AUSTRALIA’S clean energy sector is struggling because of delays in the imposition of an emissions trading scheme, leaving the renewable energy target system devised by the Howard government as the only reliable economic carrot worth chasing.

Business owners across the country are grinding their teeth at the delays in putting a price on carbon, the single most critical element in any energy regime that wants to increase the economic attractiveness of renewables and decrease reliance on coal-fired power generation, currently the cheapest system by a long way.

“Emissions trading scheme” (ETS) is the generic term for what we need and carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) is the specific name of what was proposed and rejected in Canberra early in 2010.

And because the RET system is significantly smaller and less comprehensive than any ETS, we are beginning to see the scary phenomenon of lower prices for renewable energy stocks.

Why? Isn’t every new windmill or solar panel in Australia a long-term positive?

Yes, but until the much delayed Australian election result brought forward the likely date for a renewal of the ETS/CPRS debate, investors and generators alike have been thrust back on a little part of the overall picture, the one investment certainty in an ocean of waffle: the Renewable Energy Certificate system by which electricity producers must reduce their emissions by 20 per cent by the year 2020.

And because those generators have been buying certificates on the open market, as they have been encouraged, and building windfarms, the amount of clean energy being produced in Australia is at risk of plateauing.

They’re scaling up gradually but not only do they not have to get there just yet, but there are now reports that they’re very close to having enough certificates to cover themselves for 2011-2013.

Which means that anyone who builds a wind farm from scratch in Australia in the near future and who does not have a contract with an electricity provider had better have a lot of electricity users of their own planned, because those providers won’t be buying until they have to.

In simple terms, our attempts to wean ourselves off coal-fired power have struck growing pains and we’ve barely started.

Wind isn’t of course the only renewable, following well behind hydro power — but it is still well ahead, in cost and time terms, of large-scale solar power. That makes it the biggest game in renewables in Australia at the moment.

That’s something the existing generators have emphatically noticed and they are forging ahead with new wind capacity.

The bad guys, if you want to call them that, are ironically the only ones likely to make much money out of wind in the short to medium term.

For instance the $1 billion Macarthur wind farm in Victoria being jointly developed by AGL and its New Zealand partner Meridian Energy looks likely to earn its developers so many renewable energy certificates (RECs) that the price of those certificates will stay at around $40 per megawatt hour.

This is not enough to make any new wind farm economical on its own for a company that doesn’t generate electricity from more old- fashioned sources such as coal.

The $1 billion 420-megawatt farm, near Hamilton 260 kilometres west of Melbourne, is due for completion early in 2013.

That capacity, which incidentally was recently uprated by 25 per cent because of the introduction of bigger turbines, will be enough to power more than 220,000 average Victorian homes and save more than 1.7 million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year. AGL recently said that was the equivalent of taking more than 420,000 cars off the road.

There’s strong opinion out there that with that sort of scale of construction, Australia will hit its grated renewable energy targets easily. Jenny Cosgrove, a power analyst at stockbroker Wilson HTM, was recently quoted as saying we’re rapidly approaching a balance of supply and demand for the period up to 2013, and that’s not including the supply of small-scale RECs that she estimates to total more than 21 gigawatt hours by the end of this year.

“It will take a number of years before this excess supply is absorbed,” she said.

Conclusion?

Our large-scale power generating industry turns out to be well ahead of our federal government on the renewables side of the ledger and householders are catching up fast.

So strong has been the demand by households to be involved in generating their own electricity that the federal government had to devise a whole new system called the SRES, Small Scale Renewable Energy Scheme.

To the credit of the ALP federal government earlier this year, “the number of systems receiving support under the SRES will be uncapped to ensure small scale installers have certainty”, to quote a government fact sheet issued in February.

The problem with all this is that there’s all the difference in the world between generating an increasing percentage of Australia’s electricity from renewables, and pushing less CO2 into the atmosphere by the more challenging process of phasing out coal-fired power generation.

It’s an irony that before the federal election John Brumby’s ALP state government in Victoria had done more to move on the emissions issue than the federal government had, by canvassing in July the idea of shutting at least part of the ancient and notorious Hazelwood brown coal power station in the Latrobe Valley.

At the time he did it Julia Gillard had put off the likely action date on setting a carbon price until 2012, thus earning him significant brownie points with his proposal to shut down 25 per cent of Hazelwood by 2014 to save four million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.

Admittedly the idea is dependent on federal funding to hand as much as $1 billion in compensation to the plant’s owners.

But in a legislative landscape where nothing appeared to be happening, the idea got media traction.

The final 76-74 settlement of the House of Representatives on September 7 in favour of the battered ALP incumbent presages a likely second attempt to bring in an emissions trading scheme of the sort that was proposed, then abandoned, early this year.

New Green MP Adam Bandt clearly wants an ETS, if a tougher scheme than the one previously rejected, and during the negotiating process that followed the election ex-National Party independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott both highlighted the need for an early debate on the ETS as one of their most urgent priorities.

It’s also worth noting that on the eve of the August election, Gillard said she would view a victory as a mandate for a carbon price provided the community was ready for it.

The main reason for the Emissions Trading Scheme’s rejection in April was the Greens’ emphatic belief that it ought to go further than it did, particularly in relation to the excessively generous protection that the Greens thought it granted to existing “dirty” electricity generators.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s noisy objection to it was the most widely reported element of the ETS’s rejection.

But it was the Senate Greens’ blocking stance against the ETS on the grounds of its perceived inadequacy, tied ironically in with the Coalition senators’ objection on the entirely opposite ground that the measure was excessive, that finally did for it. Coalition doubters weren’t its only executioners.

Can that happen again?

Certainly, particularly as the number of Green senators is going to go up on July 1 as a consequence of the August election, but there’s a growing belief among the majority of electors in Australia who want to see an ETS legislated soon that a modest scheme is still a great deal better, particularly in perception terms, than no scheme.

Perhaps we should leave it to Henry Derwent, President and CEO of IETA, the most powerful emissions trading body in the world, to give us an external view of the rejected Australian ETS.

“Australia’s emissions trading scheme was first-rate, comprehensive and effective.

“It was probably insufficiently flexible but it was potentially very efficient,” he told a press conference in Singapore in August.

Derwent runs the Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Association.

Original source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/special-reports/climate-change/climate-series-delays-test-true-believers/story-fn5oikwf-1225935460834

If Australia is to mitigate climate change, we will need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity and transport fuels by finding ways to harness our clean, renewable resources like the sun and wind.

CSIRO (Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) is developing the next generation of technologies that produce energy from renewables including solar, wind, ocean and geothermal resources. We are also mapping ocean energy and researching its potential and finding new ways to integrate renewable technology into existing electricity grids or for use immediately in the home.

DEVELOPMENTS IN RENEWABLE ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES

Solar energy
Energy from solar power is a proven technology found throughout society, from the abundant photovoltaic solar panels on neighbourhood roof tops to the emerging concentrated solar power industry changing the landscape of desert areas around the world.

Solar technology is everywhere and it works. The challenge is to make it work better, more reliably, and to be comparable in cost to fossil fuels.

CSIRO conducts large scale, world-class solar research and development – specialising in next generation photovoltaic cells and concentrated solar power. The National Solar Energy Centre in Newcastle, NSW, is home to one of the largest high concentration solar array in the Southern Hemisphere, with another solar field currently under construction. Extensive research into organic photovoltaic and dye-sensitized solar cells is also well underway.

Wind energy
CSIRO’s wind research is focusing on improving the forecasting of wind energy, especially in severe weather conditions where production can change rapidly, as well as developing ways to store wind energy for use when the wind isn’t blowing…

CSIRO-developed UltraBattery technology is being trialled to help ‘smooth-out’ the highly variable output from wind farms, increasing average powerline carrying capacity and reducing the need for alternative fast-response back-up services.

Geothermal
Through the Western Australian Geothermal Centre of Excellence, CSIRO is investigating ways to use hot sedimentary aquifers to provide energy for applications such as desalination, air conditioning and power. We are also examining the chemical and mechanical factors that contribute to the management of aquifers in geothermal systems. The research will broaden the use and commercial-scale application of geothermal energy.

In addition to this form of geothermal energy, Australia has some of the richest sources of hot rocks in the world, in the form of high heat-producing granites. To harness this energy we will need to develop cost-effective technologies to access deep hot rock reservoirs, as well as manage geothermal sources to enhance production and be able to transport this energy to the market.

Ocean
Scientists at CSIRO are investigating the potential for wave energy generation in Australia and mapping Australia’s ocean resources.
As part of this work, researchers have identified Australia’s priority regions for harnessing ocean energy and will further refine details of the most suitable locations for commercialisation of wave energy converters, of interest to the wave and current energy industry. Much still needs to be done to address the economic and engineering feasibility of ocean energy generation systems, but the mapping work conducted to date shows the potential of this important renewable resource.

FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES FOR BUSINESSES
As well as renewable energy generation, businesses can make dramatic emissions and cost reductions through energy efficiency measures. Whilst “first step” measures such as changing light fittings can bring significant advantages, even more dramatic savings are possible through smarter control systems. Such systems are relatively inexpensive (they don’t require large pieces of infrastructure), yet they can realise quite dramatic energy savings, whilst allowing business as usual.

CSIRO is working on a number of exciting projects that will be available to businesses in the future, including:
• Optimal air-conditioning control using weather data, energy market pricing and feedback from building occupants to intelligently alter the operation of a building’s air-conditioning system to save energy, money and greenhouse gas emissions.
• Solar cooling using heat from the sun as an energy source which can be used to generate cool air for use in buildings.
• The Virtual Power Station intelligently aggregates renewable energy generators – such as solar panels – and energy storage into a cost-effective and reliable electricity supply network.
• Smart fridges can plan ahead and coordinate when they consume energy in order to smooth the intermittent power output from renewable generators such as wind and solar farms, while keeping within usual temperature limits.

Original source: http://www.businessreviewaustralia.com/business-features/technology/future-renewable-technologies

We have not been paying for our electricity so that is much more of an incentive for householders and industry to consume considerable amounts of electricity

Murdoch University business and development lecturer Peter McMahon warns West Australians will pay dearly through their hip pockets for living in one of the least-sustainable societies in the world.

His report, which examines the energy, transportation,environment, farming and mining sectors, covers WA sustainability from 1829 to 2020.“The energy-intensive WA economy faces huge challenges as carbon-control schemes and peak energy trends will raise energy costs dramatically,” Dr McMahon said.

“Rising living standards in WA have led to the state being the highest energy-user and the worst polluter and waste generator in the country.”

In his report, WA2020, Dr McMahon said the state needed to make significant policy changes in the next decade to avoid dramatic price increases and tackle drought, soil erosion and salinity problems.

Energy Minister Peter Collier said the state’s thirst for energy was because West Australians had been living in a “fool’s paradise” for too long.

“We have not been paying for our electricity so that is much more of an incentive for householders and industry to consume considerable amounts of electricity,” Mr Collier said.

“It has sent all the wrong messages to the community.
“We are moving towards a user-pays system with electricity and that has a two-fold effect.

Number one, it means that the State Government won’t continue to bail out Verve Energy to the tune of billions of dollars and number two, the community are much more aware of the fact that it costs to use electricity so it sends the right message.”

But he said the state was making progress, especially when it came to the switch to renewable energy. By 2012 WA would produce 8.9 per cent of its energy from green sources including wind, solar and wave generators, he said. So far 18,000 households have installed solar panels, which feed energy directly into the grid.The state pays householders 40c a kilowatt hour for excess power.

Environment Minister Donna Faragher did not respond to questions about Dr McMahon’s report. Dr McMahon claimed WA’s isolation, size and diverse landscape was delaying much-needed action. The report urged the Government to make urgent policy changes in areas such as energy, transportation and mining.

Original post: http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/special-features/west-australians-to-pay-for-dirty-living/story-e6frg19l-1225914730176

The UK is determined to get out of the “dunce corner” on renewables, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne said today as he officially opened the world’s largest offshore wind farm off the UK coast.

The 100-turbine Thanet wind farm off the coast of Kent will produce enough electricity to supply the equivalent of more than 200,000 homes a year, and brings the UK’s total power from onshore and offshore wind to more than 5GW – enough to power all the homes in Scotland.

At a ceremony at sea to mark the launch of the new site, Mr Huhne said offshore wind was a key part of meeting the country’s commitments to boost renewables, and the Government was focused on moving from the “frankly atrocious record” on green energy it had inherited. Currently the UK sources just 3% of all its energy from renewables, against a target of 15% by 2020, and is 25th in the league table of 27 EU countries on action on green power. Offshore wind power was part of ensuring secure, cheap energy supplies in the future, as well as providing jobs, Mr Huhne said.

But concerns were raised about the proportion of jobs created by the offshore wind industry going to British workers, and whether incentives such as £60 million promised for ports development to support the supply chain would survive the forthcoming Government spending review.

About 30% of the 3,500 jobs generated by the manufacture, construction and installation of the wind farm owned by Swedish company Vattenfall went to UK employees.

Mr Huhne said the ports funding was subject to the comprehensive spending review but said it would be foolish not to encourage in every way possible investment in the supply chain, to ensure as much as possible of the manufacture and skills for offshore wind were based in the UK.

“We need to make sure we have both the supply chain and the skills, and we will do what we can to make sure we are as attractive as we can be to investors,” he said.

“We do have an awful lot of wind and wave and tidal power and we are determined to have a supply chain to match.”

While he said the opening of the Thanet wind farm and the reaching of the 5GW was a landmark for the UK, Mr Huhne said the country had a long way to go, and could easily encourage the industry to deliver 10 times as much wind energy by 2020.

The Energy Secretary’s comments came as new research published by Vestas, which made the turbines for the Thanet wind farm, suggested that the UK offshore wind industry could directly provide as many as 34,000 permanent skilled jobs, and another 24,000 jobs in the wider economy.

The tens of thousands of jobs would come from operations and maintenance of wind farms and would be in addition to the temporary construction jobs from installing the energy plants.

But Vestas, which was at the centre of controversy when it closed its onshore turbine factory on the Isle of Wight with the loss of 600 jobs last year, said uncertainties over financial support, local skills shortages and inadequate grid and port infrastructure was putting thousands of the potential jobs at risk.

The company called for clarification on financial support, and targets agreed between Government and industry for 2020 and beyond. And there should be decisions over which ports will receive funding from the £60 million pledged for developing harbour areas to accommodate new wind farm construction.

Vestas Offshore president Anders Soe-Jensen said: “We need more qualified people to come into this industry, if this industry is going to take off.”The wind turbines will be there, we can handle that, but we need to get them erected and maintained, so we need people to come into the industry in high level jobs.” And he said: “To build up the entire supply chain will require some assistance from the Government.”

But Oystein Loseth, chief executive of Vattenfall, said the UK was the best country in the world to be installing, building and operating offshore wind. “This project would not have been possible without the British Government’s active support and its commitment to renewable energy,” he added.

And Maria McCaffery, chief executive of wind industry body RenewableUK, said: “Today’s 5GW announcement and the news on September 6 that wind supplied 10% of all electricity to consumers serves to highlight just how mainstream this energy source has become.” She said that each gigawatt of power that was installed was taking less and less time to construct, and with the right Government policies in place, the industry expected to be installing between 3GW and 4GW a year when the next major round of wind farms begin construction.

Original source: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/worlds-largest-wind-farm-opens-off-kent-2087352.html

You’d think that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the Persian Gulf would have nothing to do with alternative energy initiatives, right?  Since they have close to a quarter of the global petroleum reserves literally underfoot, you might assume that they’d try to prevent the development of alternatives, or at least not be interested in using them.  It turns out, however that even the oil rich Gulf is diversifying the energy sources beyond fossil fuels, both for business diversification and as a result of real need.

Selling off natural resources

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are facing increasing shortages in domestic energy supply, and their economies depend on selling petroleum to other countries rather then burning it  for their own needs.  Many of these countries face gas shortages, and they recognize that petroleum supplies are finite and need to be managed wisely and husbanded for the future.

One way of supplying this power is through renewable energy sources like sun and wind. Saudia Arabia, Oman, Dubai and Kuwait all have programs to promote and develop solar and wind power farms, solar powered desalination, more efficient use of oil through fuel cells, carbon sequestration, oil gasification, and green building.  The city of Masdar in Abu Dhabi aims to be the first carbon neutral area in the world through clean energy initiatives and cooperation with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Peter Barker-Homek, chief executive of Abu Dhabi’s National Energy Company (TAQA) described his available alternatives to oil and gas:

“. . . you start looking at clean coal, and nuclear power is also something that has to be in the global energy mix. In the countries that have run good nuclear programs, they are remarkably safe. We still don’t have a resolution as to what you do with the depleted uranium at the end of its life cycle.

Solar, thermal — perfect in the Gulf

“But in a world that is oil constrained, keeping that barrel of oil so you can get a refined product is extremely valuable.    Renewables will only account for 10% to 20% of any country’s energy mix, though solar or thermal power, if it’s going to be perfected anywhere, is going to be perfected in the Gulf. The amount of sunlight in a day makes it a perfect environment. ”

Alternative or renewable energy technologies are growing and present an opportunity for investors, but will become a real solution only when they become cost effective and widespread, according to Forbes.com.  Demand for petroleum is still increasing worldwide, especially in the developing world led by China and India, and they will not switch away from their use of oil unless the alternative is competitive.

Western economies can help this process along by making clean technologies more attractive for investment and innovation, first by reducing the subsidies for the oil companies, next by taxing “dirty” fossil fuels.  Finally they can also give carefully selected incentives to alternative technologies until they reach maturity in large scale applications and low cost.

And who knows?  Maybe the answer to GCC (Global Climate Change) will come from the GCC.

Original post: www.greenprophet.com/2008/08/gulf-countries-renewable-energy/

Waves crashing on to Australia’s southern shores each year contain enough energy to power the country three times over, scientists said on Tuesday in a study that underscores the scale of Australia’s green energy. The research, in the latest issue of the journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, comes as the nation is struggling to wean itself of years of using cheap, polluting coal to power the economy and to put a price on carbon emissions.

Oceanographers Mark Hemer and David Griffin from the state-funded research body the CSIRO looked at how wave energy propagates across the continental shelf and how much is lost. The aim was to build a picture of the amount of energy on an annual basis and how reliable that source is.

The government has passed laws that mandate 20 percent renewable electricity generation by 2020 to curb carbon emissions and wind power is likely to make up the bulk of the green energy investment. Wave power is still in early development.

“So what we’re saying is that we can achieve that target if we harness 10 percent of the available wave energy resource,” Hemer told Reuters from Hobart.

Hemer and Griffin used complex computer models to map how the energy in the waves attenuates near the shore. They looked at the annual cycle both in terms of mean wave conditions and the 10th and 90th percentiles.

This means that 10 percent of the time waves are smaller than the mean and for the 90th percentile the waves are larger than that value for 10 percent of that time.

“Basically what this means is that there is still a fairly large resource for 90 percent of the time,” said Hemer. And this is crucial because some types of renewable energy, such as wind and solar panels, are limited because they can’t generate steady power 24 hours a day, unlike coal or gas.

Wave power has much greater potential to deliver steady power supplies, but connecting it to the grid in remote areas could be a problem.

“Averaged over the whole year, Australia’s southern coastline has a sustained wave energy resource of 146 gigawatts (1,329 terawatt-hours/year),” the researchers say in their study, or three times Australia’s total installed generation capacity.

The government, facing an election on Saturday, is under pressure to put a price on planet-warming carbon emissions and further boost investment in cleaner energy.

The country is one of the developed world’s top carbon emitters and relies on coal to generate about 80 percent of its electricity.

Hemer and Griffin’s work has created a series of maps of the coastline that helps wave power investors find the right sites and design projects that can cope with calm and stormy conditions and how frequent these might be.

Their work is different from some past studies, which used wave data from deep-ocean waters.

The researchers don’t advocate any particular wave power technology.

But there are three firms in Australia developing technologies, including Fremantle-based Carnegie Wave Energy, which has a system based on large buoys suspended just below the surface near the shore.

Hemer and Griffin’s estimates are based on the amount of energy along the coast at 20 meters deep, since many emerging wave power systems are likely to be at that depth or less.

Ideal sites included Portland in Victoria and Albany in southern Western Australia because of easy grid connections.

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE67G2G420100817