 | The Bullroarer - Friday 4 July 2008 | The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | Inquiry into the Excise Legislation Amendment (Condensate) Bill 2008 and the Excise Tariff Amendment (Condensate) Bill 2008 |  |
25 comments on Waiting For Garnaut, No More
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25 comments on Waiting For Garnaut, No More
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GAIA Host Collective
I agree it's time for Australia to start behaving like "Export Land". The coal, uranium and LNG will be worth a hell of a lot more in the future if we don't sell it now.
Hmmm, but we may need some nuclear munitions to defend it all from the angry customers... How soon can you get your breeder reactor down there in Tassie fired up, Boof?
;-)
Since 98% of the Derwent flows out to sea (unlike the Murray) it could do some cooling while it's at it. The warmer water will help the already toxic fish cope with the muck from factories. Tassie is no longer 'clean and green' since it became utterly coal dependent via Basslink.
With a 20% MRET windpower along the roaring forties should grow substantially. Tas Hydro doesn't appear to be interested in pumped storage so some of that green electricity could be sent back to the mainland. The wind potential should at least max the HVDC cable outflow with 500 MW.
I favour baseload nuclear power stations at godforsaken places like Whyalla and Broken Hill on the mainland. The water and transmission problems are solvable. Let's give Gav's favoured geothermal and concentrating solar 5 years to show they can produce the amounts of cheap reliable power the system wants. Then go for proven technology.
Wind, solar, tidal and biogas are already proven (as is geothermal for that matter - if you want to call it "unproven" you need to specifically refer to Hot Rock geothermal, not traditional surface geothermal and low temp geothermal - both of which have been around for a long time - and provide a lot of New Zealand's power, for example).
We should be encouraging a lot of experimentation with wave power, HFR geothermal power and subsurface tidal / ocean current power
In the meantime we can get to work building up large scale wind and solar power plants and making sure we generate biogas from all our waste streams - and making the grid smarter and more dynamic, abandoning this obsolete "baseload" mentality that some remain mired in.
Eventually we'll get to 100% clean energy and leave the old model of dirty power generation behind.
I reckon 20-40% tops.
Which is it?
Do you believe "20-40%" tops?
Do you calculate it? If so, what is the basis of your calculation?
Do you see it as or count on it being 20-40% tops?
Are you making plans taking account of it as being 20-40% tops?
Because honestly, most of us will only be interested in the calculation. Your beliefs, imaginings and plans are very important for you and your family, but not very important for us.
These are fair questions and I see the start of a long thread. I'll break it down;
need for baseload - people who actually run power grids say about 40% of the total needs to be constant output ie to run hospitals and aluminium smelters
get real about wavepower and hot rocks - I'm sure there's a dentist's waiting room somewhere with a Popular Mechanics from 1975 that says these are the next big thing. How come it's taking so long?
the EROEI cliff - (see Euan Mearns articles) what distinguishes us from the Neolithic is that we need system averaged energy returns >10 or so. That's intermittent power with major backup.
there's not enough spare cash - we can't easily change from power that's 5-10c per kwh to power that costs 30-50c due to high financing costs. Another way of looking at it is that if future energy has a payback of 8 years we need all the spare energy from the next 8 years just to replicate the current output.
does the Easter Bunny exist? - I'm not saying yes or no but I want to see the evidence. What large countries have 50% or more renewables without unique factors?
This confrontation is long overdue and there's plenty more ammo. I suggest the next few years is put-up or shut-up time for the dreamers.
Boof - you are close to trolling now, making your usual collection of assertions without backing them up with any references.
Show me articles from the 1970's predicting imminent wave power or HDR power generation. From Popular Mechanics or any other source. Just one.
Both wind and CSP have EROEI way over 10, so there is no EROEI cliff to worry about if we get cracking building enough supply.
Your obsession with "baseload" I find strange. Most of our "base" load in Australia is a function of offering very cheap late night power to these smelters - because all this excess fixed capacity existed.
You are relying on circular logic. If large coal fired power stations didn't need to generate a minimum level, then we wouldn't have this demand in the first place.
Supply is variable, so is demand. That is just how it is, in spite of your apparent need for some sort of fixed baseline. As the gird gets smart and we utilise more clean and obviously intermittent power sources, demand will be managed to meet supply.
Its not that hard - the idea of markets has been around for a long time now.
Okay, so you believe and count on it. You didn't calculate it, you've no basis for your ideas except one or two private conversations and some made-up stuff - your imagined PM article, for example.
That's okay, you can believe what you want. But if you're going to tell others what to believe, then we need to have... well, you know: facts.
Ideas based on casual chats and made-up stuff we can manage by ourselves, we don't need your help ;)
I disagree with Boof on nuclear power but I also agree that 100% grid electricity from renewables is a big ask. In the case of wind, csp, PV, tidal, wave, ocean currents, geothermal and hot rocks, all of them have some level of proven ability to generate electricity. What they have not yet proven is the ability to run a modern industrial economy (any OECD one would do) and scale appropriately to allow economic growth and BAU to continue.
In both the arguments there seems to be an assumption that BAU is both possible and desirable, albeit with a bit of refashioning in the image of Boof or Gav.
Gav's renewables and Boof's nuclear won't produce liquid fuels, the recent price rises of which have created the start of a tsunami of political momentum which threatens to wipe the climate change concerns completely off the landscape.
Liquid fuels are mostly used for transport.
Transport can mostly run on electricity (planes being the main exception).
Therefore you can replace liquid fuels with electricity.
Electricity can be provided by renewables and/or nuclear.
The amount of energy available from renewables is more than 10,000 times our current energy consumption.
Therefore you could replace almost all our liquid fuels needs with renewables (nuclear advocates would make a similar argument about nuclear power, though you can argue about how long this could be sustained, whereas renewables last "forever", or thereabouts).
Change is possible, I don't see why people focus on one type of change (peak oil production) and refuse to accept many other changes aren't possible at the same time...
Whether or not "BAU" is desirable is another matter - there are other issues to deal with - but each of those is an additional discussion.
Shipping is the other exception. We have had electric transport in some areas of the world for a little over 100 years. The knowledge of electricity and its generation, distribution, control and application has expanded vastly since the 1950's and the advent of the electronic age. The advancements that are happening today are minutely incremental and are more focused on the nano, compared with the leaps and bounds that took place in early twentieth century. The electric vehicles that are yet to appear in Australia, all look like lightweights and are trying to mimic what a petrol/diesel can do but don't seem to making any great market penetration.
Electric rail passenger transport only makes economic sense in densley populated urban areas, or between major metropoli. Freight rail to and from factories is possible only once the factory reaches a certain size. Retail deliveries have a similar problem. But perhaps the biggest industry that cannot be electrified very easily is agriculture.
The transporting of grain, livestock, fodder and produce from farms is heavily reliant on trucks which are not easily replaced. In a post peak oil scenario where diesel is in short supply, it is questionable as to the survivability of many agricultural industries on the transport implications alone, let alone what is used on farm. It doesn't matter if there is oodles of electricity from any source available if it cannot be practically applied to a traction motor that is hauling a load. When it costs $20-25M just to put in a rail siding, what do think it will cost to run an electrified line past the door of every farm in the country?
The relentless assumption that we can just order up electric transport for everyone and then power it with renewables (or nuclear) is a simplistic answer to a complex set of questions.
The questions we need to be asking oursleves is what is essential transport and what can we do without; how do we redesign cities and towns so that people don't need to use mechanised transport as much as they currently do; if people are staying put, how do they get fed, clothed, housed and all the other essential inputs for life; what are the people going to do to keep themselves occupied, and what implications for transport does that have? etc etc ad infinitum.
If we can come up with low energy solutions to these questions, like Kiashus example of the 1 Tonne Carbon Lifestyle, then we may be able to simply retire many of the FF technolgies we currently use and either not have to replace them with anything or give zero emission technolgy a much lower total demand that they need to meet.
Its funny how differently people look at rates of change.
I see both the electric grid and vehicle transport poised for large transformation - and its already beginning in some places.
What is happening in Australia today is irrelevant - we don't lead in technological change - we follow.
You need to watch what is happening in California, Germany and Japan - that is where technological innovation actually happens.
Electric cars and smart grids are both hot areas now for venture capital investment. The majors are hurrying to catch up in the car industry and various cities are already starting to roll out smart grid programs. We'll see both trends manifesting themselves here within a decade.
As for farm machinery, if it can be run by a diesel engine, it can be run by an electric engine - I don't see why you think this change impossible.
Even if it was, we could use biofuels (ethanol, biodiesel or CNG from biogas) for agriculture - no big deal.
Low energy solutions are good, but they aren't the only way. As fuel prices rise, we'll see people, organisations and communities adjusting in different ways depending on their individual circumstances.
The only question about the 100% target is when - hopefully it will be in 40 years time - worst case 150 years...
Boof and Gav,
The question you are discussing whether we can replace 20-40% or 100% of FF use with renewable energy sources is the critical question for Australia. Presently we use about 50% of energy for electricity production,and of this 55%is from coal, 25% from NG and the balance mainly hydro(18%) with a small amount of wind.
Phasing out all coal generation power with wind ( and later solar) could be possible using NG and hydro to cover peak demand. Replacing most NG would require additional pumped storage and transmission lines in the east coast. Cost is the issue, but electricity is very low cost and "clean coal" is going to take time and is expensive. NG and oil have risen x4 in price.
Th go beyond 40-50% renewable fuels, will require converting car and rail to electric. This is going to happen for passenger vehicles over next 20 years. Converting trucks to battery power is not possible with current technology, but may be able to use re-recyclable once use chemical batteries(Zn/O2, Al?). Air transport may have to use bio-fuels. Sea transport is very efficient at low speeds.
The remaining 25% of FF(not oil) are used for cement, steel, chemicals; these may be very difficult to replace BUT not impossible over longer time periods with modest technical improvements.
I would conclude then that 75% of FF use could be relatively easily be replaced by wind, solar, geothermal, wave and tides and would enable BAU( sort of). Nuclear would help base-load, but not essential for Australia or countries with good hydro for pumped storage.
I would agree with Boof that in 1970's lots of Popular Mechanics stories of wave and geothermal, but also jet turbine and nuclear cars, rocket ship travel around world, supersonic aircraft. All possible now but just too expensive or too many problems of safety(supersonic air travel).
I agree that we need to expand the grid and pumped storage (and other forms of energy storage - ideally the CSP plants would have storage built in, and new wind plants would have some, perhaps modest, amount of additional storage as well).
We also need to make the grid smarter and to manage demand better - which means variable pricing and the ability for consumers to 'program" their energy consumption based on price, which would automatically level out a lot of load peaks (thus further reducing the need for Nat Gas plants).
I don't want to make this pick on Boof day... but...
I hear statements like this quite often. Implicit in this statement is the idea that river water flowing to the sea is wasted... if "we" don't use it. Now it might be true that the sediments downstream of the zinc smelter are stuffed, but is it really necessary to then reason that since that bit is stuffed lets stuff it some more by heating it up as well? Thermal pollution is not as benign as you seem to think.
River water carries with it the nutrients that make estuaries and river outfalls productive fisheries areas... especially around Tassie.
Do we make "the system" or has "the system" made us?
Aren't we now in the process (ie Garnaut) of redefining what "the system" needs, rather than wants?