Scott Morrison, Angus Taylor stack clean energy agencies with fossil fuel mates
https://michaelwest.com.au/scott-morrison-angus-taylor-stack-clean-energy-agencies-with-fossil-fuel-mates/ by Callum Foote | Apr 20, 2022,
The Morrison government has slashed renewables funding and stacked Australia’s renewable energy agencies with fossil fuel executives, leaving the likes of ARENA, CEFC and Snowy Hydro controlled by potentially regressive political appointees for years. Callum Foote reports.
Eschewing common sense and proper process has become de rigeur for Scott Morrison and his energy minister Angus Taylor. And we are not hearing more than a whimper about this from Labor either. Political Mates deals. Jobs for the boys, Jobs for the girls.
Stacking the bureaucracy occurs under regimes of both stripes but, as is their wont, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his energy minister Angus Taylor have taken their undemocratic agendas to the next level, to a grotesque art form.
They have been busy stacking public agencies, supposedly independent agencies, with their own people; not on merit but on party lines. We are of talking highly paid jobs, many between $250,000 and $500,000 going to people on the basis on political affiliations rather than ability or independence.
As if the government’s well-publicised stacking of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) were not enough evidence of blatant abuse of process, the recent spate of mining or fossil-fuel related board appointments to government-run renewable energy bodies ARENA and the CEFC, will favour the agendas, indeed the profits, of large multinational mining companies for years to come.
CEFC Board appointments
The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) was created under the Gillard government, dedicated to making investments in emerging clean energy technologies. Originally, and for many years it ran a profit while presiding judiciously over the financing of RE projects.
First, the Coalition under Tony Abbott tried to have it abolished, despite it being a net earner for government – therefore no drag on the public purse. Failing there, the government has undermined its mandate and stacked it with its own ever since.
The latest: chairman, Steven Skala, AO, has had his position renewed for another five years.
Skala is vice chairman of Deutsche Bank Australia and has been a director of the Centre for Independent Studies, a libertarian think tank, since 1995.
While being the vice president of Deutsche Bank Australia, the bank joined JP Morgan and Standard Chartered to loan US$1 billion to Adani Enterprises in July last year.
Matt Howell has been appointed to the CEFC board for the first time, leaving his position as CEO of Tomago Aluminium.
Howell is also a director of the Australian Aluminium Council, an organisation which has been labelled the most militant of the “greenhouse mafia” organisations – as dubbed in a 2006 ABC Four Corners investigation.
The Council funded and promoted the work of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), whose “MEGABARE” economic model was, at the time, used to generate reports which were a go-to for Liberal and National Party politicians wanting to argue climate action would spell economic catastrophe.
Rod Campbell, director of research at The Australia Institute, says Howell’s recent switch to pro-renewable energy rhetoric shows he is ”more than willing to play games in the energy space rather than really be involved in constructive long-term planning”.
ARENA Board appointments
Elizabeth O’Leary, a senior director at Macquarie Asset Management and head of MAM Agriculture & Natural Assets, one of the world’s largest private land managers, has been appointed to the board of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
O’Leary joins a long list of Macquarie Bank Alumni working for Australian clean energy financial bodies as revealed by a MWM investigation.
A consortium comprising private equity funds managed by the tax avoiding Brookfield Asset Management and Macquarie Capital acquired Apache Corporation’s Western Australian oil and gas assets for $US2.1 billion in 2019. This created Australia’s third largest oil and gas producer.
Snowy Hydro Board appointments
Snowy Hydro, which has become the government’s tool to intervene in the energy market – check out the highly questionable public subsidies for the Kurri Kurri gas plant – has appointed two new board members. These are Leanne Heywood who spent 10 years as an executive with Rio Tinto.
Timothy Longstaff was the government’s other pick for the role. Longstaff has previously been a director of Perenti, a Perth-based global mining services contractor.
Longstaff was also a senior advisor to the Finance Minister Simon Birmingham as recently as 2021. Birmingham is the minister who announced Longstaff’s appointment. Jobs for the boys, anyone?
Reduction in renewables funding:
The Climate Debt Statement, a measure introduced by Prime Minister Tony Abbott aggregates funding for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) to work out how much their expenditure contributes to total government debt. It shows a decline in spending from $2 billion in 2022-23 to $1.3 billion in 2025-26.
Angus Taylor attempting to co-opt CEFC
A previous attempt to amend the CEFC’s legislation was abandoned earlier this year, after a group of Nationals MPs – including current leader Barnaby Joyce – sought to move additional amendments to expand the agency’s investments into coal and nuclear projects.
The Morrison government had attempted to open up the CEFC to carbon capture and storage projects, announcing a plan to establish a new Low Emissions Technology Commercialisation Fund using the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC).
This was designed to skirt around the CEFC’s legislated ban on funding CCS projects.
Despite the government’s ten-year jihad on renewable energy, there is no stopping financial logic, or common sense for that matter. RE prices have dropped radically over the decade, even more than the sector’s advocates and analysts had anticipated. That is, the cost of building new renewable energy versus the cost of building new coal or gas.
Where government has failed, miserably, investors have taken up the slack, leaving our politicians in the dust trying to prop up their fossil fuel donors with public money. This, even to the point of espousing ludicrous schemes which do not measure up financially: Kurri Kurri, the examination of a new coal-fired power plant for Queensland, the public subsidies for gas companies to frack the NT’s Beetaloo Basin.
The past decade has seen stunning change. The next 10 years will be breathtaking
the share of renewables in January, 2022, in Australia’s main grid is 34.4 per cent. Wind and solar alone account for 28 per cent. Solar accounted for 12.6 per cent of generation over the last 12 months, and will now likely deliver half of all generation by 2050 – not three per cent.
That 1.5°C is the only target that really matters. The federal Coalition government insists we need new technology to get us there. But nearly all the tools we will need are already at our disposal. The only thing missing, at least at the federal level, is leadership. And in a few months’ time, at the next federal election, there will be an opportunity to get that right.
The past decade has seen stunning change. The next 10 years will be breathtaking, https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-past-decade-has-seen-stunning-change-the-next-10-years-will-be-breathtaking/ Giles Parkinson 30 January 2022.
They said it couldn’t be done. There was no way Australia could reach 20 per cent renewables by 2020, we were told. And yet we did. And then we were told there was too much wind and solar. Now it is clear there is not nearly enough.
It is now exactly a decade since the RenewEconomy website appeared and published its first articles. Australia, at the time, was yet to build its first large-scale solar farm; the carbon price had not yet been put in place, the finishing touches were being put on a re-booted renewable energy target and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and geothermal and solar thermal were supposed to be the next big thing.
At the time, the transition to a grid dominated by wind and solar appeared as some sort of flight of fancy.
Sure, some utilities like Origin spent tens of millions on solar and geothermal technologies, before throwing billions into LNG. The then chief executive of AGL, Michael Fraser, used to indulge our questions with responses such as “seeing it’s you guys, I guess we better talk about solar.” A few months later, AGL spent billions becoming the biggest generator of coal in the country and the biggest emitter. It is still trying to find a way out of that mess.
But there was no doubt that many legacy utilities could already see what was coming and how much was at stake. The small amounts of rooftop solar in the grid were already pointing to a future of deep duck curves and negative prices, and the incumbents used their regulatory and political influence to fight furiously against any moves to encourage rooftop solar or energy efficiency. Some of them still are.
Big business didn’t want the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) to intervene in the market, because they wanted new technologies to be kept in the lab. Some still do. The coal lobby was arguing that it shouldn’t be expected to invest in carbon capture and storage because it was clearly not commercial, and wouldn’t be for another couple of decades. It’s too late for coal, but now the gas and oil industry are trotting out a similar argument.
In the month that RenewEconomy first published, with a team of just two (myself and still deputy editor Sophie Vorrath), there was a negligible amount of renewables in the grid – an average of 4.6 per cent over the month of January, 2012. Most of it was hydro. The official forecasts were equally dismissive – a federal government white paper predicted that solar, might, at best deliver 3 per cent of generation by 2050, or one per cent by 2030.
RenewEconomy, even in those early days, sensed that the transition might go a lot quicker than that. Firstly, because it needed to, secondly because it was clear it would be supported by great licks of capital, and thirdly because learning curves pointed to a future of low cost renewables.
Fast forward a decade and the share of renewables in January, 2022, in Australia’s main grid is 34.4 per cent. Wind and solar alone account for 28 per cent. Solar accounted for 12.6 per cent of generation over the last 12 months, and will now likely deliver half of all generation by 2050 – not three per cent.
That transition has brought extraordinary change. Coal fired power stations, if they couldn’t before, now see the writing on the wall and are preparing for closure, although they are still using their regulatory and political clout to make the case for one more major handout as the transition accelerates around them.
South Australia, thanks to its good resources and a government that made it clear it would welcome investment in renewables, leads the way with the a world-topping 62.5 per cent share for wind and solar (as a percentage of local demand) in the last 12 months.
South Australia has already delivered a week long period where wind and solar delivered more than local demand, and it is expected to reach “net 100 per cent” renewables (calculated over a year), well ahead of the official state target of 2030.
Remarkably, that net 100 per cent renewables will come from wind and solar only. It will be an extraordinary achievement and the knowledge gained from operating such a system will set a blueprint for the world to follow.
Yes, it will rely on storage, demand management, links to other states for exports and some imports, and some fossil fuel generation in wind and solar droughts, but having a gigawatt-scale grid in a modern economy meet the equivalent of 100 per cent of its demand over a year will be extraordinary.
And as stunning as the last decade has been, the next decade could be breathtaking because the market is now looking at green exports, in the form of electricity and hydrogen and ammonia, and green manufacturing, which can all focus their demand on when the sun shines and the wind blows. As the big utilities now admit, you can say goodbye to “baseload”.
As we look to the next decade, it is clear that coal generation may have disappeared from NSW by 2032, and fossil fuel cars will make up only a tiny fraction of new vehicle purchases. The share of renewables in the grid will be well above 80 per cent and could be heading towards 100 per cent.
Just to be clear on that point, the Australian Energy Market Operator expects the share of renewables to be around 80 per cent by 2030 according to what the overall industry considers to be the new “most likely” scenario, known as “step change.”
Crucially, mainstream politics is embracing it. Labor’s emissions targets, still well short of what’s needed for 1.5°C, assume an 82 per cent share of renewables in the main grid by 2030. Even the federal Coalition is dialing in a 69 per cent share of renewables in its woefully inadequate emissions targets.
Australian billionaires such as Andrew Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes have already helped change the public discourse on the green energy transition, and if their bold plans – and those of others – come true, Australia will be an exporter of green hydrogen, green ammonia, green electricity, and green materials in the form of steel and other manufactured products.
Continue readingAustralia continues to lead the world for solar installations.
Rooftop solar took a hit in 2021 with the industry growing a third less than expected thanks to lockdowns and supply chain disruptions, despite still showing strong growth overall. More than 3m households and small businesses across the country now have solar panel systems installed, with the milestone reached in November. According to registration data provided by solar consultancy company SunWiz, 3.24GW of new solar capacity was added across the country last year, representing 10% growth on the previous year.
These figures include small rooftop systems of less than 100MW registered by homeowners and small businesses, and do not include large, industrial-scale solar installations. Queensland now has the most installed capacity, with 4,483MW, closely followed by New South Wales (4,256MW) and Victoria (3,839MW). Australia continues to lead the world for solar installations with a total installed capacity of just under 17GW.
nationwide.
Guardian 19th Jan 2022
Batteries Also Make Nuclear Uneconomic
Australian Submarines May Go Nuclear But Our Power Stations Never Will, SOLARQUOTES, October 11, 2021 by Ronald Brakels
- ”………………………………………..Batteries Also Make Nuclear Uneconomic. As solar and wind generation increases, the worse the economics of nuclear energy become. This is because its low cost pushes down wholesale electricity prices. There can be periods of high electricity prices when renewable output isn’t sufficient to meet demand, but this isn’t enough to make nuclear pay. Nuclear wouldn’t pay if there were no such thing as battery storage, but battery storage makes its economics worse.
- Next year a 580 megawatt-hour battery will be built in Victoria for $270 to $300 million. That’s around $500 per kilowatt-hour. If each kilowatt-hour of storage capacity provides a total of 4,000 kilowatt-hours of stored energy over its lifetime — a not unreasonable amount — then the cost of storage will be around 13 cents per kilowatt-hour.
- That’s not cheap, but still a lot cheaper than nuclear energy, especially since we will often charge it with renewable electricity that costs 1 cent or less per kilowatt-hour. It also has the advantage it will supply electricity when prices are high, rather than more or less continuously, as is usually the case for nuclear power.
- There’s no reason to expect the cost of utility-scale battery storage to stop falling anytime soon, so by the time a nuclear power station could be completed in Australia, its economics will be far worse from falling energy storage costs alone. ………https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/submarines-nuclear-not-power-stations/
Morrison government moves to strengthen secrecy around energy ministers meetings
Details of key energy policy decisions could remain secret, as the Morrison government moves to protect National Cabinet deliberations from transparency laws. The post Morrison government moves to strengthen secrecy around energy ministers meetings appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Morrison government moves to strengthen secrecy around energy ministers meetings — RenewEconomy Michael Mazengarb 2 September 2021 The Morrison government has moved to strengthen the level of secrecy around the proceedings of National Cabinet – including the meetings of energy ministers – proposing new legislative amendments that will ensure the National Cabinet is exempt from a range of transparency measures, including freedom of information laws.
The move will extend to the ‘sub-committees’ of the National Cabinet, including the Energy National Cabinet Reform Committee chaired by federal energy minister Angus Taylor.
The new legislation, which will define the National Cabinet as a committee of the federal cabinet under a range of transparency laws, including the Freedom of Information Act, is designed to ensure the National Cabinet is protected from public disclosure obligations.
The legislation comes as a response to a landmark ruling of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on a freedom of information request lodged by independent senator Rex Patrick, which ruled the National Cabinet was not covered by freedom of information exceptions, and documents relating to National Cabinet meetings should be disclosed publicly.
But the Morrison government has sought to effectively overturn this decision through the legislative amendments, ensuring the proceedings of National Cabinet, and its sub-committees, remain secret.
“Like the Commonwealth cabinet and its committees, all proceedings and documentation of the National Cabinet and its committees are confidential,” federal education minister Alan Tudge said when presenting the legislation.
In response, Patrick described prime minister Scott Morrison as a ‘sore loser’.
“Having acted outside and contrary to the law with regard to National Cabinet secrecy, the Prime Minister now wants to change the law,” Patrick said.
“He’s a sore loser who does not accept long-established conventions of Cabinet responsibility and democratic accountability. He hates scrutiny and is allergic to transparency.”
The creation of the Nation Cabinet came at the same time as the abolition of the COAG system, including the COAG Energy Council meeting of energy ministers. The change has allowed the Morrison government to take greater control of the National Cabinet process – and in the case of energy reforms – as meant that little detail of what is discussed amongst energy ministers is known publicly.
While state and territory ministers often publicly vented their frustration about the lack of national action on climate and energy policy around meetings of the former COAG Energy Council, the new National Cabinet regime means ministers are bound by cabinet confidentiality rules and have since been largely mute about any dissatisfaction they may harbour about the proceedings of the new committee.
The Energy National Cabinet Reform Committee has taken oversight for the work of the Energy Security Board. Its secrecy requirements have resulted in key information about energy market reforms being proposed by the Energy Security Board being withheld from the broader energy market for weeks after reform recommendations were delivered to ministers.
Much of the energy market was reliant on leaked information as their main source of knowledge about the Energy Security Board’s post-2025 re-design of the National Electricity Market – which will amount to the most significant shake-up of the market’s design since its formation.
The control that Taylor wields over the energy committee also meant that the first official public release of information about landmark energy market reforms was first released to news outlet
sympathetic to the Morrison government before it was released to the wider public.
The added protections being sought by the Morrison government will further prevent the release of information about meetings of the Energy National Cabinet Reform Committee – with the public left in the dark about even the agendas of meetings.
RenewEconomy has sought access to documents relating to meetings of the Energy National Cabinet Reform Committee on several occasions – as well as a wide range of documents relating to other government decisions through freedom of information laws, but access has been denied in most cases.
A recent review of freedom of information requests completed by the Grata Fund found that the Morrison government has often unlawfully blocked access to documents, undermining laws intended to support public transparency and accountability of government decisions.
The latest legislation looks set to be opposed by both Labor and the Greens. The Morrison government will likely be reliant on One Nation senators to pass the laws through the senate.
Australia’s national energy market can be supplied by 100% renewable energy by 2025
AEMO forecasts rooftop solar would continue its boom and by 2026 would on its own supply 77 per cent of the demand in the National Electricity Market during the day.
Australia’s energy transition really does continue at pace and now our base case forecast by 2025 is the national electricity market can be supplied by 100 per cent renewable energy,
Electricity grid powers on despite demise of coal as renewables surge, https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/electricity-grid-powers-on-despite-demise-of-coal-as-renewables-surge-20210830-p58n6i.html, By Mike Foley and Nick Toscano, August 31, 2021 Australia’s power grid is set up to cope with coal’s continued decline over the next decade, the market operator has declared, even as a flood of cheap electricity from solar and wind farms undercuts traditional power plants’ profits.
Fossil fuel-based generators have been under financial pressure over the past year as renewables drive down daytime power prices to levels where coal and gas struggle to compete. South Australia’s Torrens Island B gas plant is set to mothball one unit next month, Victoria’s Yallourn Power Station is set to shut four years early in 2028, and one unit at NSW’s Eraring Power Station will shut in 2030.
State and federal governments are working on plans to cope with the danger of more early power plant closures amid concerns sudden exits could disrupt electricity supply.
However, the influx of wind and solar power, coupled with the boom in rooftop solar and investment in new transmission lines, is expected to fill the void because it will be backed by investment in dispatchable power projects – providing on-demand energy from new gas, batteries or pumped hydropower
Over the next five years we’ve got sufficient supply to meet the required reliability standards,” the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) chief executive Daniel Westerman said, noting that power projects in the pipeline were progressing well. “In the subsequent five years we are confident about the anticipated generation and storage projects as well.”
AEMO forecasts rooftop solar would continue its boom and by 2026 would on its own supply 77 per cent of the demand in the National Electricity Market during the day.
However, rooftop solar is drastically reducing daytime demand, and its cheap cost of supply is eating into the business cases for traditional power plants.
That means large-scale power generation, which is still essential to satisfy peak demand when the sun isn’t high in the sky, has less money-making potential.
“Australia’s love of rooftop solar is going as strong as ever, so the minimum operational demand is likely to cause us the biggest challenges by 2025,” Mr Westerman said.
“Without additional operational tools, we may no longer be able to operate the (electricity market) securely in all periods from 2025 due to a lack of security services when demand from the grid is so low.”
A reform being investigated by state and federal governments may help address this, Mr Westerman said. Under the proposal for a “capacity mechanism”, retailers would pay generators to guarantee future supply by remaining in the grid or investing in new assets.
Green Energy Markets analyst Tristan Edis said state and federal governments “have funded the construction or made very firm promises to construct a huge pipeline of thousands of megawatts of dispatchable capacity as well as transmission projects that should mean we will have plentiful supplies of dispatchable capacity to maintain reliability as coal generators exit”.
AEMO’s latest upgrade has also lifted its expectations for renewables penetration into the grid. In June Mr Westerman said it was a “goal” for the grid, usually powered by about 70 per cent coal, to be able to handle an influx of 100 per cent renewable power at certain times.
Australia’s energy transition really does continue at pace and now our base case forecast by 2025 is the national electricity market can be supplied by 100 per cent renewable energy,” he said.
Australia’s carbon emissions down 20% due to wide take-up of renewable energy
Telegraph UK, 29th July 2021, For Australia’s part, our experience with technology-orientated pathways
gives us confidence that with the right investments and partnerships, a prosperous net-zero world is well within our reach.
On the ground, our real-world rollout of renewables has made clear to Australian firms and families the immense benefits of investing in clean technology. Because of their embrace of our new energy future, Australia’s emissions are down over 20 per cent on 2005 levels and green technology continues to be taken
up at record levels right across our nation.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/29/technology-key-free-prosperous-net-zero-world/
Lowy Institute polling shows that 91% of Australians want the federal government to support renewable energy development
https://poll.lowyinstitute.org/charts/potential-federal-government-policies-on-climate/ Looking at a range of possible federal government policies, almost all Australians (91%) say they would support the federal government ‘providing subsidies for the development of renewable energy technology’. This aligns with Lowy Institute polling in 2018 in which 84% of Australians said the government should focus on renewables rather than traditional energy sources
.ight in ten Australians (78%) support ‘setting a net-zero emissions target for 2050’, suggesting they seek a firmer commitment from Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has said that Australia’s “goal is to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible, and preferably by 2050”.
Seven in ten Australians (77%) support providing subsidies for the purchase of electric vehicles. A sizeable majority of Australians (64%) support introducing an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax. These views have shifted significantly in the past five years. In 2016, in response to a differently-worded question in the Lowy Institute Poll, only 40% said they would prefer the government to introduce an emissions trading scheme or price on carbon.
ustralian views of coal exports and coal mines also appear to have shifted significantly in recent years. Six in ten Australians (63%) support a ban on new coal mines opening in Australia. The same proportion of the population (63%) say they support reducing Australian coal exports to other countries, in an apparent shift from five years ago when a majority (66%) said Australia should continue to export coal. In 2021, only three in ten Australians (30%) say they support the federal government providing subsidies for building new coal-fired power plants.
On a number of these policies, there is a significant gap between support from younger and older Australians. For example, 72% of Australians aged 18–44 years old support banning new coal mines, compared to 55% of Australians aged over 45. Similarly, 71% of respondents aged 18–44 support imposing a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme, compared to 57% of Australians over 4
The federal government’s promotion of a ‘gas-fired recovery’ for Australia’s economy appears to have general support, with 58% in favour of Australia increasing the use of gas for energy generation.
Australians are split over the question of nuclear power, which has been prohibited in Australia since 1998. Almost half the population (47%) would support removing the existing ban on nuclear power, but the same number (51%) are opposed to that measure.
New South Wales Productivity Commission slammed for recommending nuclear power while ignoring offshore wind,
NSW Productivity Commission slammed for recommending nuclear power while ignoring offshore wind, https://www.miragenews.com/nsw-productivity-commission-slammed-for-571554/
Maritime Union of Australia
The NSW Productivity Commission is under fire for recommending the NSW Government lift the state’s ban on nuclear power while ignoring proven, lower-cost renewable energy sources such as offshore wind.
Among 60 recommendations aimed at driving productivity and economic growth, the NSW Productivity Commission White Paper released this week proposed the ban on nuclear generation be lifted for small modular reactors.The same report made no mention of offshore wind generation, despite the proven technology producing a growing share of electricity around the world and several major proposals awaiting approval off the NSW coast.
This is despite the CSIRO’s most recent report on electricity generation costs showing that SMR nuclear reactors cost approximately $16,000 per kilowatt, nearly three times offshore wind. Recent UK analysis has found the cost of developing offshore wind is even lower.
The Maritime Union of Australia said it was staggering that the NSW Productivity Commission would recommend resources be thrown into small modular nuclear reactors — a technology that doesn’t yet exist — instead of cheaper, cleaner, proven technologies like offshore wind.“It is unbelievable that the NSW Productivity Commission would propose a major regulatory overhaul for a theoretical technology that doesn’t operate anywhere on earth, yet not even mention one of the fastest growing forms of energy generation,” MUA Deputy National Secretary Warren Smith said.
Rather than waste years debating a theoretical technology, which will come with huge costs and substantial safety concerns, the NSW Government should be getting on with supporting the development of reliable, cheap, and plentiful offshore wind resources.“The NSW Productivity Commission’s focus on an industry that doesn’t even exist, while ignoring a proven technology that can deliver power and jobs for NSW right now, shows an ideological pro-nuclear agenda has been put ahead of the state’s economic interests.“Small nuclear reactors have been promised for half a century, but as yet not one exists. Most countries with nuclear power are moving away from the technology, with new reactors running hugely over budget, requiring massive taxpayer subsidies, and locking in higher power prices for consumers.“In contrast, offshore wind technology continues to mature, delivering massive growth at ever-lower prices.
“Australia has the advantage of long coastlines close to population centres, along with highly skilled seafarers and offshore oil and gas workers who could be utilised to construct local wind projects.“The development of an offshore wind industry would also provide an opportunity to transition highly-skilled workers from fossil fuel industries into a clean, green alternative.“With the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions to address global heating, it’s absurd that the NSW Productivity Commission would suggest sitting on our hands for a decade in the hope a theoretical technology will magically fix the problem when we already have solutions available.“NSW has an opportunity to become a major exporter of clean, renewable energy, securing our economy for the future, but only if the Berejiklian Government takes immediate steps to support proven technologies.”
National Farmers Federation want govt to support renewable energy (not coal or nuclear)
released on Tuesday, the NFF makes the call for renewable energy to be part
of new investment to address the $3.8bn annual shortfall in infrastructure
in regional Australia. The paper, which makes no mention of coal or nuclear
energy supporting jobs in the regions, comes as the Nationals push for the
Clean Energy Finance Corporation to invest in those technologies.
Queensland neeeds job-supplying, clean, renewable energy, NOT antiquated nuclear power
“What regional Queensland needs is an Australian government that is united on growing manufacturing and delivering cleaner, cheaper, energy.
“Not a Government that is tearing itself apart and proposing antiquated solutions.”
LNP comes clean on plans for Queensland nuclear power, https://statements.qld.gov.au/statements/91502 18 February, 2021
The LNP’s latest thought bubble on energy policy has again exposed the rifts in the coalition party room, Energy, Renewables and Hydrogen Minister Mick de Brenni said today.
Mr de Brenni said the LNP’s latest announcement to bring nuclear energy to Queensland would not be welcome by the public.
“Queenslanders have emphatically rejected nuclear power time and time again and today’s revelation flies in the face of every State and Territory’s nuclear ban,” the Minister said.
“Inner city Liberals are pushing renewables, Nationals are nuclear and the result is the lack of a coherent national energy policy.
“Manufacturing and resources companies are investing in cheaper, cleaner energy to grow jobs in Queensland by investing in renewables, not old fashioned, dangerous options.
“Queensland’s renewable energy zones have been flooded with enough interest to create 60,000 megawatts of extra clean energy, which could create up to 57,000 jobs in construction alone, let alone the influx of load intensive manufacturing jobs…
“This ongoing investment in large-scale renewable energy is only happening because of Queensland’s very clear energy policy.
“What regional Queensland needs is an Australian government that is united on growing manufacturing and delivering cleaner, cheaper, energy.
“Not a Government that is tearing itself apart and proposing antiquated solutions.”
Mr de Brenni said the Queensland Opposition Leader should immediately reject the calls and ask his party for a coherent energy policy.
“He should call his Queensland federal colleagues today to put an end to calls to bring nuclear energy to Queensland,” Mr de Brenni said.
“Any decision to overturn the Australian ban on nuclear by the LNP has the potential to kill off Queensland’s chance to onshore manufacturing and the Palaszczuk Government’s plans to develop a clean, renewable hydrogen sector and thousands of renewable jobs.”
“Queensland’s renewable energy zones have been flooded with enough interest to create 60,000 megawatts of extra clean energy, which could create up to 57,000 jobs in construction alone, let alone the influx of load intensive manufacturing jobs.
“And we have the youngest fleet of coal-fired power stations.
“This ongoing investment in large-scale renewable energy is only happening because of Queensland’s very clear energy policy.
“What regional Queensland needs is an Australian government that is united on growing manufacturing and delivering cleaner, cheaper, energy.
“Not a Government that is tearing itself apart and proposing antiquated solutions.”
Mr de Brenni said the Queensland Opposition Leader should immediately reject the calls and ask his party for a coherent energy policy.
“He should call his Queensland federal colleagues today to put an end to calls to bring nuclear energy to Queensland,” Mr de Brenni said.
“Any decision to overturn the Australian ban on nuclear by the LNP has the potential to kill off Queensland’s chance to onshore manufacturing and the Palaszczuk Government’s plans to develop a clean, renewable hydrogen sector and thousands of renewable jobs.” Media contact: Rosie Gilbert 0466 834 330
Solar, storage to take over from Ranger uranium mine
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Solar, storage to take over from Australian uranium mine https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/02/17/solar-storage-to-take-over-from-australian-uranium-mine/https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/02/17/solar-storage-to-take-over-from-australian-uranium-mine/https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/02/17/solar-storage-to-take-over-from-australian-uranium-mine/
The Ranger Uranium Mine ceased production in Australia’s Kakadu National Park in January, following years of financial losses. Now, as part of a multimillion dollar rejuvenation of the park, there are plans to develop a solar and battery storage hybrid project near the town of Jabiru. FEBRUARY 17, 2021 BLAKE MATICH From pv magazine Australia Distributed energy producer EDL will build, own and operate a hybrid microgrid in the remote mining town of Jabiru, in Australia’s Northern Territory. Working with the Northern Territory government, EDL’s Jabiru Hybrid Renewable Project will help the community transition from its recent history as a uranium mining town to a new future as a tourist destination in the heart of the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park. Jabiru is held in native title by the Mirarr people. The town, as it is recognized today, has only existed since 1982, when it was established as a living community for the nearby Ranger Uranium Mine. The project, which integrates 3.9 MW of solar generation and a 3 MW/5 MWh battery with 4.5 MW of diesel generation, is in line with broader efforts to rejuvenate Kakadu. It will also be EDL’s 100th site since it began 30 years ago with the development of the Pine Creek Power Station on the other side of the national park. “Once completed, our hybrid renewable power station will provide Jabiru with at least 50% renewable energy over the long term, without compromising power quality or reliability,” said EDL CEO James Harman. The Ranger Uranium Mine is owned by Energy Resources Australia, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto. It was once one of the most productive uranium mines in the world. However, the mine ceased production on Jan. 8, after years of losses primarily attributed to the market slump following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. According to the Katherine Times, Kakadu is set to undergo a $276 million upgrade as part of a plan to rejuvenate tourism to the home of the world’s oldest living culture. Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley told the newspaper that “the park’s traditional owners want to see culturally appropriate tourism grow and we will work with them to achieve that outcome.” EDL will begin construction on the project in the months ahead. It expects the hybrid system to be generating energy by early 2022. |
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Businesses and State governments lead the transition to renewable energy
Guardian 26th Oct 2020, Future historians will no doubt remember 2020 as the year of Covid-19. But according to veteran climate campaigner Bill McKibben, they may also view it as a turning point, the year the world moved decisively towards “the transition everyone knew we needed to make”. McKibben told the recent Global Smart Energy Summit 2020 has been a year of “extraordinary convergence”, from the images of Australia’s bushfires, seen around the world on New Year’s Day – “like something out of Hieronymus Bosch” – to unprecedented developments such as China’s commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2060, the EU’s pledge to make its Green Deal and Є100bn Just Transition Fund the centrepiece of post-Covid recovery, and the US $15tn divested from fossil fuels.
Closer to home, there’s extraordinary convergence between business and state governments on the need to speed up Australia’s energy transition.
Tim Reed, president of the Business Council of Australia, wants a “national, bipartisan commitment to net zero emissions by 2050”. Most states have already made this commitment, and South Australia is leading the pack. The state’s energy and mining minister, Dan van Holst Pellekaan, says SA will aim for 100% net renewable generation by 2030. Rapidly expanding wind, solar and battery storage capacity in SA’s Upper Spencer Gulf region will play a key role in achieving that aim.
But energy transitions are not just about panels, turbines and targets. They’re processes of social as well as technological change. Unless local people see jobs and other benefits for their communities, there’s a danger support will falter, and the legitimacy of Australia’s energy transition will be undermined.
South Australia’s global milestone -100 per cent of energy demand met by solar panels alone
 ABC 25th Oct 2020, South Australia’s renewable energy boom has achieved a global milestone. The state once known for not having enough power has become the first majorjurisdiction in the world to be powered entirely by solar energy. For just over an hour on Sunday, October 11, 100 per cent of energy demand was met by solar panels alone. “This is truly a phenomenon in the global energy landscape,” Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) chief executive Audrey Zibelman said. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-25/all-sa-power-from-solar-for-first-time/12810366 |
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The pandemic and the prospect of zero interest present a massive opportunity for clean energy development.
 The tantalising promise of ultra-cheap power South Wind, 27 October 2020 by admin
The pandemic and the prospect of zero interest present a massive opportunity for clean energy development. The story of 2020 has really been two stories, deeply interwoven, in which what happens in one keeps playing on the other and causing general mayhem. One is about the virus; the other the economy…….. Solar panels are getting steadily more efficient and cheaper to make, but Quiggin sees their greatest potential in the fact that they last three or more decades and cost virtually nothing to operate. The cost of a solar project today arises almost entirely from the need of investors to get a return on the capital they put into the project’s construction and grid connection. Solar’s low capital cost is stretching the “payback period” of projects – the time available for investors to be repaid in full – so far into the future that the power generated is virtually free. Quiggin calculates that over a module’s lifetime the cost could drop as low as 2c per kilowatt-hour. Yields from current Australian government bonds are lower than likely inflation. European countries are offering bonds maturing after 50 or 100 years, and the US government is selling similar bonds at negative interest rates. Given all this, Quiggin believes that governments should issue perpetual bonds yielding inflation-adjusted returns of zero. “In the world of zero real interest rates that now appears to be upon us… governments can, and should, invest in projects whenever the total benefits exceed the costs, regardless of how those benefits are spread over time.” If there is a powerful case for public investment in renewable energy, the case for doing the same for transmission, says Quiggin, is even stronger. “Electricity transmission lines have the same cost structure as renewables (low operational cost and long lives), if anything more so, meaning that the cost of transmission depends primarily on the need to secure a return to the capital invested.” This is where Quiggin’s interesting idea really starts to sing. A modern, smart, efficient electricity grid over a wide area like eastern Australia can make intermittent solar and wind power work well for us, rapidly switching demand to where the sun shines and the wind blows and minimising calls on alternative generators or energy stored in batteries or hydro schemes. Opposition leader Anthony Albanese proposes to spend $20 billion on transmission infrastructure to allow the national grid to fully integrate new renewable sources. The government could go one further by investing in both transmission and renewable generation. But it is still in pre-pandemic mode, offering just low cost finance for private transmission investment. The pandemic has disrupted everything we knew, killing the old economy and its ideological stereotypes. In these times of upheaval and flux, as John Quiggin says, there are huge opportunities for large-scale public investment in a new, cleaner economy. Our recovering economy will need a lot of public investment. All we ask of the Morrison government is the vision to see what’s possible and the courage to act. http://southwind.com.au/2020/10/27/the-tantalising-promise-of-ultra-cheap-power/ |
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Antinuclear 