More trouble coming

Penny Wong in clash with carbon emitters | The Australian

Funny how the Rudd government's honeymoon has been ended by conflicting petrol price policies which are both not going to have any substantial impact on prices.

(By the way: has anyone asked the question - if you have Fuelwatch as a national scheme, and given that volatility in oil prices is expected to continue, how does anyone expect to be able to tell whether the scheme has worked or not?)

Much, much more serious trouble is brewing over energy and carbon trading:

TENSIONS are emerging between major greenhouse emitters and Climate Minister Penny Wong after a number of hostile meetings before the release of the Government's green paper on emissions trading in July.

Senator Wong has told small groups of chief executives from major power and other energy-intensive companies that the Rudd Government's election promise of a renewable energy target was "not negotiable".

One of these meetings in Melbourne last Tuesday completely broke down, with Senator Wong reportedly furious at the way she was being treated by the eight business leaders present, telling them "you wouldn't treat (former Treasurer) Peter Costello the way you are treating me".

I'm not so sure that playing the "you're not respecting me because I'm a woman" card was such a good idea, which is what I assume that report means. If that's correct, one of the guys should have responded "no, it's not that you are a woman. It's because you are a po-faced lesbian." That would have broken the ice; there would have been laughs all around, followed by questions about how good looking is her partner.

(I may have taken too much pseudoephedrine this week.)

That renewable target

This is another post where I try to get my head around energy issues from some Web sources. Anyone who has more accurate figures readily at hand is welcome to correct me.

I just saw some of Skynews Eco Report, in which the Rudd government's 2020 target of 20% energy from renewable sources was being discussed. (Can't find it on the Web yet.)

I think the female guest said that by 2010, Australia will have 2% of its electricity generated from renewables, and the 20% target by 2020 is made even worse by expected growth in demand for electricity (via population growth, presumably) in the same period.

However, this 2 % figure isn't right (or maybe I misheard her); a parliamentary paper from 2000, which I have referred to before, said we were already at something like 10% for electricity from renewables, but it was supposed to increase (by mandated government target) by 2% by 2010. Maybe that is the source of the 2% figure?

This 2004 fact sheet, from the Renewable Energy Generators Association, gives a better idea of the problem. It appears that, as of 2004, it didn't look likely that the mandated increase would be met. The problem has been that, after the enormous boost the Snowy Hydro scheme gave to renewable energy, the total proportion of renewable energy for the nation subsequently went into a pretty steady decline, as growth in demand was met by fossil fuels.

If I can follow the second table on that fact sheet correctly, it seems to be saying that:

a. total 1997 renewables was 16,000 GWh;

b. even to keep at 10.5% of total electricity by 2010, it would require an additional 9,500 Gwh from renewables;

c. to get to 12.5% by 2020 would take an additional 21,000 GWh;

d. to get to Labor's 20% target will take close to 45,000 GWh.

But: that government paper I linked to above said that close to 90% of the renewable electricity in 2000 was from hydro electric; a source which is presumably incapable of any significant further growth.

Actually, looking at the government's 2004 MRET (Mandated Renewable Energy Target) Review, it seems that they are now counting solar hot water as a renewable energy source, and in a table in that paper, they have hydroelectric down to 36% of renewables, and "deemed solar hot water" at 26%. (That figure for solar hot water seems kind of high, and almost a bit of a fudge to me.)

The MRET report does seem to confirm that an extra 20,000 GWh is needed by 2020 just to get to 12.5% renewables target. I assume that the REGA paper is therefore correct in its figure of 45,000 GWh to get to 20%.

The issue of how to treat hot water systems confuses the issue. If it were not for them, I would have said the following seems to be the case: we currently seem to get only about 2,000 KWh from renewables other than hydroelectric (that's 10% of 16,000 GWh, plus some extra to allow for changes since the 2000 paper). To get to 20% renewables by 2020 (an additional 45,000 GWh,) would therefore require the amount of current non-hydroelectric renewable electricity to be increased by a factor of (roughly) 23!

So, whatever windfarms, solar and other (non hydroelectric) electricity we have now, it has to increase about 23 times in 12 years.

(As I say, maybe intensive increase in solar hot water changes the figures somewhat, but as that seems not to be discussed much as a strategy, I am guessing that it won't be what rescues us.)

No wonder there is scepticism as to the target, and the Liberals are starting to argue that it will divert resources from the more important task of developing clean coal, which is actually much more important on a global scale. Greg Hunt may well have a good point here.

Anyway, it still seems pretty clear to me that the general public has no idea of the scale of the problem.

Europe tries again

European energy | An EU plan to cut hot air | Economist.com

The Economist looks at the EU's plans for CO2 targets. This section is noteworthy:

The trick of managing both to save jobs and the planet will mostly be left to the EU’s Emissions-Trading Scheme (ETS). This obliges big polluters such as power companies or industrial giants to trade permits allowing them to emit tonnes of carbon dioxide, and other climate-change nasties, within a steadily tightening overall cap. So far, firms have received some 90% of their permits free (letting some earn fat windfall profits by charging customers for their nominal cost).

Different countries will also be allowed different targets:

Sweden, for example, will be asked to meet 49% of its energy needs from renewable sources like hydro-electric power, or nifty heating plants that burn wood or straw. Yet tiny Malta (a sun-drenched but crowded rock near Italy) has been given a renewables target of just 10%. It is a similar story when it comes to cutting greenhouse gases: wealthy Denmark must cut its emissions by 20% by 2020, against 2005 levels. Bulgaria and Romania, the union’s newest and poorest members, will be allowed to let their emissions rise by some 20%.

Late last year, The Guardian reported that there is "severe scepticism" about the 20% renewable energy target in Britain. The Financial Times has a significant problem with the renewables target too.

I'm just sceptical any time the EU claims it is taking the "high moral ground".

Greenhouse gas - reduce how exactly?

Over at Slate, there's an interesting article talking about just how "green" are fully electric cars in reality. (Answer: pretty damn green, especially if you live where nuclear power makes your electricity.)

The article made the point that in the US, 49.7% of all electricity is coal generated.

This got me thinking about the Australian situation, and what it means for the range of CO2 reduction which the post-Kyoto Bali conference is talking about.

According to a paper by the WWF (downloadable here,) coal accounts for about 85% of Australian electricity, hydro power is about 8 % (more than I thought) and natural gas is 7%. This Parliamentary Paper from 2000 indicates that the figures are about right: there might be one or two percent of wind, solar and other renewables as this pie chart from the paper (showing the renewable energy components in Australia) indicates:

but really, hydro power is the only truly significant "green" electricity we have at the moment.

As everyone has probably heard, the Bali conference is talking about total emissions reductions of 25 to 40 per cent by 2020. Kevin Rudd is (so far) insisting that he won't be nominating Australia's target just yet. But, even assuming a 30% target is what Rudd settles on, what does this mean for our electricity industry?

According to this recent government paper, close enough to 50% of Australian greenhouse gases come from electricity generation. Transport accounts for 12.5%, about 23 % comes from agriculture and land use, and industrial and waste seems to account for much of the rest.

The paper confirms too that Australia has kept pretty close to the Kyoto target (which still allowed an increase on 1990 emissions) by reducing land clearing. I would guess that further progress that could be made in reducing land clearing is probably getting limited.

As for transport; it's hard to see how a 30% reduction in that sector is likely to be achieved without massive changes over the next 13 years. Maybe a 10 to15% reduction, but remember that whole sector only accounts for 12.5% of total gases now anyway.

So, it would seem, if Australia is to have any hope at all of meeting a 30% reduction within 13 years, the electricity sector is going to have to bear the greatest burden of this change.

Even if renewables made a massive increase from its current 8-9% (nearly all hydro, remember) to 20% (the target Rudd has already set for 2020), and you give natural gas another percent or two, it would still leave about 70% or so of electricity from coal.

Roughly speaking, (and I won't put my back of the envelope figures up in case I have stuffed this up completely), it seems to me that even if you allow for renewables at 20% of all electricity, you would still have to have about half of your coal as "clean" coal for the energy sector to be able to come close to accounting for the bulk of the total target of a 30% reduction in CO2.

My suspicion, based on European experience (see some of my earlier posts) is that even with massive investment, renewables at 20% is very, very improbable by 2030. I also suspect that having about one half of all coal power stations operating at zero emissions by 2030 is very, very improbable. Quite frankly, no one knows how well CO2 sequestration will work. People do know that nuclear does not make CO2.

My points:

1. Australia's extremely high reliance on coal makes it exceptionally difficult for it to meet a target even towards the lower end of the range that the UN says Australia should have in 13 years from now.

2. Those countries that have or will develop large proportions of nuclear power in their electricity generating mix have a task that is very significantly easier.

3. People in Australia don't understand this yet.

In other news...

The New York Times has run a couple of articles indicating that some countries well advanced in the development of wind power are starting to get leery of it:

In the United States, one of the areas most suited for wind turbines is the central part of the country, stretching from Texas through the northern Great Plains — far from the coastal population centers that need the most electricity.

In Denmark, which pioneered wind energy in Europe, construction of wind farms has stagnated in recent years. The Danes export much of their wind-generated electricity to Norway and Sweden because it comes in unpredictable surges that often outstrip demand.

In 2003, Ireland put a moratorium on connecting wind farms to its electricity grid because of the strains that power surges were putting on the network; it has since begun connecting them again.

And in Germany, they are starting to run out of places to put them:

In Germany, where 20,000 wind turbines generate 5 percent of the electricity, advocates say wind will be critical to meeting the government’s goal of generating at least 20 percent of all power from renewable methods by 2020. But the industry’s growth is slowing for a variety of reasons.

Germany is running out of places to put the turbines because of restrictions on the location and height of the devices. And rising raw material prices are making wind farms more expensive to build.

“Under the current circumstances, Germany’s climate protection targets are not achievable,” said Hermann Albers, the president of the German Wind Energy Association.

Remember: Kevin Rudd has promised us the same renewable energy target. Germany has much smaller area over which to send the energy they chose to generate with wind or other renewables, and has been hard at developing it for years. (They also claim they can do it without new nuclear plants.)

I can't see there is a hope in hell that Labor's target is achievable in Australia.

Funny that

Labour's plan to abandon renewable energy targets

Just as Australians seem to be warming (ha ha) to Labor's plans to increase renewable energy, and its determination to rule out nuclear, Labour in England seems to be planning to talk Europe out of setting fixed targets for renewables, and wants to use more nuclear:

Leaked documents seen by the Guardian show that Gordon Brown will be advised today that the target Tony Blair signed up to this year for 20% of all European energy to come from renewable sources by 2020 is expensive and faces "severe practical difficulties"....

They also reveal different priorities across government departments about how to get renewables to 20% of the electricity mix. Although Germany has increased its renewable energy share to 9% in six years, Britain's share is only 2%, with its greenhouse gas emissions rising...

One of the main objections of government to meeting the renewables target set by Mr Blair is that it will undermine the role of the European emission trading scheme. This scheme was devised by the Treasury under Mr Brown and allows wealthy governments to pay others to reduce emissions. "[Meeting the 20% renewables target] crucially undermines the scheme's credibility ... and reduces the incentives to invest in other carbon technologies like nuclear power", say the papers.

The government is clearly worried about its ambition to introduce more nuclear power as soon as possible.

All talk

Revealed: cover-up plan on energy target | Environment | The Guardian

Presumably, Labor supporters here would think Labour in England was a good example to follow in terms of greenhouse action. But:

Government officials have secretly briefed ministers that Britain has no hope of getting remotely near the new European Union renewable energy target that Tony Blair signed up to in the spring - and have suggested that they find ways of wriggling out of it.

In contrast to the government's claims to be leading the world on climate change, officials within the former Department of Trade and Industry have admitted that under current policies Britain would miss the EU's 2020 target of 20% energy from renewables by a long way. And their suggestion that "statistical interpretations of the target" be used rather than new ways to reach it has infuriated environmentalists.

An internal briefing paper for ministers, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, reveals that officials at the department, now the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, think the best the UK could hope for is 9% of energy from renewable sources such as wind, solar or hydro by 2020.

It says the UK "has achieved little so far on renewables" and that getting to 9%, from the current level of about 2%, would be "challenging". The paper was produced in the early summer, around the time the government published its energy white paper.

Against wind power

Matthew Stevens: The answer isn't blowing in the wind | News | The Australian

This is an interesting article explaining why wind power is not the great benefit that it would seem. For example:

...even in those states with the most ambitious renewables targets, South Australia and Victoria, the net effect of wind power on carbon dioxide emissions will be negligible, if not illusory. According to another recent study, if Victoria reaches its target of 1000 megawatts of renewable generation capacity by 2016 (the state currently boasts about 120MW of wind capacity), its share of national greenhouse gas emissions will fall from 32 per cent to 28 per cent by 2020.

But in raw numbers, Victoria's power plants will be pumping out 24 per cent more carbon dioxide by 2020 than they do in 2006 because, quite simply, Victorians will be using much more power.

I suppose it can still be argued that it is better to have some of that electricity produced by clean wind power than an alternative CO2 producing means, otherwise the total future CO2 output will be even higher than that already bad forecast.

But it would seem that the more important message is that, in reality, windpower is just fiddling around the edges of the problem. What's worse, such fiddling can give an impression of significance that is undeserved.