Author: Peter Gardner

(an edited version first published in the Bass Coast Post)

It will help if those bigger new proposals generate a “social licence” as well as electricity. That means working actively with the community as projects are developed. Locals know things about their landscape that technical engineers might miss. They need to be consulted and their interests considered over the long term.

Bald Hills Windfarm provides an ongoing “dividend” to the local communities around the site in the form of community grants. They needed to do that. I hope these new solar farms will do the same, either building in some portion of community ownership, or via a community dividend. The co-op, with its deductible gift recipient status, community energy focus, and commitment to helping community groups across the region, could make this part easy for them. We are always happy to discuss.

Also coming … I keep meeting clever young people who tell me how we will soon be able to use software and new apps to gather together distributed generation and stored energy from solar, wind and battery storage. We’ll be able to send it out when it’s needed, to stabilise the grid and add supply during those critical peak demand times, earning us income as we go. When that can happen easily, everyone will pay less for power, even those who don’t own a house or factory with a solar roof.

For years I have been saying “Our grandchildren will curse us if we don’t act.” By supporting, encouraging and helping guide the developments in renewable power that are coming our way, we are acting.

I want each of those developments to be as directly beneficial to the immediate community as they can be. But I want them to happen, for all of us, wherever and whoever we are.

Encouraging renewable energy generation, with community and business working positively together, including dealing with the changes it brings, are easy small steps towards giving our grandchildren a brighter future with a climate that is settling down.

The momentum is all positive. It’s a very exciting time …

*Susan Davies runs a small mixed farm in Outtrim and was founding chair of the Energy Innovation Co-operative.

 

‘Coal to Green’ video by Tom McNish

(an edited version first published in the Bass Coast Post )

Wherever I go across Bass Coast and South Gippsland and beyond I see solar panels, not just a lonely single string on a house as in the old days when I put solar on my place, but large roof-covering accumulations of solar panels on workshops, factories, shops, houses and rural sheds. Numbers are expanding exponentially. It gives me hope. We can act. We can make the change that has to happen. Our small, rural and traditionally conservative communities can see the advantages already, even if some of the old political forces are slow to get the message. It is just happening.

Numbers and sizes of solar installations aren’t expanding because of large government subsidies. Households and businesses install solar because it reduces power bills, it’s easy, has a quick pay-back period and is very reliable (provided you’ve learned the lessons of the past and used a quality installer and quality products).

I am part of the Energy Innovation Co-operative. We have been working in this region for nine years, helping to encourage this change to renewables and energy efficiency. The co-op will add in a small way to the regional renewable energy output with the 90 kW to be installed at the State Coal Mine Wonthaggi. Our Southern CORE (Community Owned Renewable Energy) Fund is helping community groups to install solar panels on their buildings.

There are other solar projects to follow, including inviting small investors to help fund a solar installation in return for income or credit on their power bill. And we will keep providing advice and support through community information sessions and social media. But there are more and bigger solar projects coming on.

The proposed 30 megawatt solar farm outside Wonthaggi has begun the permit and community consultation process. I know of at least three other local proposals that are even less developed. They will come, in time. I want this to be seen as a big plus for all of us. Renewable electricity generation is relatively “low hanging fruit” in reducing carbon emissions. Reducing emissions in other areas of our local economy, such as transport and agriculture, demands more effort from each of us personally. Let’s go for the easier ones like power generation where we can.

*Susan Davies runs a small mixed farm in Outtrim and was founding chair of the Energy Innovation Co-operative.

 

A local media frenzy followed PM Turnbull’s recent announcement of a “world-first trial to use brown coal to make hydrogen” in the Latrobe Valley. The Federal and State governments are each contributing $100 million towards the cost of the trial with the final product being shipped to Japan. At the launch at Loy Yang “Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said hydrogen was a fuel of the future.”

Since then during his recent visit French President Macron’s pleaded with the Australian Federal Government to act on Climate Change. He used the key phrase “there is no Planet B” and one can only throw one’s hands in the air for our politicians “still don’t get it!”

The trial is hardly a ‘world first’ as the majority of hydrogen (∼95%) is (and has been for decades) produced from fossil fuels by steam reforming or partial oxidation of methane and coal gasification with only a small quantity by other routes such as biomass gasification or electrolysis of water. The problem with the whole idea is that Japan gets the clean fuel, hydrogen, whilst we are left with the carbon dioxide… an ‘unclean’ product! Where to put it? I understand the temptation… we have squillions of tonnes of brown coal and a lot of money may be earned from it. So why leave it in the ground?

Specifically, hydrogen is produced by first reacting coal with oxygen and steam under high pressures and temperatures to form synthesis gas, a mixture consisting primarily of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. After the impurities are removed from the synthesis gas, the carbon monoxide in the gas mixture is reacted with steam through the water-gas reaction to produce additional hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Hydrogen is removed by a separation system, and the highly concentrated carbon dioxide stream can subsequently be captured and stored. When hydrogen is used in efficient fuel cell vehicles, emissions can be more or less eliminated as water is the main product!

This is what the Japanese get and are prepared to pay for! Clean fuel with clean emissions! To get a lot of hydrogen the coal needs to be “gasified” rather than burned, creating compounds that can then be reacted with water to make hydrogen. Firstly the coal is heated with air. Then the products are again heated with steam. There are impurities such as sulphur and other products that must be removed. However, the bulk of the final product consists of carbon dioxide and hydrogen which must be separated. The carbon dioxide needs to be stored somewhere safely. Some of it (albeit a small proportion) may be used in other industries.

The whole scheme has already been highly politicised in the Latrobe region due to many workers being laid off since privatisation and the promise of new jobs is welcomed. However ‘renewables’ are the way to go if we are to meet our obligations under the ‘Paris Accord on Climate’ to which Australia is a signatory. Hydrogen (plus oxygen) can be made simply by electrolysis of water. This is where a rapid expansion of solar energy may be applied as well as feeding households for electricity demand. In the words of the French President: “there really is no Plan B if we are to avert global catastrophe in the coming decades!”

*Chas is a former Maths/Science teacher at Swifts Creek HS

 

Paul Treasure’s blog last month on a PHES project adjacent to the Latrobe Valley attracted substantial interest. On the positive side it offered an energy storage that could more than replace Yallourn W – now the dirtiest coal fired electricity generator in Australia. It also made use of nearby Latrobe Valley infrastructure making it far cheaper than the Snowy 2.0 project and perhaps most important of all provided jobs for Gippslanders.

On the downside the proposal attracted some criticism mainly in the form of threats to biodiversity caused by construction of an upper dam adjacent to the Baw Baw National Park. In particular the threat to the endangered Baw Baw frog was mentioned along with other values of this near wilderness areas. It goes without saying that all projects of this sort need to go through the process of a thorough environment impact statement. The critics also suggested there may be other more suitable PHES sites and that improving energy efficiency may be a possible alternative.

Energy efficiency should lead to a drop in demand and ‘demand response’ a drop in high prices during scarcity. Current flat lining of energy demand in Victoria is probably due to improvements of the former but we have yet to make the serious inroads on demand that are needed. I intend to examine aspects of energy efficiency in another blog and have done a brief account of ‘demand response’ – paying consumers to turn off their power at times of peak demand.

Alan Pears writing his column in the Alternative Technology Association’s RENEW stated “the size and frequency of profitable price gaps [for PHES] depend on many factors. If too many energy storage facilities are built before it [Snowy 2.0] starts operating or demand response trims peak demand (when prices usually peak), the price gap will close. If improving energy efficiency drives demand down, it undermines the economics of all supply options by shifting the balance between supply and demand.”

And “Snowy 2.0 won’t be operating until well after the Liddell coal power station closes in 2022, so a lot of new storage and supply capacity and demand-side measures will need to be introduced before then. That will undermine the viability of Snowy 2.0. Given the rapid growth and declining prices of alternatives, Snowy 2.0 may require big subsidies.”

Whilst there are substantial risks with any large scale investment in Snowy 2.0 or a Baw Baw PHES there are far more involved in building any fossil fuelled power station.

Similarly ‘demand response’ is in its infancy and yet to have any effect on high prices. Much of this will be provided by a cost benefit analysis and the fact that we have to move from the high carbon to the low carbon economy as quickly as possible. From the point of view of the climate emergency action should be taken on all fronts to increase supply via renewables and storage and decrease demand by energy efficiency and demand response.

Reports from across East Gippsland indicate the region is experiencing a (so far) short sharp drought similar to those autumn droughts we experienced in 1983 and 1998. A recent trip to Stratford via Perry Bridge and Strathfieldsaye confirmed this with a large number of farmers feeding out and some paddocks heavily overgrazed. The experience of 1998 is firmly in my mind when in the upper Tambo valley we experienced Easter dust storms which left a millimetre of fine dust spread over our furniture inside our house and small sand dunes formed on the south sides of the hills. There followed in June record floods.

The Weather Bureau (BOM) states East Gippsland has experienced a serious to severe rainfall deficiency over the last 12 months. Much of this century our region has been on the dry side although for most of this decade the seasons appear to have been normal to good. The unusual warmth we are experiencing in April (possibly a record?) appears to be heavily influenced by the warm water in the Tasman Sea.

How much of the drought can be attributed to climate change? For a start is can be clearly argued that climate change has been influencing weather patterns all our lives. However it is only since the 1980s that the increasing temperatures and other effects have become more pronounced and clearly observable. Also science has long predicted that the climate change will increase extreme weather events and make them more severe. Barrie Pittock, for instance, in his Climate Change (CSIRO Publ. Melb. 2005) has more than 40 references to drought.

The science of climate attribution is also growing rapidly and being used to predict how likely an event has been influenced by climate change and whether or not an extreme weather event would have occurred without climate change. The ABC noted “The basic principle behind climate change attribution is comparing the world as it is, with how it would have been without human-induced greenhouse gases”.

Unfortunately it is a fairly slow process and unable to help us with events that have just occurred or still occurring. Some events are easier to attribute climate change influence than others. For example a 2004 study of a heatwave that occurred in 2003 in the northern hemisphere and which caused 35,000 fatalities “found that climate change had more than doubled the risk of such extreme heat” for this event.

We can conclude that as all our weather is now influenced by the increasing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and that the current dry is also influenced by it though by how much we do not know. Interestingly the BOM forecast for south-east Australia is for above average rainfall for May-July. Perhaps we are due for a repeat of 1998?

 

Republished from the Bass Coast Post

Bass Coast is noted for its bracing winters rather than sunshine but that hasn’t deterred a company proposing to establish a 30 megawatt solar farm on the outskirts of Wonthaggi. APR Australian Solar plans to build the farm on the site of the old St Clair abattoir, on the Korumburra-Wonthaggi Road. Company director George Hughes said the $50 million project would produce enough electricity to power 7200 homes, which potentially covers Wonthaggi and Inverloch.

Asked why Wonthaggi rather than somewhere obvious like Mildura, Mr Hughes said that Wonthaggi had several advantages for a solar development. “We looked for a substation with available capacity and a site that’s currently being grazed. Once it’s up and running, it will be grazed again. Cattle are grazing now; it will be sheep afterwards. There is no need for rezoning. “Plus there’s a need for power in the area. Wonthaggi is expanding and there is more demand.”

The private company has several projects underway in Europe and the UK and has recently shifted its focus to Victoria. “We feel there are good opportunities in Victoria; there is good support for renewables.” ARP has also announced plans for similar-sized solar farms at Lang Lang and Maffra and $100 million projects at Morwell and Baranduda.

As for sunshine, Wonthaggi certainly has more of it than the solar farms the company has established in the UK and Europe. “The difference in UK and Europe is the government subsidies. Over here there are no government incentives so it will be based solely on the sale of power.” Mr Hughes said the farm would enhance Wonthaggi’s energy security although the company was not looking at a stand-alone system.

“The power will be 100 per cent exported to the grid. If there is a high demand in Wonthaggi it will be used here first. Where there is surplus capacity it will go to Inverloch then be exported to anywhere.” He said the company was working with AusNet to resolve technical issues of compatibility. All going well, he hopes construction can start in early 2019.

Construction involves installing about 100,000 solar photovoltaic panels onto aluminium supports. The work is expected to take six months and produce up to 100 local jobs. Once construction is completed, the property will revert to a sheep grazing property. Mr Hughes said the local response had been very positive. And he assured the Post that planning was well advanced and the project would proceed. “When we start a project we’ve already put a lot of money into it. We need to do our sums.”

 

The Water Will Come by Jeff Goodell (Black Inc. Melbourne, 2018)* is a book about sea level rise. It is mainly about the USA although it looks at many other parts of the planet including the Pacific Isles and the west coast of Africa. But it is the East Coast of the USA and in particular Florida which, to use an apt cliché, is ‘at the coalface’ of sea level rise.

The book examines in detail various aspects of this complex problem including climate refugees, of the need for an eventual ‘retreat from the coastline’, how the loss of gravity of melting ice effects sea level rise around the globe, of land subsidence and salinity. There is even a small amount of humour when Goodell notes “The best way to save coastal cities is to quit burning fossil fuels (if you’re still questioning the link between human activity and climate change you’re reading the wrong book).” (p.11)

With current average sea level rise around the globe of between 3 and 4 mm per annum Goodell notes that it’s not the sort of thing you can watch and only becomes visible with “higher storm surges, higher tides, and the gradual washing away of the beaches…” (p.12) He adds that “If we can hold the warming to about three degrees Fahrenheit above pre industrial temperatures, we might only face two feet of sea level rise this century, giving people more time to adapt. However if we don’t end the fossil fuel party…all bets are off. We could get four feet of sea level rise by the end of the century – or we could get thirteen feet.” (p.12)

Goodell then rhetorically asks “At what point will we take dramatic action to cut CO2 pollution? Will we spend billions on adaptive infrastructure to prepare cities for rising waters – or will we do nothing until it is too late? Will we welcome people who flee submerged coastlines and sinking islands – or will we imprison them?” (p.14) Questions of vital importance to Gippslanders and Australians generally.

So how does all this apply to Gippsland? Various aspects including subsidence, salinity, beach erosion and the amount and rate of sea level rise are important. A large part of our coastline is vulnerable to erosion and a sea level rise of a metre or more will probably destroy the Gippsland Lakes and make large parts of coastal and lakes towns and villages uninhabitable including Lakes Entrance, Paynesville and Raymond Island. See my somewhat outdated paper The Gippsland Coast in 2100 for more detail.

The time for drastic action to reduce our carbon pollution is now. And attempts by governments and the status quo in the Latrobe Valley to rescue the dying brown coal industry – like the current coal to hydrogen project in the Latrobe Valley – are pure folly. Governments of all persuasions take note.

*copy in the East Gippsland Regional Library

 

(Monthly Newsletter. Jenny is the President of Climate Action Monaro – fb page )

As if it wasn’t bad enough to have a lump of coal brought into parliament a few months ago, 20 or so Parliamentarians led by Tony Abbott, Eric Abetz, Barnaby Joyce, Kevin Andrews and Craig Kelly, have formed the Monash Group to push for a new coal-fired power station. To his credit, Treasurer Scott Morrison (a wielder of coal in the earlier stunt), declared it was not economic and rejected the idea. The next day, the descendants of General Sir John Monash, who was a civil engineer and an Australian military commander of the First World War, complained about the group using the name Monash for their “anti-science, anti-intellectual” proposal.

Despite Morrison’s rejecting the idea of a new coal power station, the Prime Minister clearly thought a sop to the backbench was in order. He is pushing Alinta to buy the ageing Liddell coal-fired power station from AGL so that base-load power can continue after its planned closure in 2022. PM Turnbull wants another three years or so of it so it coincides with the opening of Snowy 2.0 (pumped hydro). Fortunately, the heroic Andy Vesey of AGL is standing firm and not selling, and using it as a base to develop renewables.

Someone needs to tell the PM that base-load power is not what is required any more, rather dispatchable power is, and old power plants like Liddell do not deliver dispatchable power. And he needs to know that coal-fired power stations caused a surge in airborne mercury pollution, according to a study done in Victoria’s Latrobe valley.

David Spratt, from Climate Code Red, released a report two days ago that finds we will reach 1.5oC warming within a decade, based on a number of recent scientific papers. This of course, was the more ambitious limit of warming (as against 2oC) set by the Paris Agreement. You can read the report here.

One of the world’s leading climate activists, Bill McKibben, is coming to Australia soon [https://350.org.au/accelerate-climate-action-bill-mckibben-tour/ ]. He will speak in Canberra on May 2 [and Melbourne May 3 ed.] on accelerating climate action. He’s always worthwhile but you have to pay.

Good to see our federal MP, Mike Kelly, standing firm against a nuclear power plant for the South Coast. While nuclear power does deliver carbon-free power once built, building the plants uses a lot of energy as well as the decommissioning.  And as he says, the waste and risk issues have still not been resolved.

Meanwhile, it’s been a hot, dry start to the year. Rather than being a source of pleasure as some news readers would have us believe, for anyone who worries about climate change, it simply provokes anxiety.

For full newsletter see here.

(Press Release from FOE 12.4)

National environment group Friends of the Earth has expressed disappointment at the announcement that the Andrews government is proceeding with a trial led by Kawasaki Heavy Industries to convert Victorian brown coal into liquid hydrogen for export.

There are many significant problems with this project:

“Firstly, it is most unlikely it will ever move to commercial phase. This project will only proceed if carbon capture and storage (CCS*) technology is employed” said Friends of the Earth campaigns co-ordinator Cam Walker. “New uses of coal would come with an unacceptable climate burden unless CCS is deployed and would be inconsistent with the government’s commitment for the state to be carbon neutral by 2050.”

According to the government’s own Statement on future uses of coal, major new coal projects will need to operate within mandated emissions standards. Without CCS, it seems very unlikely that the Kawasaki project would meet this requirement. “Why is the government promoting a project which is at odds with its own policy?” asked Mr Walker.

Friends of the Earth say government expenditure on coal projects is a waste of taxpayer dollars. “Governments have squandered over $1.3 billion on carbon capture projects with no return on investment. This is money that could have been invested in healthcare, education, infrastructure, and climate action.”

“Secondly, the $100m of new public funds allocated to this project represents wasted money that should have gone to job creating projects in the Latrobe Valley that use technology that is already viable. Obvious candidates include renewables, energy efficiency and retrofitting of houses, energy storage, high tech research and developing a business case for the geothermal resource that exists under the Latrobe Valley.

“CCS has already absorbed well over $1.3 billion of public funds and each new dollar invested in this technology represents a dollar that is taken from technology that works.”

“Thirdly, we have to ask who is driving this project? The federal government lacks the state government’s commitment to ensuring CCS is linked to any new coal developments. And government officials continue to promote ‘clean coal’ technology, despite the fact that this technology is going nowhere.”

Friends the Earth say the Victorian government needs to hit the reset button on the matter. “The state government needs to seek more informed advice from energy experts to ensure that future projects reflect best practise technology suitable for the 21st century, instead of relying on advice which is clearly aligned with promoting the ‘clean coal’ pipe-dream.”

*we have commented on CCS and the coal to hydrogen project here.

 

John Monash was a celebrated military leader of World War I and the guiding light in the establishment of brown coal generation in the Latrobe Valley. Unlike his predecessors during the war he did his best to protect his soldiers from the slaughterhouse in front of the trenches using all available technology (tanks, planes and artillery) to advantage. As an engineer he used the scientific information and technology of his former enemies to build the solid foundations of brown coal fired electricity generation that has lasted nearly 100 years. He was, in short, a man of science.

One of the posthumous honours bestowed on this hero was the naming of Victoria’s second university after him. Established in the early 1960s it was a place of intellectual fervour and the hotbed of criticism surrounding the Vietnam War. Now a small clique of parliamentarians have adopted (or stolen) Monash’s name to call for a new, supposedly clean, coal fired electricity generator in the valley.

It must be stated at the outset that there is no such thing as clean coal and lignite or brown coal has about 60% water content making it ever so much ‘dirtier’. Thus the self-proclaimed Monash Forum are either ignorant of climate science or wilfully (and perhaps criminally) disregarding it. Their stance is anti-intellectual, anti-science and the antithesis of Monash’s life. It also offers false hope to many in the valley still clutching at straws to save the old economy instead of firmly grasping the opportunities of the new.

The front men of the Monash forum with its 20 odd members are the usual suspects – Kelly, Andrews Abbott, Abetz – climate change deniers to a man. More frighteningly it is rumoured that more than half of this number is made up of National Party members. It is yet to be revealed whether this includes our local member Darren Chester.

It would seem that the best way to confront the urgency for decisive climate change action is a return to bipartisanship and being governed and acting on the best science available at the time. This is not going to happen whilst the reactionaries in the Monash Forum are in effect holding the balance of power.

Thus the return to bipartisanship requires either the removal of the reactionaries from their power base or from parliament altogether. This is an exceedingly difficult task and almost certainly beyond the immediate abilities of the more science friendly parties – the ALP and the Greens, as all the lower house members appear to be in safe conservative or regional seats. What is desperately needed now are new centrist or conservative candidates that can appeal in these seats – independents who accept the overwhelming evidence of climate change and the urgency to act upon that evidence.