Applications made for new wind farms under the Andrews Labor Government will now be simpler, encouraging investment and jobs growth in regional areas.
In Victoria, we currently have 19 wind farms that have planning approval but are yet to be commissioned. Continue reading Renewables roundup: Daniel Andrews winds up wind
At Climate Progress Extreme Heat Wave In India Is Killing People And Melting Roads. Temperatures have reached 122°F (50°C), that’s 1°F less than the all-time record. Continue reading Climate clippings 141
We’ve just broken some more global warming records. January-April was the hottest on record and May 2014–April 2015 was the hottest 12-month period on record. Continue reading Climate clippings 140
As noted in Climate Clippings 139 (Item 5) the new Queensland Labor Government has committed to a 50% renewable energy target by 2030 so I was interested to attend a public forum last week on the future of electricity in Queensland, chaired by John Davidson as convenor of the West Brisbane Branch of the Queensland Greens. Speakers were John Foster, Professor of Economics at Queensland University, Murray Craig, Managing Director of Solar Centre and Charles Worringham, spokesperson for the Queensland Greens. Continue reading The future of electricity in Queensland
In the link above, Graham Readfearn goes into some detail on the likely melting prospects of East Antarctica in particular. The salient points are as follows: Continue reading Climate clippings 139
Switching to 100% renewables by 2050 would save major economies $500 billion and save the lives of 1.3 million people.
The study looked at how fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions were linked to the economy, health and job market of the US, the EU and China, and then assessed how their current climate change commitments would benefit those areas.
According to the study:
if the US, the European Union and China started taking the steps towards using 100 percent renewable energy by 2050, they’d save a combined US$500 billion per year.
On top of that, moving in that direction would save the lives of around 1.3 million people who are killed prematurely by air pollution, and also create 3 million new jobs by 2030. And if that’s not enough reason, the study also predicted that if all countries started moving towards the 100 percent renewable target, global warming would not cross the 2 degrees Celsius threshold that many scientists believes is the ‘point of no return’ for climate change. (Emphasis added)
Here are the savings:
Notice most of the lives saved and the jobs would be in China, which has a major stake in global warming. The following image derived from the Firetree flood maps, shows eastern China with 9 metres of sea level rise:
That whole Shanghai and Jiangsu basin goes squishy with only one metre rise. At 2 or 3 metres the area would become unlivable. From about 5 metres the sea would start to penetrate deep into Anhui Province.
The linked article contains information about other developments in renewable energy.
Costa Rica powered the whole country with renewable energy for 75 days straight.
If California covered its houses, buildings and urban spaces with small-scale solar installations, it would generate enough electricity to power the state three to five times over.
Meanwhile, fossil fuels are way more expensive than the immediate dollar costs would indicate. As noted in this article:
Experts in these fields who have published research on the subject have found that fossil fuels are incredibly expensive, when we account for all of their costs. For example, one recent study conservatively estimated that including pollution costs, coal is about 4 times more expensive than wind and 3 times more expensive than solar energy in the USA today.
I’m confident the Greens appreciate the true situation, not sure that Labor really get it. Meanwhile as posted recently in Climate clippings, the Abbott government has its head completely buried in the sand:
1. Manicured lawns produce more greenhouse gases than they soak up
Researchers found:
that a hectare of lawn in Nashville, Tennessee, produced greenhouse gases equivalent to 697 to 2,443kg of carbon dioxide a year. The higher figure is equivalent to a flight more than halfway around the world.
1. Polar bears – uncertain future
The Mail on Sunday recently declared the polar bear in good shape on the basis of the opinion of biologist Dr Susan Crockford, who says:
“On almost every measure, things are looking good for polar bears … It really is time for the doom and gloom about polar bears to stop.”
It turns out that Crockford’s expertise is the archaeology of dead dogs and the identification of animal remains, and receives funding from the Heartland Institute to spread disinformation about human agency in climate change.
Information, reliable or not, is difficult to come by. This is a snapshot of one estimate of how the polar bear is travelling:
In nine of the 19 populations of polar bears information is deficient.
On their future the best estimate is:
To keep polar numbers relatively healthy, though still lower than today, scientists suggest global temperatures should not exceed 1.25 degrees Celsius above the 1980-1999 average.
2. Arctic sea ice is getting thinner faster than expected
Measuring the thickness of the Arctic sea ice sheet is not a simple matter. data from disparate sources has been brought together for the first time.
in the central part of the Arctic Ocean basin, sea ice has thinned by 65% since 1975. During September, when the ice reaches its annual minimum, ice thickness is down by a stunning 85%.
Contracts worth £315 million have been awarded to 27 renewable energy projects with a combined capacity of 2.1 gigawatts.
The majority of the 27 schemes are windfarms, including 15 onshore and two offshore schemes (the blue and green chunks below). The remaining contracts went to five solar farms (yellow) and five schemes that will burn or gasify waste to generate energy (black and grey).
By peak capacity the outcome looks rather different:
The auction was divided into two pots, with one pot reserved for “less established” technologies.
The big surprise was the prices, which were lower than expected.
4. Keystone XL pipeline bill vetoed
It’s important to note that the pipeline bill has been vetoed, not the pipeline.
Keystone is not dead. The bill was a political Tea party move to pre-empt State Department approval, which will now continue until a recommendation in made to John Kerry as Secretary of State.
Meanwhile Nebraska landowners are fighting a case in the courts. They claim state law giving TransCanada the right to drive the pipeline through their land under ’eminent domain’ is unconstitutional.
If the landowners succeed TransCanada does not have a route for the pipeline.
A longer post on the issue is here.
5. The IPCC reviews it’s processes
Every seven years the IPCC publishes three whopping reports followed by a Synthesis Report. Working Group 1 looks at the physical basis of climate change. Working Group 2 looks at impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Working Group 3 looks at mitigation. Each of these whopping tomes has a Summary for Policy Makers of about 30 pages.
The main decision is that the program will continue with some minor modifications. They will try to link the second and third volumes more specifically to the first, while producing the whole series within about 18 months.
More special reports on specific issued will be produced during the interim years.
They will try to make the summaries for policy makers more readable.
6. NZ infestation of flat-earthers climate denialists
The Dominion Post is the newspaper of record for New Zealand’s capital city, Wellington. Last Friday it featured an opinion piece by high profile climate denialists Bob Carter and Bryan Leyland titled Hypothetical global warming: scepticism needed. Gareth Renownden at Hot topic calls it
a “Gish Gallop” of untruths, half-truths and misrepresentations — a piece so riddled with deliberate errors and gross misrepresentations that it beggars belief that any quality newspaper would give it space.
He then identifies 24 specific errors or misrepresentations.
7. EU adopts climate change targets for Paris conference
The EU formally adopted on Friday climate change targets for December’s Paris conference including a 40 percent cut in emissions by 2030, climate commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said.
The targets were agreed on by leaders of the 28 European Union member states at a summit in October, but the confirmed benchmarks have now been officially sent to the UN, Canete said.
The EU was the second after Switzerland to publish its submission.
In other EU news, the Commission is to spend €100 million on projects aimed at connecting energy networks across the continent.
El Niño has finally arrived at a time of the year when they usually decay. It’s weaker than usual and is unlikely to have much impact on world weather.
9. US weather conundrum
Last week I reported (Item 1) that the planet had just experienced the hottest 12 months, while it was freezing in eastern North America during January and February and into March.
Because winter includes December and December was mild, no state had a record low winter. In fact the East’s brutal cold was offset by record warmth in the West, which was caused by warmth in the Northern Pacific. The experts think this pushed the jet stream out of shape, bringing Arctic air further south in the east.
It seems the Northern Pacific warmth has now moved to the Central Pacific, causing the weak El Niño referred to above.
Reminder Climate clippings is an open thread and can be used for exchanging news and views on climate.
Toowoomba Regional Council has approved a $1bn solar farm for a total footprint of up to 2 gigawatts over the next eight years.
APPROVAL has been given for the largest solar farm in the country — and possibly the largest proposed in the world — to be built in Queensland.
Construction on the 13,000-acre Bulli Creek site near Powerlink’s substation near Millmerran, southwest of Toowoomba, is expected to start next year. It will be on cleared, flat cattle grazing land.
Developer Solar Choice has received approval from Toowoomba Regional Council for a total footprint of up to 2 gigawatts over the next eight years.
The solar farm will be built in stages of multiple 100MW-plus phases, within a total planning approved envelope of 2GW.
If the farm reached its full potential it would take Australia 25% closer to achieving the mandated 41,000GWh target by 2020.
The ‘largest in the world’ claim relates, I think, to solar PV.
They say the project is expected to start next year but:
“The Bulli Creek project is attracting attention from a range of global investors prepared to take a medium- and long-term view,” Solar Choice said, stating it remained open to a large-scale investor.
There’s more at RenewEnergy.
Managing Director of Solar Choice, Angus Gemmell, says the Bulli Creek Solar Farm is one of a very small and select number of mega-scale solar projects that Solar Choice has strategically located at transmission nodes on broad-acre lands with high solar irradiation, west of the Great Dividing Range.
These include a 1GW solar project currently being progressed through the Whitsundays Regional Council , directly adjoining Powerlink’s 275kV Strathmore Substation at Collinsville. Another 300MW project, the Gannawarra Solar Farm in north-western Victoria, is already planning approved on the 220kV transmission lines between Swan Hill and Kerang.
“We believe that large-scale solar is on the right side of history – it’s not a matter of if these projects will be built, but when,” Gemmell told RenewEconomy in an interview.
The Toowoomba approval allows for battery storage to be added, should that become feasible.
For those who don’t know, Toowoomba at about 110,000 is the most populous inland non-capital city in the country and is the second most populous inland city overall, after Canberra.
ACT renewable energy contract
On another thread John D informed us of the ACT renewable energy contract.
The prices announced have stunned some observers, including rival bidders such as AGL Energy, which had hoped to kick-start it Silverton project. The prices are even lower than they appear, because the ACT tariff is fixed for 20 years, and it does not rise for inflation.
It appears three wind farm projects have been approved, at Bendigo ($81.50/MWh), at Ararat, west of Bendigo ($87/MWh) and at Hornsdale, south-east of Port Augusta ($92/MWh).
Battery storage
AGL Energy is planning a major new push into the rooftop solar market, along with digital meters, battery storage and home management systems.
Australia’s biggest energy utility, AGL Energy, says battery storage is already an “interesting” proposition for consumers, and it expects radical changes in the home energy market in coming years.
“We are at the point where we have got big changes going on (in energy markets),” AGL Energy managing director Michael Fraser said on Wednesday.
“We see battery storage technology going ahead in leaps and bounds.” This, in conjunction with rooftop solar and home energy management systems, would cause a “significant” and “fundamental” change in the way the energy market operates, Fraser said.
Brisbane-based Redflow says it is fast-tracking the rollout of its battery storage products to the residential and mining sector.
Redflow, which is bringing its unique zinc bromide flow battery to market, says its new products are 40 per cent cheaper than its first generation products, and are now approaching grid tariffs in some markets.
So much so, that CEO Stuart Smith says the grid, the backbone and chief source of electricity [for] more than a century, could soon be relegated to the role of mere “back-up”. This, of course, has huge implications for existing utilities – be they network operators, retailers, and/or generators.
“We believe we have a disruptive, scalable technology whose applications are continually expanding,” Smiths says.
“The future where the grid progressively becomes a backup rather than the primary source of energy is fast approaching by integrating our products with renewables such as solar and wind at a residential and commercial level.”
It seems they will be targeting Germany amongst others, where there is lots of solar and high electricity prices.
Tesla is also gearing up to enter the battery storage market. In an interesting development:
Queensland network operator Ergon Energy is installing up to one hundred 100kWh battery storage units because it is less costly than traditional grid upgrades. The units will be installed without subsidies, and other network operators are also trialling various battery storage models.
South-east Queensland is supplied by Energex. Ergon supplies the rest of the state where network costs are higher.
SA looks at nukes
South Australia has announced a Royal Commission into nuclear energy. At New Matilda, nuclear advocates Barry Brook and Ben Heard put the case in favour:
Nuclear is expensive, at least compared to coal. But when coal pays its environmental costs (especially for air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions) nuclear is not expensive at all.
Electricity from some renewables is now comparatively cheap. But when renewables pay their full system costs to overcome variability, a renewable system is very expensive indeed.
In this context, a ‘nuclear intensive’ strategy is still likely to underpin the most viable, scalable and cost-effective pathway to replace coal.
Nuclear is the safest form of large-scale energy production, when evaluated on the basis of deaths per unit of generation.
Not sure where we go with nukes, but with a bit of luck Abbott’s attempt to kill off renewables should be no more than a bump on the road in the longer term.
Biodegradable packaging has been made from mushrooms for use as foam, insulation and the like.
The article doesn’t say whether it is cost competitive.
A new study finds that wheat yields drop on average by 6% for every degree Celsius rise in temperature.
Global production of wheat was 701 million tonnes in 2012, but most of this is consumed locally. Global trade is much smaller, at 147 tonnes in 2013.
The loss of production per degree equates to 42 million tonnes, with obvious implications for shortages and prices. Year-to-year variability is likely to increase.
An obvious strategy is to develop and use heat tolerant varieties. My understanding is that there has been a reduced research capacity generally in agriculture across the world.
Worldwide, solar energy has continued to grow even when economies were shrinking. By 2013, almost 138.9 gigawatts (GW) of photovoltaic (PV) had been installed globally, states the European Photovoltaic Industry Association in the report Global Market Outlook for Photovoltaics 2014-2018.
From the bottom, blue is Europe, brown is Asia Pacific, purple is the Americas and orange is China.
The pdf is here.
Europe added almost 11 GW, second only to wind.
In the US alone, there are now about 174,000 jobs linked to solar energy, with 36,000 new jobs expected by the end of this year.
India’s plans to build a solar PV modules manufacturing plant over the next three years worth US$4 billion and 20,000 new jobs.
Giles Parkinson tells how the costs of solar will fall a further 40% in the next two years, reaching grid parity in 80% of global markets.
4. Australia could become manufacturing hub of battery storage
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) met in Abu Dhabi last weekend, ahead of the World Energy Future Conference in the same venue. Australia thumbed its nose by sending an embassy staffer rather than a minister, as a country genuinely interested in renewables would have done.
Australia is increasingly being seen as a “no-hoper” and an “outlier” in terms of large scale renewable energy.
No-one seems to have told Donald Sadoway, a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is seeking to strike up research partnerships with Australian universities and secure funding of $50 million for a pilot manufacturing plant of the liquid flow batteries.
Sadoway thinks Australia would provide a strong home market, ideal for remoter population centres difficult to serve with a high quality grid.
The LMBs [liquid metal batteries] are being hailed as a potentially low cost option for utility-scale battery storage. That is because the nature of the technology means that they can cycle – or discharge – thousands of times without having its capacity reduced.
The batteries could last for 300 years.
No doubt the minister for industry will quietly tell him that we don’t do large scale renewables, or manufacturing, in Australia.
5. Inconvenient truths hit the cutting room floor
Inconvenient words about climate change and torture were snipped out of President Obama’s State of the Union speech when posted on the (Republican) Speaker’s official site. Words like this:
The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe.
Pathetic!
6. Republican opinion on climate change
Meanwhile the Republican-controlled US Senate has voted 98-1 to say the climate change is real and not a hoax. However, that doesn’t mean that humans are the cause. After all the Bible tells of climate change and it’s just arrogance to think humans are the cause!
At least Mitt Romney thinks humans are the cause and thinks (again) that we should do something to stop it. How arrogant is that?!
A recent Yale study identifies four different kinds of Republicans – liberal, moderate, conservative and Tea Party. While overall only 44% of Republicans think global warming is happening, the sub-groups vary considerably:
Yet overall 56% think CO2 should be regulated as a pollutant, again with vast variations of opinion:
7. Ocean warming accelerating
The story about 2014 being the hottest year has upstaged a more important fact – ocean warming is off the charts:
2014 heat referred to surface temperature. Since about 93% of additional heat resulting from global warming ends up in the oceans, they give a better indication of changes in the Earth’s energy system.
John Abraham at The Guardian links to a thorough review of ocean heat measurement methods.
In January of 2014, Denmark got just over 61% of its power from wind. For the whole of 2014 it was 39.1%, a world record.
Their leadership is working well for them. Nine out of ten offshore turbines installed globally are made in Denmark. They plan to be fossil fuel free by 2050.
Elsewhere Germany and the UK smash records for wind power generation. Scotland hopes to be fossil fuel free by 2050.
On Boxing day rooftop solar met one third of South Australia’s demand and at least 30% from 11.30am to 3.30pm. Bonaire (pop. 14,500), a small island off the coast of Venezuela, said goodbye diesel and hello 100% renewable electricity.
California Gov. Jerry Brown last week called for
the state’s electric utilities to boost their renewable energy procurements to 50% of retail electric sales and discussed future initiatives to support rooftop solar, battery storage, grid infrastructure and electric vehicles.
As Bill Lawry would say, “It’s all happening!”
The first set of figures is in, this time from the Japan Meteorological Agency, showing 2014 as the hottest year so far:
The red line is the long-term linear trend.
The blue line is the 5-year running mean.
Australia had the third hottest year on record.
3. Chinese three-wheeler is for real!
From John D’s Gizmag collection we have the Spira4u three-wheeler car:
It’s not a toy, it’s a serious car which has gone into pilot production as a 10 kW electric or a fuel-injected 150 cc version with an economy of 2.94 l/100km (80 mpg).
It has a handy parking option:
And it floats:
An amphibious version is under development.
4. California starts to build a high-speed rail system
The first phase of California’s high-speed rail system will be a 29-mile stretch from Fresno slightly north to the town of Madera. From there the project will link up with urban centers like Los Angeles and San Francisco, eventually allowing commuters to travel between those two cities at 220 mph and cutting the trip from nearly six hours to less than three. The system will eventually extend to Sacramento and San Diego, totaling 800 miles with up to 24 stations.
The full rail system should be in use by 2028.
5. Solar at grid parity in most of world by 2017
Investment bank Deutsche Bank is predicting that solar systems will be at grid parity in up to 80 per cent of the global market within 2 years, and says the collapse in the oil price will do little to slow down the solar juggernaut.
Quiggin at The Conversation and his place: Only a mug punter would bet on carbon storage over renewables.
6. When you are in a hole, stop digging!
From a study in the journal Nature:
“Our results suggest that, globally, a third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves, and over 80 percent of current coal reserves should remain unused from 2010 to 2050 in order to meet the target of 2°C,” write authors Christophe McGlade and Paul Ekins of University College London.
Keeping the increase in global temperatures under 2°C will require vast amounts of fossil fuels to be kept in the ground, including 92 percent of U.S. coal, most of Canada’s tar sands, and all of the Arctic’s oil and gas…
In 2013, fossil fuel companies spent some $670bn on exploring for new oil and gas resources. The figure should be zero.
7. Climate change will create more environmental refugees
Natural disasters like Typhoon Haiyan—which devastated the Philippines in 2013 displace more people than war, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center in Geneva. And as climate change sets off increasingly lethal natural disasters, so will the numbers of environmental refugees increase, Reuters reported.
It is a reality that governments must prepare themselves for. In 2013, some 22 million people were displaced by extreme natural disasters like typhoons, earthquakes and tsunamis, a number three times the number of those who were forced to migrate because of war, according to the IDMC.
Earlier this summer New Zealand accepted a family who cited climate change as the reason why they had to flee their homeland, thought to be the world’s first official environmental refugees.
The Japanese have run an actual train with people in it at 500 km/h. The Chinese have built a train which can theoretically run at 1800 mph by encasing it in a vacuum tube.
It looks as though high speed rail could become a real alternative to air for intercity travel.
Thanks to John D for the headsup.
2. World’s first power-to-liquids production plant opens
The world’s first power-to-liquids (PtL) demonstration production plant was opened in Dresden on 14 November. The new rig uses PtL technology to transform water and CO2 to high-purity synthetic fuels (petrol, diesel, kerosene) with the aid of renewable electricity.
The article does not say how efficient the process is, but presumably less so than using the electricity directly.
3. World Bank focus on clean energy
The World Bank has traditionally been one of the world’s largest funders of fossil fuel projects. Now it:
will invest heavily in clean energy and only fund coal projects in “circumstances of extreme need”…
No doubt this policy stems from the bank’s commissioned report Turning down the heat.
4. Why the Peru climate summit matters
Hope has been injected into the Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru, scheduled to run from 1 to 12 December by the recent US/China agreement. The optimism stems as much from the fact that the two largest emitters in the world are finally working together as the level of ambition. The EU has also recently pledged to cut emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030.
Countries will be working on the text of the draft agreement for Paris in 2015.
Countries are expected to put forward their contributions towards the 2015 agreement in the form of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) by the end of March [2015]. These will then be used to craft the Paris treaty. The Lima gathering will help provide guidelines and clarity for what these INDCs must entail, especially for developing countries still reliant on fossil fuels to meet fast-growing energy demand needed to achieve developmental goals. These options could range from sector-wide emissions cuts to energy intensity goals to renewable energy targets.
We’ll be represented during the second week by Julie Bishop and Andrew Robb, a climate change denier. Seems Bishop went bananas when she found out, and Robb doesn’t want to be there anyway.
Giles Parkinson reports that we’ve sent a delegation of 14, the smallest in 20 years and probably not enough to be actively obstructive as we were in Warsaw last year.
5. 2014 looks like hottest on record
This is how it’s shaping:
Record hot years are often El Niño years. This year is a neutral ENSO year so far.
That’s so far; there is at least a 70% chance that El Niño will be declared in the coming months, according to the BOM. Looks like a hot, dry summer.
6. Germany’s largest utility gets out of the fossil fuel business
On Sunday, Germany’s biggest utility E.ON announced plans to split into two companies and focus on renewables in a major shift that could be an indicator of broader changes to come across the utility sector. E.ON will spin off its nuclear, oil, coal, and gas operations in an effort to confront a drastically altered energy market, especially under the pressure of Germany’s Energiewende — the country’s move away from nuclear to renewables. The company told shareholders that it will place “a particular emphasis on expanding its wind business in Europe and in other selected target markets,” and that it will also “strengthen its solar business.”
E.ON will also focus on smart grids and distributed generation in an effort to improve energy efficiency and increase customer engagement and opportunity.
“With its decision, E.ON is the first company to take the necessary steps from the completely changed world of energy supply,” German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, said Monday.
7. The inconvenient truth of EU emissions
The Commission and European Environment Agency’s Progress Report on climate action says:
according to latest estimates, EU greenhouse gas emissions in 2013 fell by 1.8% compared to 2012 and reached the lowest levels since 1990. So not only is the EU well on track to reach the 2020 target, it is also well on track to overachieve it.
Kevin Anderson is not impressed:
The consumption-based emissions (i.e. where emissions associated with imports and exports are considered) of the EU 28 were 2% higher in 2008 than in 1990[1]. By 2013 emissions had marginally reduced to 4% lower than 1990 – but not as a consequence of judicious climate change strategies, but rather the financial fallout of the bankers’ reckless greed – egged on by complicit governments and pliant regulation.
Then he really gets stuck in:
In the quarter of a century since the first IPCC report we have achieved nothing of any significant merit relative to the scale of the climate challenge. All we have to show for our ongoing oratory is a burgeoning industry of bureaucrats, well meaning NGOs, academics and naysayers who collectively have overseen a 60+% rise in global emissions.
