These posts include a brief mention of a number of news items relating to climate change. They don’t preclude treating any of these topics at more length in a separate post.
They can also serve as an open thread so that we can keep each other informed on important climate news.
The disconnect between climate policy and scientific reality
There is a dangerous disconnect between climate policy and scientific reality, according to Ian Dunlop of the Policy Development Centre.
Climate change is not just another policy item on the normal agenda, it is a transformative issue which has life-and-death consequences. This is not a time to follow Bismarck’s advice that“politics is the art of the possible”, as Combet suggested. Quite the reverse; we need leaders who can see that what was politically impossible will shortly become politically inevitable.
The continual emphasis on the economy as the main game, with climate change grudgingly considered as an optional extra, ignores the fact that unless we address climate change fast, the economy will be in tatters err long.
The government and the opposition are both missing the boat, according to Dunlop, and the NGOs are no better, settling into going with the flow in order to get something started.
Coal power on the way out in the US?
Climate Progress tells us that:
38 coal plant projects were dropped or delayed in 2010, up from 26 the year before and 27 in 2008. Meanwhile, power producers announced plans to retire 48 existing plants this year, four times as many as in 2009 and 12 times as many as in the year before that.
Retirements announced this year equate to roughly 4 percent of the nation’s total coal-fired capacity.
Meanwhile Ernst & Young report that clean technology investments will continue to accelerate next year all on a world basis after building momentum this year.
And by the way, oil hit $90 per barrel for the first time in over two years.
The US will boldly lead the world to catastrophic climate change in the next 25 years
That’s according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). They predict that energy-related CO2 emissions will increase by 16% by 2035.
Obama should do something, but the other lot are heading in the opposite direction. House Energy chair Upton calls EPA climate change plan ‘unconstitutional power grab’. He doesn’t believe carbon is a problem in need of regulation.
Climate Progress has more.
Upton once considered a “moderate on environmental issues,” but has worked hard to refashion himself as a hard-right defender of pollution in recent months.
Whatever it takes, I guess.
Obama is in fact trying
Yep, he’s pushing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants amid opposition from industry and Republicans in Congress.
Simple rebuttals of climate change sceptic talking points
Climate Progress is re-posting some stuff from Skeptical Science, including rebuttals of climate change sceptic talking points. You may recall their Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism.
They do good work.
Agriculture will cope with climate change: study
I don’t know whether this one is good news or false hope. They studied wheat growing in North America from 1839 to 2007.
Eastern Ohio was the geographic centre of wheat production in 1839 but by 2007, west-central South Dakota assumed that position.
Farmers in US managed to grow 26 times more wheat in 2009 while in Canada, there was 270 times increase.
Wheat actually moved farther west and moved farther north digging roots into regions of harsher climates; drier and colder climates, a researcher told.
They do say that drier climates in Africa are going to be a problem. I thought dry was going to be the lot of the southern parts of the US.
Also wet can be a problem as we are finding in Qld this summer. Certainly greater variability is a problem for dry-land farming.
Polar bears are not doomed
That’s if we reach peak emissions by 2020 according to model runs.
The real story here is whether the Arctic ice melt will reach a tipping point, or whether it will respond positively and reverse as emissions concentrations peak and reduce.
I’ve always suspected the latter, simply because in the past we have had fluctuations before involving part-melts with relatively weak natural forcings.
The carbon trading HFC scam is still happening
Last week [the article is from 16 December], at the climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, India successfully opposed the adoption of a provision that would have called for action to limit the production of HFC gases.
This New Scientist article tells you why. There is simply too much money to be made.
The environment year in review
John Vidal in The Guardian does the environment year in review for 2010.
It’s not all bad.
As far as the coal-fired power plants go, I suspect the regulatory uncertainty is making them too big a punt. Which is something, I guess. There’s also the issue that electricity demand growth in the US probably cratered through the GFC.
It’s not all bad.
It does feel pretty bad, though. 🙁
Also, the Guardian link is borked.
[Fixed now – Brian]
Ideally, the world should be going on a war footing to deal with climate climate change.
However, I think arguing for this level of climate action is counterproductive. The message that is getting through to the voters is that they have to choose between destroying their way of life in the next 10 years to avoid destroying their way of life in 40 years time. Add to that the complexity of climate science, the support for climate action dividing along left/right lines and the difficulty of predicting how climate change and the war footing will affect individuals and their families it is no wonder that emissions continue to grow and there is no sign that this is going to change for many years to come.
We might achieve far more if we took a more pragmatic approach. The sort of thing I have in mind is based on the following concepts:
1. Any reduction in emissions will delay the undesirable consequences of climate change and is worth doing
2. What counts is the cumulative emissions going forward. The same action done sooner will have more impact than the same action done later.
3. The action plan should consist of a series of separate steps.
4. Each step needs to be designed so that it is easy for people to understand how it will affect them. (And make it hard for anyone to mount a scare campaign.)
5. This government will only have to commit to the first few steps. Future governments will have to decide on what steps to take during their term of government.
6. We can make quite significant reductions in Australia’s emissions before we run into the difficult and very expensive steps.
For example, my figures say that we should be able to more than halve power related emissions without having to raise the average price of electricity by more than two cents. A price increase of this magnitude would increase the Davidson power bill by less than 25 cents/day and raise the per capita cost of all power by 27 cents/day – Hardly the end of the world as we know it and a challenge for scare campaigners.
The interesting thing about the Ian Dunlop article was that it rabbited on about the need for drastic action – Then suggested that we start with a carbon price of only $35/tonne! What does he think will change at this tax level?
John D said:
I agree that it is not enough in the longer run, but providing its ubiquitous and there ere really are no loopholes, I’d be happy with this as a start. IMO, we ought to ramp it up each year until we reach about $150 tCO2 by about 2020-2025.
The starting figure provides the gamechanging shock and the projected price means that people will be engineering systems that will, when delivered, be cost-effective at the higher price.
Of course, a cap and trade system would allow more precise and timely movements in CO2 price, and take advantage of uncertainty, so I would still prefer that.
That is at least 2.7 NBNs.
I don’t know!?What are the qualifications of that Indian Chappo who was Chairman of the IPCC! As a steam train enthusiast,many AGW Skeptics are too,and Coolers,and I wouldn’t mind a degree in steam trains.I could then go to Eritrea,and relieve one of their hardworking engineers.Have to get the money first.No doubt all the wise kerbubblers of Truth Honesty and the Climate Change Way,are blessed with a continual point of confirming the meterological science doesn’t have any transgressors amongst them,and all submit willingly to whatever is in the original predictions of the IPCC Report.So it must be a mental disorder of mine,after all, where I find meteorologists not accepting the IPCC much at all.And others qualified in Science and Technology who have assessed as systems environmental matters generally and specifically. In fact I came across one of those Academics recently that is about reducing ,of all matters of fuel use and pollution that which is called thermodynamics systems analysis. Actually a full time Academic who has been at this research for quite a long time.Seeing there are many environmental problems, the dismissing of AGW matters cannot be considered light headed seeing pollution comes in many forms.And so does environmental destruction.But he mustn’t exist because,well he may not have a steam train engineers certificate![I also think steam trains are complex great systems that can be modernised and should be using a variety of fuels.]
Next Big Future reports on net changes in US electrical generation capacity for 2010. There was in fact a net addition of 6395 MW of coal.
I’ve fixed the Guardian link. What happened was that I forgot to put it in.
“Take That Magnetosphere” Lorie Kramer Houston Texas seektress@seektress.info Spaceweather.com NOAA related. See also at Rense.com others… scroll down, don’t be shy.
“The message that is getting through to the voters is that they have to choose between destroying their way of life in the next 10 years to avoid destroying their way of life in 40 years time. ”
This is one of the most successful pieces of denialist misinformation. In fact measures to lower CO2 emissions are not expensive at all, they simply represent replacing one technology with another, soemthing which happens all the time.
Can we please not have a War on Climate Change?
Caly…..,
Yes, you are right, that is indeed the case. In fact it will turn out that a zero CO2 energy world is cheaper than a fossil fueled world (commercial aviation excepted for the time being [container shipping having moved to nuclear power being the predominate nuclear change]), meaning a higher standard of living.
Different and better.
Of course, if we respond rationally to climate change, we not only mitigate medium and longterm risks, but gaim benefits in the short term as well — cleaner air and water and more liveable cities, so the b-a-u claim is simply bogus.
Another sobering (and really scary) overview.
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/the-deadly-decade-20101231-19bf8.html
Apologies if its already been linked to somewhere. Just trying to keep up with this stuff is doing my head in.
I think you are first with that link, Paul.
Thanks.
Not sure whether this has been posted recently, but the NASA pictures of mountaintop mining for coal in Virginia are pretty speccy (in a bad way). Just goes to show how far we can modify our environment. The sooner coal goes out of fashion the better!
Link here.
Seems to me that there are two “solutions” to GW on offer.
Firstly; The nuclear power military industrial academic complex that must come with special powers to arrest and detain protesters, issue media suppression orders and so on.
The legislation to set it all up; including changes to Industrial Legislation and the legalisation of private investment in the nuclear industry. The founding of departments of Nuclear Duplicity at various Universities, changes to State Laws. The founding of a special Constabulary charged with the task of protecting nuclear installations, the founding and training of special Army groups. Changes to air traffic regulations. The list goes on and on
Only the totally gullible would think that this could be accomplished within say 10 years. (then they would start building the Nuclear panacea. Oh please.
The other “solution” is that offered by some of the Green persuasion .
Return to the state of the “Noble Savage” complete with Composting toilets and mung bean stews. Oh please.
Huggy
There’s nothing wrong with composting toilets and mungbean stews.
Huggy, in Oz we have unlimited potential, I would have thought, for an energy-rich future from solar, wind, wave and geothermal, leaving aside nuclear, which I’m more interested in in its 4th generation manifestation, with the possible exception of applications to shipping.
And we have unlimited gas as an interim technology to phase out coal power.
All we need is political will and a strategic path to follow.
Brian, we do have enormous potential.
Build a dc link from the west coast across to New Zealand and we could have solar power into the load peaks.
Geothermal looks good especially if we tap into existing aquifers and do not use fracturing techniques. Germany is leading in this technology. http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jun2008/gb2008063_168366.htm
Large scale distributed energy storage will be faster to the table than nuclear, it will get in under my 10 year limit – easy. Look to China here where every apartment building must provide an energy storage system (basically an UPS style system) for every tenant. These are centrally controlled for load levelling and peak load management. They have most of the world’s lithium for batteries BTW.
The 4th generation nuclear fission is rather like nuclear fusion, has been a few years away for the last 60 years. In any event we don’t need it.
It really beats me how otherwise intelligent people can be so sanguine about nuclear waste, I invite them to see how it is stored in the US and Russia. It is all very well to say that we will do it better, but the practice tells the story. Then go and ask people about the leaks; and coverups of same, from reactors all over the world. Again the actual experience is different from the naive ramblings of enthusiastic amateurs who have never actually been down and dirty in a real reactor.
Huggy
Brain said:
The potential is limited by:
a) available investment funds
b) the price we are willing to pay to replace HC combustion
c) the amount of insolation at the surface (solar)
Of course, what Australia does is merely a blip on the planet’s biosphere. Unless one can replace nuclear power everywhere with renewables at acceptable cost in utility/labour power, then the principled argument against using it here is paradoxical.
Our potential to exploit nuclear power here is every bit as unlimited as the other technologies you cite, and then some.
Fran, my attitude is that we should avoid nukes if we can. Here we can. Some other places may not be able to.
Brian said:
If we don’t care about the consequences, we can avoid nuclear everywhere. Every technology has a suite of negative consequences, and it is for us to work out which ones are unacceptable. I’d sooner have a zero human footprint if we could but I fear I’ll be disappointed.
In any event, the argument put against nuclear power is not normally, it’s fine except in Australia but rather that it’s beyond rational contemplation everywhere.
So really, the renewabilists have to show that a feasible non-nuclear low carbon solution is possible everywhere, or else accept the consequences of there being no such solution and apologise for them on the basis that this is still the least of all harms.
@Fran, I think that I would argue that nuclear is fine if you already have all the systems in place to generate power (e.g. France or the US).
For Australia, the nuclear boat has passed. The reason is that one doesn’t just decide to build a power station, you also have to refine fuel, develop the expertise to run the plant etc etc. We have none of this in Australia. It would take about 30 years for there to be enough political will, a site for a station to be found, uranium to be extracted and refined and a plant built even before you can make any power. I’m not sure we have this time to replace coal at all.
Additionally, you can’t build up this infrastructure for a single plant, as it’s just not cost effective. I’ve not seen what it would cost to piggy-back on a European or US scheme but I don’t imagine it would be cheap. Has anyone done a study as to what the price for refined uranium might be?
Bye-bye thread on climate science! Hello yet another boring rant-fest on Fran’s favorite topic – How everybody must embrace nukes… See Quiggin’s sandpit threads passim…ad nauseam
I am with Brian on this one.
What is needed is a new approach to the supply, and nature of, the services that are provided by the electricity networks.
The NBN should solve our road and vehicle problems.
New ways to structure cities http://www.news.com.au/national/plan-to-stop-the-rise-of-the-mega-city/story-e6frfkvr-1225942023908
So much to do and so little time.
Huggy
Jess said:
If so, then at least at this stage, this is defence of b-a-u on the basis of “what are you going to do?” — a kind of shrugging of the shoulders rationale.
Take out the political objections and all we have are the financial and engineering considerations, and there’s absolutely no reason for thinking that we couldn’t get total replacement of hydrocarbons in stationary energy within 25 years. Within that same window, we could have most small vehicle transport mostly on the (near zero) grid. We just have to commit now to something that works. A large chunk of the costs would releive us of the trading loss on liquid fuels.
FTR, renewables are going to be a lot slower than nuclear, because here the engineering constraints are for all practical purposes, insurmountable within 30 years at least if we are talking about substantial reductions in CO2 intensity.
I’m def with @Huggy on the distributed energy solution though.
Someone pointed me to this neat way of building solar panels and solar water heaters into roofing iron, developed by researchers at the University of Waikato in NZ. Just imagine how much less power you’d have to generate if you had a roof of these on every house.
So Fran there are only “Financial and Engineering considerations”
No legal constraints?
No need to change existing laws?
No need for special policing and military powers?
No need for:
Forced disposal of waste in repositories that are in aboriginal lands? (present policy)
A reputable academic establishment guide the nuclear industry? (We have none)
Laws that force Insurance companies to come to the party by passing the major part of the risk over to the taxpayer?( Along US lines?)
No need for environmental guidelines for the extraction and processing of uranium ore.
No need for a nuclear safety Authority ? (We have none)
Well at least you are now out in the open as an unreconstructed 19th century robber baron.
Now all you need is a private army to enforce your “Financial and Engineering” considerations.
Huggy
HB said:
None that could not be changed reqlly quickly, assuming that the government were so inclined.
No more than apply to any other secure facility.
No. Firstly, that would be done after successful negotiation, and secondly, in the short term (the next 60 years or so) it would make sense to store the hazmat onsite, so that when reprocessing becomes the most feasible response, it will be readily useable. It’s unlikely any hazmat would go into long term storage much before that timeline.
We would create one in the same time-window.
Given that Price-Anderson has not been approached, this claim is simply spurious.
We already have them, though we might wish to revisit them to ensure that they are suitable, regardless of whether we have a nuclear fuel industry.
Your level of angst bears no relationship to the scope of the challenge, and simply predisposes you to iterate folk tales and urban legend about renewables.
Whether you know it or not, your advocacy serves the interests of the fossil hydrocarbon stakeholders of the world.
WARREN BUFFET is backing wind power!
Keithy said:
Now there’s a surprise! 😉
Oh, and I can’t wait for the Daddy-of-all-oil shocks!
I wonder how many suburbs will get emptied in America this time?
(…Why are we talking about the price of oil, btw?!!?)
Fran, You said, “Take out the political objections and all we have are the financial and engineering considerations”
I gather – on this logic – that you would support any engineering project that stacks up financially, is that so?
Maybe you would be interested in a project to power a factory with the unpaid labour of the intellectually handicapped?
Cannot see any “financial or engineering constraints” in that. On your logic such a project would be entirely OK. I for one would have major political and ethical issues with it. You would have none at all apparently.
Huggy
HB said:
Heads of feasibility
1. Financial: the fiancial resources exist to complete the project; the project produces benefits at l;east equal to every other benefit that could be had with the same resources
2. Technical: the skills and material resources needed to complete the project or can be contrived/assembled on timelines that do not prejudice financial or any other head of feasibility; the project is capable of performing as conceived at the scale required
3. Operational: the project comports with the ends, values and needs of the relevant stakeholder communit(y)(ies)
4. Schedule: the project can be realised on a timeline consistent with the benefits specified in other heads of feasibility
5. Environmental: the project does not prejudice ecosystem services in any respect that would be worse than doing nothing at all, or pursuing some other option that satisfies the feasibility heads above.
Projects should be evaluated and compared and ranked in this way to specify the optimal configuration
Pablo and Brian @88-89 on the the cold climate in Europe thread:
Isn’t that the crux of the problem? However, it is easy to fall for some easy blaming or conspiracy theory by whom so ever should do something or another, or isn’t doing some thing or another. I belatedly came to the conclusion, that the horse has bolted with only a phantom rider on its back. Humanity has started a global nuclear war in slow motion only to realise it is not a computer game.
So I am asking the question, are we not expecting too much from our politicians in these complex times of lo$$ying and weekly polling? And are the ‘old rules’ really adequate to cope with the scale of this unprecedented problem. In that context, I can understand the “There will be no warming in our time.” attitude.
Fran,
If Stevenson, the Wright brothers, Karl Benz and all the others had adopted your project criteria we would not have Aeroplanes,Steam engines and motor cars. So maybe you are entirely correct in all of your pronouncements.
Huggy
HB said:
That’s a silly referent. None of these people were evaluating public projects. Their projects only had to be sensible to them and those backing them.
Aircraft got massive public support in the US as soon as governments realised their military application. Ditto with motorised land transport.
And one wonders how well renewables would pass these heads of feasibility? Not well as fas as I can tell.
as far as
FB
I would argue (and will if the time comes) that nuclear power fails on all your criteria.
It is in exactly the same position now as it was 50 years ago, hopeless thermal efficiency, hopeless mass efficiency, needs exotic alloys and materials that are hard to find or abetter utilised in other applications. Not economically viable unless there is a bomb making facility attached.
Oh I forgot about the really amazing generation four (or is it five?) super efficient plutonium burning all singing all dancing reactor that is painted green and arrives on the back of a truck.
I actually made some serious enquiries and was told to come back in 20 years or so.
Oh drat.
Huggy
Ootz@38. Quite agree with your question. Democracy as we currently know it will morph imo with the potential for a war cabinet/grand coalition behind a very charismatic/tough/fallible leader willing to act on ‘best’ advice domestically – and eschew/ignore foreign comparisons. You see short term/acute examples of it with state and federal leaders, shoulders together on flood/fire/drought catastrophes. Acting on AGW will surely test the news cycle.
Climate Progress on nuclear Has Joe got his facts wrong Fran?
John D.
He has his facts pretty right I would say.
Well found.
Huggy
That sounds reasonably conclusive and correlatory with other studies, John D.
John D asked:
Firstly — although Joe is responsible for the post, this is by anti-nuclear activist Bill Hewitt.
I have a lot of respect for Joe Romm. He has persistently done very useful work around the climate change issue. He’s an intelligent and ethical guy. Accordingly, I’m, reluctant to criticise, but this is one of those situations where he has ventured outside his strong suit. He’s just a little too much in love with the idea of renewables to be able to assess their feasibility properly. Just as most of us have smart friends who are with the wrong guy/woman and can’t see it, Romm is stuck with a fantasy and feels the need to go negative on the rival technology, as he sees it — which is nuclear. He’s wrong on that too because nuclear power is a rival to hydrocarbons, not renewables, simply because excluding hydro (which is site limited and expensive and actually has a very large footprint) renewables cannot and have not displaced any serious fraction of hyrdocarbon combustion.
Hewitt argues for example that between 2003-7 nuclear plants in the US had 10.6% downtime of which 2.5% (I assume he actually means 25%) of that time unplanned (strictly: unscheduled). What this means in practice is that redundancy can be as low as 2.5%. Compare this with the major source of (non-hydro) renewables in Australia — wind. In Southern Australia wind has a capacity credit (the amount it guarantees to supply in 24 hours time) of between 3-8% (Victoria and SA respectively). That makes nuclear only 12.18 to 32.33 times as reliable as wind, and in both cases, gas back up stands by to make sure that contracts aren’t forfeited. That’s scarcely a criticism of nuclear. Scheduled outages don’t demand much redundancy and providing you have excess capacity in the sustem — other nuclear plants — then this is not a serious problem. As the marginal CO2 footprint of nuclear is near zero, no problem at all.
Hewitt continues with the usual praise for renewables citing growth in wind resources in China, citing an “optimistic” 230GW by 2020 (though the usual figure is 100GW). The 2006 Chinese plan for nuclear is to take it from 1% to 6% of total stationary energy by 2020 and by 2030 to have about 250GW installed. Curiously, Hewitt leaves this out. It seems clear that China is going to want a very mixed portfolio including traditional HC sources, plus the full spread of renewables, with very significant tranches for geothermal and hydro.
I have hated nuclear power for 40 years comments hewitt, and truthfully, this is the last time he considered the matter. He appeals to Romm because of his claims rather than because the claims are fair.
HB Said:
Actually, it passes all but #3 in Australia, and those of us who want timely and effective mitigation are working on that. Renewables (excluding hydro, and possibly geothermal/HDR, but we will see) don’t meet any of the criteria in any major energy market.
It’s amusing that you can challenge nuclear power on #2 while accepting the Hewitt piece on availability of nuclear, yet pass renewables even though they’ve never been built at industrial scale. Special pleading much?
I’d say so.
FB “It’s amusing that you can challenge nuclear power on #2 while accepting the Hewitt piece on availability of nuclear, yet pass renewables even though they’ve never been built at industrial scale. Special pleading much?”
Fran, you base your argument for nuclear on the Generation IV reactors, er could you point me at some that have been built on an industrial scale please?.
Or do you want the obsolete clunkers that Obama is facilitating?
Huggy
HB said:
While that is certainly the longterm plan, I’d be happy with a fairly well settled design such as the APR1000 or similar. We should pick something reliable that works and that we can easily manufacture here.
A decade or a little more from now, when the IFR is well established and a best of type design has been settled, then we switch over. It’s said that the Russians will have a working commercial-scale IFR in 2015. I suppose we will see.
Fran. In other words I have called you and you have come up with a busted flush.
“A decade or a little more from now, when the IFR is well established and a best of type design has been settled, then we switch over. It’s said that the Russians will have a working commercial-scale IFR in 2015. I suppose we will see” That’s not industrial scale, that’s just vapour ware.
Huggy wins again.
“…could you point me at some that have been built on an industrial scale please?”
Right back at you on geothermal, HB. The decidedly underwhelming German exemplar you pointed to @22 is a measly 3.4 MW – hardly ‘industrial scale’. 3.4 MW is not much more than a large portable diesel generator. This piddling capacity cost something like A$130 million. And there’s nothing like Moore’s Law to call on here to forecast lower costs – believe me, the petroleum and minerals industries have trying for decades to put a dent in the cost of drilling to 3-4 km, and have only made marginal improvements. Any sort of geothermal (let alone hot sedimentary aquifer as you apparently prefer) is still years away from commercial reality in Australia, and the jury is still very much out on whether it will scale up at all technically, never mind commercially.
The double standard on display here is just breathtaking. Compare the BAU yardstick held up to nuclear @26 with the call for a war footing @4.
As for recent news pertinent to climate, consider http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/wind-power-heat-warning/story-e6frea83-1225978916924 on how much help wind energy is likely to be for summer demand peaks.
But if it’s a roundup of the latest climate science you’re after (e.g. HAL9000 @27), the link contained at http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/10/29/open-thread-7/#comment-109656 (apologies for the self-reference) is hot off the press.
MD,
You and Fran are confusing the network with generation.
A bit like not understanding the difference between networked computers and mainframes.
The problem for the electricity network is that it basically rooted; it is 60 years old and no longer able to cope.
Your (implicit) model of voltage source central generation relies upon a stiff and robust network and close to unity pf loads that existed 50 years ago.
There is widespread agreement in the power industry that something has to be done about this. The so called “intelligent grid” is one response, the adoption of current source PV is also one disastrous response (ask the Germans).
All the while distributed energy storage and power generation has been proceeding apace. The huge Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) business is one manifestation of this.
The global market for UPS is at about $7 billion pa and growing at 22% pa. Add on to this the centralised energy storage systems that are in widespread and commercial operation in Japan and the US.
Add enough distributed energy storage to the network and two things happen. The existing network can now cope with the new patterns of energy consumption and the intermittency problem for renewables goes away.
Huggy
Can anyone recommend a site that takes an honest look at ALL of the carbon costs involved in fission-produced electricity? I’m talking all stages from minerals exploration to disposal of wastes and the decommissioning of fission power stations.
Let’s have a proper and transparent feasibility analysis for replacing our carbon-intensive sources with nothing off the table.
Whatever combination best ticks the boxes should be done. If some of these sources turn out to be renewable, then great.
We urgently need to replace, by no later than 2025 with priority all stations 25 years-old or more:
These would include (age at 2025):
(NSW) Bayswater (39-40 years; 2.6GW; 19.8Mt Co2); Eraring (41-43 years; 2.6GW; probably similar to Bayswater in Co2); Vales Pt. (47 years; 2.2GW; 9.3Mt Co2); Munmorah (55 years, 0.6GW (GHG not given) Liddell (52-54 years, retrofit 35 years; 2GW; 14.7Mt Co2); Wallerawang (1GW 45-49 years; 7Mt Co2); Redbank (mainly because it is one of the most Co2 intensive plants in Australia despite being only 151MW)
(Vic) Anglesea, (56 years; 15OMW and uses sulphur-rich lignite, emitting high volumes of SO2 as well as 1.21Mtpa); Hazelwood (55-61 years. 1.6GW, most Co2-intensive plant on the planet; 16Mtpa opr 3% of Australia’s total emissions) LoyYang A&B 45 years old, 3.35GW 14Mtpa) Yallourn (1.48GW 56 years old, 11Mtpa Co2)
(QLD) Gladstone (49years, 1.7GW 11.8Mtpa Co2) Tarong (41years, 1.47GW 9.8Mtpa Co2)
(WA) Muja(59 Years, 854MW 5.56Ptpa Co2 plus a host of other nasties) Kwinana 660MW (latest iteration will be 45years at 2025, includes oil fired generation!)
(SA) PlayfordB (240 MW, 61 years from full operatioon, 65 from first usage, Co2-intensity comparable to Hazelwood and Redbank –1.38tCo2 per MWhe, total 1.239Mtpa)
That gives us about 21.65GW of capacity to replace by 2025, not allowing for a likely increase in electricity demand between now and the end of life of the said plants.
Fairly obviously, we are stuck with a fair bit of installed wind, and it makes sense to make best use of it, given that we have significant sunk costs, however doubtful they would have been as projects when first considered. The least bad thing would probably involve extending our pumped storage capacity as much as we can, pairing this with nuclear and allowing the resultant pumped hydro to balance any volatility in wind. An extension in pumped storage might make some of our expensively acquired PV a little more useful. Of course, this extended pumped storage could also help us reduce the CO2 intensity of our existing gas and coal capacity.
Key though is finding some low-carbon way of keeping the pumped storage topped up, and nuclear fits that specification very well.
The modelling would be complex because one would have to make some pretty significant assumptions about each of the factors (feedstock type and source {uranium, MOX, seawater, Th232, from a mixed mine or single mineral, concentration) and reactor system (LWR, FSR) and of course the nature of final storage.
Really though, compared with hydrocarbon combustion it’s utterly trivial.
There’s a good general discussion at Prof. David Mackay’s Without Hot Air e-book site.
FB; we are (almost) in heated agreement here.
The existing MV and LV network including generators and even some of the HV and transmission assets need urgent replacement. This is the case also in other parts of the developed world.
I am afraid that there is no simple solution, that is one of the reasons why I become a tad annoyed when some-one proffers an easy solution such as Nuclear, that only looks at part of the problem.
Replace all the present ancient coal fired clunkers with new supercritical plant and gas fired peaking plants and you would at least make significant improvements in CO2 reduction within a few years.
A nuclear program will take too long in my estimation.
Huggy
You say Fran that:
then go on to quote a string of stations that have been running for over 50 years. The reality is that age tells us very little. Things like power stations are maintained and upgraded so that they can still function efficiently for a very long time. So to claim there is a need for urgent replacement because of age is to create an artificial crisis that discredits the case for replacement.
We certainly do need to replace these coal fired stations with something with much lower emissions for climate change reasons. However, the need is too urgent for the replacement process to be held up while we argue about the merits of nuclear. At this point the nuclear debate is something that is being used by AGW skeptics as excuse to put off climate action.
My personal view is that the short term clean-up should be dominated by the gas transition with cleaner forms of power generation starting to replace gas around 2025 to 2030. One of the attractions of the gas transition is that it the delay in to the final solution allows time for several new developments to prove their worth and improve their cost efficiency.
John D
They are over 25 years now but will be between 39 and 60+ years in 2025.
That’s beside the point. If you run your eye through that list, they have a variety of other negative environmental impacts on them and 40 years is a reasonable time to recover sunk costs on a plant. If we build new coal capacity the same will apply. That is what NSW is now planning.
That may well be true because they know that the people keenest on climate mitigation tend mostly to favour renewables. Of course, the time we are wasting on renewables simply buttresses the default position — which is coal and gas. The winners out of this fight are the HC people. HuggyBunny above admits this when he says:
He’s happy with a new generation of Earth-destroying resource depleting toxic monsters, merely because the word “radioactive” keeps him awake at night. He will ignore the fact that coal releases radiotoxicity to the open air as part of its normal operation.
We could, if we wanted, have reduced emissions from the 21.66GW of capacity above from perhaps 153Mtpa to, for all practical purposes zero (or about 1/3 of our emissions). We get rid of other airborne pollutants like mercury, Mb, SO2, NOx and actinides too. Some of those plants are taking water from rivers and aquifers. We could end that.
If by then most of the miles in our motor vehicle fleets are done from grid power, we bite into transport emissions as well. That’s a fair bite out of 14% or so, IIRC. If we put more heavy stuff on electrified rail then even better.
Between 2025 and 2035 we could eliminate the remaining coal and gas plants with GenIV plants taking our overall stationary emissions to zero.
Sounds good to me.
Giles Parkinson (Climate Spectator 28 Oct) commented that
The extreme peak demand is driven by the rising number of air conditioners being used on very hot days. Unless I am missing something this implies that people who don’t use air conditioning on these days would have their power bills reduced by a massive 30% if they didn’t have to subsidize the air conditioning of others.
Given that peak solar PV output occurs on these very hot days it suggests that feed in tariffs for solar PV may actually be too low rather than too high. It also suggests that perhaps we should insist that air conditioners should only be installed in houses that have sufficient solar PV to run the air conditioners or that power consumed by air conditioners should be charged at a much higher rate than normal power.
Question Huggy: Is there a general problem with grid capacity or is it a case that some parts of the grid become overloaded because the location of some power stations is not optimal? In particular, how soon would parts of the grid be overloaded if there was a surge in wind power investment on the south coast or solar thermal further north?
Fran: Climate Progress> had an interesting article on progress with wind power. The article had this to say about the growth in turbine size:
.
It is anybodies guess what the logical mix for clean power production will be in 2025.
John D quoted:
then reasoned:
Do you really think you could have a system built to service 30-40/8760 hours each year? How would those older not do well off folk survive if they had to pay their own separate AC bills?
Not really. Firstly, on that system people would not be giving up much of their surplus, or any. They are going toi want to use their power to run their AC. Of course AC is very energy intensive so your 1.5kW or even 3kW system isn’t going to produce a lot, especially if you are recharging your P(H)EV with it.
And the question remains — if we are paying a FiT of 20cents per kWh, doesn’t that imply a carbon cost of at least $200 per tCO2? Which political party currently proposes a $200 tCO2 price? None I’ve heard of. The NSW government had been paying three times this amount in FiT, making cash-for-clunkers look cheap by comparison.
Last I heard John, 7MW turbines was to be a new benchmark.
It doesn’t matter how big the turbines get John. It is how much output they can reliably produce at a minimum and how stable they are in terms of output.
Grid stability is a key metric.
John D
There is a general problem with the LV grid (this is the 3 phase 415V L to L ; 240V Active to Neutral that runs down most streets) is capacity, mostly it relates to voltage compliance.
PV does not help Air conditioning much because the load tends to come on in the afternoon as kids and parents come home.. It does help a bit but there is only 340MW installed in OZ.
Total waste of money IMV. The PV inverters tend to push the LV network volts up and if you get a cluster of PV you get the situation where most of them are disconnected by the internal voltage sensor.
The basic problem is that the network was designed 50 years ago for an Average Diversified Maximum Demand of about 1.5 kW. Now in many regions it is as high as 4/5 kVA, the open wires simply cannot cope mainly due to the high L on R ratio . If I told you how much it costs to re-conductor the average street you would not believe me. Think $20,000:00+ per km.
Think street closures, trucks and cranes and cherry pickers, field kitchens.
Nuclear will not fix this.
Distributed energy storage of as little as 5-10 kWh per household will fix the peaking problem as mentioned by Giles Parkinson. My modelling shows that this would entirely flatten the power demands of the LV network (About 8 million homes) and provide at least 20 GW of peaking power for non residential purposes. It would also provide as much as 40 GWh of energy storage for renewables. add in VAR control for unity pf operation and you have a whole new world. Not some atavistic throwback to the 1950,s. You know – “nuclear power too cheap to meter”.
Huggy
And FTR, in the original post:
assuming we want the archaic, “before” for some reason. As it stands it just sounds like someone who lost a train of thought.
oops: some
none Skitt’s Law![Fixed]
HB – One of the virtues held out for electric cars is that, when widely used, they provide much of the distributed storage capacity you’re talking about. Israel is apparently about to introduce electric cars in a big way, so there should be data on this within a few years.
Fran: We do have a system built to service those peak 30 to 40 hours/year. Gas fired back-up that only runs for a fraction of the year. During these peak demand times the price paid for power is extremely high because the capital cost of this standby power has to be justified from 30 to 40 hours worth of running.
An FIT of 20 cents/kWh would only imply a carbon price of $200/tonne CO2 if this was a premium above the price from other sources. Keep in mind that friends of mine in Perth were paying about 3 times the nighttime rate for daytime power consumption on their smart power system. This suggests that the old, higher NSW FIT corresponds to a carbon price close to zero. The new, lower price is subsidizing the coal fired power. The NSW coal lobby has pulled another swifty.
The maths is straightforward John D
1 * MWhe = (roughly) 1tCO2 at a standard black coal plant
1 * MWhe = FiT $200 from PV
Huggy: Link useful link to peak power data The Qld government sent out a fact sheet with my last power bill claiming that transmission and distribution (=network) costs were responsible for 47% of my power bill. The fact sheet also said that average household use had increased by 39% between 1998 and 2009. In Qld this rise probably represented a rise in air conditioning use and house size.
Bit skeptical re your 340 mW air conditioning figure. My guess is that the peak is quite a bit higher than this.
I know how much it costs to run a power line out to a tailings dam so $20,000/km seems pretty cheap.
What sort of money does your battery proposal cost nationally with today’s technology.
I guess I am optimistic that that grid control problems are solvable if the pressure is on to create something cheaper than a major grid upgrade.
Hal000: If you look at the timing of power demand in the link above the EV’s will be out driving just when you need to suck power out of the batteries.
JD –
1. I didn’t suggest electric cars could be more than part of the solution, but then every suggestion anyone makes (even Fran B!) is only part of any ‘solution’.
2. Peak usage corresponds with people leaving and arriving, not with people traveling. At any event, even in peak hour I’d say that a majority of cars are not being used.
The storage capacity of an electric vehicle’s batteries is surely something that an intelligently designed distribution system, one designed to maximise the used energy potential of the many inputs to that system, would make use of this capacity. Do you disagree?
Oops. Delete last two words in penultimate sentence. Pleonasm guilty plea.
John D. My 340 MW is the total installed capacity of house-hold PV in Australia. This is the equivalent to 50 MW of conventional generation due to the low Annual Capacity Factor of PV.
I estimate the cost for 10 kWh of energy storage and appropriate electronics in every home in Australia as about $24 Billion for all the 8 million households. The cost to fix the network will be more than this. NSW alone expects to spend $18 billion.
$60 billion for the East coast would be about right.
It’s not about generation its about the network and generation.
Huggy
Fran: You are missing the point. A carbon price establishes the premium paid for clean power. Also keep in mind that solar PV is putting power into the grid at the time of day when higher prices are paid for coal fired power. My understanding is that the new FIT of 20 cents/kWh is actually lower than the new average on demand domestic power price. You would actually need a negative carbon price to achieve this result.
Huggy: I read the 340mW as installed air con, not PV. No argument there.
Looking more closely at my link@70 it becomes debatable whether solar PV really does reduce peak grid/generation requirements, particularly in the south. In the hotter parts of the country you might be a bit surer if the was some battery power to save solar PV output for later into the day.
In terms of both batteries and solar PV there is a need to discuss ownership. We are not going to get a good result if we are depending on individuals of good will to instal solar PV or batteries.
John D.
By my modelling it is actually profitable for the utilities to install the energy storage systems gratis – only thing is they would need to control the systems in real time.
The deferral of capital expenditure on network repairs will pay for it. Add to this the elimination of peak generation and the ability to sell into AEMO during peaks and it becomes a really good investment.
This is not some sort of fantasy – such as little green nuclear reactors that arrive on the back of a truck. Trials begin here and in Europe this year – 2011.
Hal9000 yes there is a move to give old EV batteries a retirement home, they will need special geriatric care but should do an ex-soylent job.(sorry)
Huggy
@ Brian, I’ve been chewing my way through some of these things slowly and it seems I might be OT by talking about something actually in your post. 🙂
However, in regards to the clipping about “Agriculture will cope with climate change: study”, to what extent do you think that governments will have to bail out farmers who cannot adapt to shifting climates?
I ask this because we are already seeing farmers in Q’land and NSW who are asking for bail-outs because of the current poor weather – too much water or too little. It seems to be a tricky problem because changing what you farm would be fairly costly in terms of the capital injection required. Do you think that this might see the further rise of farming conglomerates who have the capital to adjust to changing climate to the detriment of the family-owned farm? And is this a desirable outcome?
Jess, I think that industry wide cooperatives such as the wheat marketing board which offer uniform return and better price bargaining for farmers are a better trend to corporates. Where corporations can become very large to maximise profit, they can also fail over night and create huge holes in the food supply with no short term fix when lawyers move in to pick over the bones.
Unfortunately, BilB @ 78, those agricultural cooperatives seem to be a thing of the past.
Bilb: Part of the power problem is that grid owners have been able to grow their profits by convincing the government that they do have to increase capacity using the same old approach and then increase prices to give a reasonable return on capital. You grow the business this way. Get a bit smarter and reduce capital needs and the profits grow more slowly. The government needs to ask the power industry hard questions about alternatives before it gives in on price increases – particularly now that we are being told we need to spend something like $70 billion over the next 10 years.
There is also the possibility that changing work patterns will affect peak loading. For example, from an infrastructure point of view it would make sense to spread the working week over 7 days instead of 5. The decline in the number of working families with school age children means that, many more people are no longer committed to being off at weekends. In fact, once our children left we often preferred to take weekdays off to avoid the crowding of recreation areas.
Jess: Sydney Kidman showed the sort of approach that is needed for agriculture in uncertain times. A string of cattle stations spread over the country so that cattle could be moved away from droughts to take advantage of places where conditions were good.
We need to extend this risk minimization/opportunistic approach to a wider range of products and develop products that fit this mode of operation. For example, we need crops that don’t require “good follow up rains.” Crops that can be planted after enough rain has fallen to ensure a good crop – or seeds that will stay in the ground until the opportunity arises.
It all doesn’t bode well for the farmer who is depending on land that is concentrated in one area.
In terms of demand, it is also fair to wonder where in the mix all those desal plants fit. Clearly, if they are to be used, you’d like to fit them around parts of the load cycle where demand is low. You also need to run them continuously if they are going to be cost effective.
One assumes that most EVs will also be charged during what is now the off-peak.
Clearly, the scope for shutting down off-peak is going to be pretty modest.
JohnD,
Have you done the simple calculation for the additional revenue raised as a result of the national round of price increases over the last 2 years?
Australian annual electricity consumption
260 billion (kwhrs)
times at least
4 cents retail price increase
equals
$10.4 BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR.
Or $100 billion over the next 10 years even before their next scheduled round of price increases.
The electricity industry is already extracting all of the money that they could possibly need.
It really amazes me what people will argue endlessly about on these topics, but will never do any basic arithmetic to see how much they are being ripped off.
The fact is that I am happy to pay the increases forboth my family consumption and my factory….
….if we get the renewables system urged by science to solve global warming.
But that is not what is going on. We are paying the money and getting a bit of renewable electricity and a lot more fossil fuelled electricity.
This is just downright dishonest and the governments, Julia Gillard/Kristina Keneally/Anna Bligh, are compliscent.
Bilb: $40/tonne= 4 cents/kWh for black coal.
A carbon price of $40/tonne = end of world as we know it.
A 4 cents/kWh increase set by the power merchants is not the end of the world as we know it.
So what are you confused about?
Jess @ 77 said:
Short answer, I don’t know. Not all changes require huge investment or new infrastructure.
Australian family farms are getting bigger and are not necessarily contiguous. As properties come on the market, they are often bought by nearby farmers.
John D, short of the Kidman solution, cattle producers often use adjistment. Cattle are trucked to properties that have feed where they eat and grow and money is exchanged.
John D,
I’m not confused about anything.
What I am telling you is that the electricity is already extracting from the economy all of the money that they need to replace all of Australia’s electricity infrastructure with renewables.
There should aready be a slush fund of 12 billion dollars available for them to be pay cash for new plant.
Can you see 12 billion dollars of new renewables infrastructure under way?
I can’t.
What I am pointing out is that the “market method” for addressing AGW is a failure. I have been criticised for proposing a 3 cent per unit levy to fund new infrastructure in that it would become a huge “slush fund”.
Well the industry has their slush fund achieved through higher electricty prices directed by government, and they are wallowing in it, demonstrating no real intention of acting in any significant way on global warming abatement. What they are doing is using our money to buy up the infrastructure that we the public once owned. What will happen next is this money will be used to buy up towards a monopoly position. Funded by us.