was a banner month for renewables Down Under.

According to an analyst at Rystad Energy, who shared the figures with clean energy site Renew Economy, three of Australia’s six states saw new records for wind and solar power production.

In total, utility-scale wind and solar produced 3,628 gigawatt hours of power across Australia, a new record.

A full quarter of that power came from New South Wales, where wind and solar generated 995 gigawatt hours of energy. But there were standouts outside of NSW, as several wind farms saw great figures in what’s known as capacity output, or the percentage of time a power plant is actually used.

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Badgingarra wind farm, a 37-turbine installation in the state of Western Australia north of Perth, saw a jaw-dropping capacity rate of 64% last month.

That capacity rate makes Badgingarra, as well as five other wind farms that hit capacity rates of more than 50% in January, competitive with most of the country’s coal units. (In November 2019, Badgingarra’s capacity output was 70%, its best month.)

Wind’s wins are a big deal, because in Australia, coal is definitely still king. Coal-fired power plants still generate about 60% of Australia’s electricity, making it an outlier as other comparatively wealthy countries race to ditch coal and diversify their grids with wind, solar, and other renewables.

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Coal maintains an iron grip on Australia’s politics as well as the global economy: Australia was the world’s second-biggest exporter of coal in 2020.

Coal has some powerful allies in the country, including conservative media mogul and native Australian Rupert Murdoch, whose various news products, including Fox News, have gone all-in on climate denial.

A Greenpeace analysis released in 2020 revealed that Murdoch’s News Corp drove a “misinformation” campaign during that year’s devastating wildfires in Australia, spreading climate denial and sowing doubt about the wildfires’ causes as the government approved new coal extraction projects.

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Because its fuel—and politics—are so dirty, Australia’s government has also made comparatively measly emissions reductions targets.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison procrastinated all the way up to the beginning of last year’s UN climate meeting to issue a net-zero plan for the country. (That plan still keeps coal and gas significantly in the mix, so it’s pretty dubious.)

Australia isn’t the only place where dirty fuels are celebrated even as clean fuels are performing well. A month after Texas Republicans used the February 2021 blackouts to bash wind energy, wind was the number one source of electricity on the Texas grid last March.

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(AU Climate Council) A Record Year: Renewables Provided 5X More Power Than Gas In 2021

Climate Council

RENEWABLES PROVIDED FIVE times more power into Australia’s largest grid than gas in 2021, according to new data from the Climate Council.

Renewables reached record highs in all mainland states in 2021, while gas generation fell once again across the country, down to its lowest level in more than 15 years in the National Electricity Market (NEM) despite virtually no change in electricity demand.

Tasmania equaled it’s previous record of 99.9 percent of wind, water and sun in 2021

“The increase in solar, wind and batteries in our electricity system is making power bills cheaper for Australian households and businesses. Electricity is now the cheapest it has been in almost a decade and we have solar and wind to thank for that,” said Climate Council Senior Researcher, Tim Baxter.

“Let’s be clear, this record has nothing to do with the federal government, which has been missing in action and leaving all of the heavy-lifting to the states and territories.”

“When you look at the data and what renewables are doing for Australians’ hip-pockets, the push for gas from the Morrison Government seems increasingly irresponsible and economically reckless.

“This week, the federal government approved its Kurri Kurri gas-fired power station, despite it making zero commercial sense.”

In NSW, gas provided just 1.5 percent of the state’s power, its lowest level in 15 years.

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Climate Councillor, energy expert and former BP Australasia President, Greg Bourne said: “Every taxpayer dollar spent on new gas-fired power infrastructure is at risk of being wasted on unnecessary stranded assets.”

“Gas simply cannot compete with renewable energy, which is bringing down power prices for consumers and creating a cleaner, healthier energy system.”

“We’re also seeing a similar clean energy trend on the other side of Australia, in WA’s largest grid, which for the first time ever in 2021 saw renewables overtake gas to become the state’s biggest source of power. This is incredibly significant considering renewable energy generation has more than doubled in WA in just three years,” said the former West Australian.

Renewable energy generation increased by almost 20 percent in the NEM in 2021, with a 30 percent jump in Victoria and 26 percent jump in Western Australia. In South Australia, gas generation slumped to its lowest level in more than two decades, while in Victoria it dropped a whopping 30 percent in just 12 months.

“Why is the Morrison Government investing in gas-fired power stations when the need for gas in our electricity system is clearly disappearing?” said Mr Bourne.

“Gas is expensive, polluting, and diminishing in importance and relevance as the rest of the world moves towards net zero, and our own states and territories rapidly roll-out large-scale renewable energy and storage.”

Further information

The National Electricity Market (NEM) is Australia’s largest grid and supplies the vast majority of Australia’s electricity.

It is an interconnected system supplying electricity right across Victoria, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, and most major populated regions of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia.

ACT’s generation is accounted for within the NSW total.

OpenNEM is an open source platform that displays electricity generation data.

This data covers the period from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021. You can view the data here.

The Climate Council has recently begun working with the OpenNEM team to grow the site’s functionality, which has recently added Australian, and global greenhouse gas emissions data tools.

State	Renewable energy generation in 2021	Gas power generation in 2021
National Electricity Market	31.4%	5.7%
Tasmania	99.9%	0.1%
South Australia	65.7%	33.5%
Victoria	31.6%	1.8%
New South Wales	24.6%	1.5%
Queensland	18.5%	8.7%
Western Australia (South West Interconnected System only)	32.2%	29.8%

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(INVERSE) Scientists Just Broke A Pivotal Record In Fusion Energy Technology

INVERSE - Mike Brown

The Joint European Torus just did something amazing.

Fusion energy just took an exciting step toward one day helping to power everyday life.

On Wednesday, the Joint European Torus (JET) facility, a giant physics lab located in the U.K., announced it had produced a record-breaking 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds.

The feat beats the record set by JET previously in 1997 when it reached 22 megajoules. The breakthrough could aid the development of a promising new form of clean energy, one that mimics the Sun's power.

"These landmark results have taken us a huge step closer to conquering one of the biggest scientific and engineering challenges of them all," Ian Chapman, CEO of the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority that operates the facility, said in a statement.

The new record strengthens the case for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a project supported by multiple countries, including China, the U.S., the U.K., and Japan. It will be the world's most giant fusion energy machine of its kind.

Fusion energy involves smashing atoms together to release energy, which is distinct from fission, the process used in today's nuclear power plants, which involves splitting atoms apart to form energy.

The new form of power generation has the potential to generate enough electricity to meet the world's needs for tens of thousands of years, all with zero greenhouse gas emissions. And unlike fission, there's no risk of a runaway reaction or a meltdown.

"Our world needs fusion energy," Chapman said.

Watch an explainer on the new record below:

Fusion energy: What did JET achieve?

JET is the world's largest and most powerful tokamak in operation, which is a donut-shaped device that holds plasma using a strong magnetic field. By containing the plasma, it enables nuclear fusion to occur. The facility is located in Culham, Oxford, and is operated by the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) alongside EUROfusion, a consortium of 4,800 scientists and experts from over 30 European research centers.

The machine heats deuterium and tritium to 150 million degrees Celsius —around 10 times hotter than the Sun — transforming the elements from gas to plasma.

Magnetic coils shape the plasma as plasma exhaust removes the resultant helium from the chamber. As the atoms combine into heavier atoms, they release energy.

JET was able to produce 59 megajoules during the five-second experiment. The fusion power, or energy per second, averaged around 11 megawatts. That’s about one-fifth of a coal power plant. Unfortunately, the BBC notes that as the experiment used two 500-megawatt flywheels to heat the plasma, it used more energy than it produced. That's not exactly efficient.

And again, it did beat the record previously set by JET in 1997, but it did not surpass the previous peak set in 1997 of 16 megawatts of power. The team has focused on sustaining energy production in recent years rather than producing more energy.

JET is not the only group exploring fusion energy. Around 30 miles from JET, First Light Fusion is also researching the technology. Last year, China's EAST tokamak managed to heat plasma for 1,056 seconds or 17 minutes.

ITER, whose first experiment is scheduled for December 2025, could take these breakthroughs to new levels. The project is supported by seven members: China, the EU, the U.S., India, Japan, South Korea, and Russia. It aims to be the first project to produce more energy than went in, offering 500 megawatts of fusion power from 50 megawatts of heating power.

"For the ITER Project, the JET results are a strong confidence builder that we are on the right track as we move forward toward demonstrating full fusion power," Bernard Bigot, director-general of ITER, said in a statement.

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