30 November 2016, The Conversation, Will the latest electricity review bring climate and energy policy together at last? The Australian government is reviewing our electricity market to make sure it can provide secure and reliable power in a rapidly changing world. Faced with the rise of renewable energy and limits on carbon pollution, The Conversation has asked experts what kind of future awaits the grid. Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) is under review following the state-wide blackout that hit South Australia in September. The review, led by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, will “develop a national reform blueprint to maintain energy security and reliability”. Importantly, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) specifically agreed that the review would consider Australia’s commitment under the Paris climate agreement, and how climate and energy policy can be integrated. Before we consider how the NEM might need to change, it is important to understand how it came about. State responsibility Electricity supply began as a state responsibility. Originally, state-based utilities owned and operated the entire supply chain, from generation to transmission, distribution and retail. With the exception of the Snowy Hydro Scheme, there were no interstate transmission lines. Accessibility and affordability were (and still are) key concerns for the states. As such, electricity prices were equal for all citizens, irrespective of their location or the actual cost of bringing electricity to them. This is still partly reflected in network tariffs today. In the late 1980s, concerns about rising costs to government, but also a worldwide ideological move towards privatisation of public services, drove a shift away from publicly owned utilities. This began with a New South Wales inquiry, which found that NSW could avoid billions of dollars in new investment by connecting its network with Victoria. This set the scene for the development of a more interconnected grid and more general reform. In particular, this was followed by a report from the former Industry Commission in 1991 and the Hilmer Reviewon National Competition Policy in 1993. These reports were dominated by market logic. They argued that competition would make the system more efficient. Governments specifically agreed to reforms that would lead to a fully competitive national electricity market. This involved breaking up and selling the three layers of the electricity sector: generation, networks and retail. Read More here
Category Archives: Fossil Fuel Reduction
18 November 2016, Energy Post, Why the future belongs to decentralised renewables, not centralised hydrogen and giga-scale nuclear. What the future of our energy system will look like continues to be a subject of heated debate. According to one well-established tradition, writes Professor John Mathews of Macquarie University in Australia, the route to decarbonisation will run via massive nuclear power systems to the hydrogen economy. But China and to some extent India are emerging as the principal practitioners of an alternative vision of energy growth, underpinning their vast industrialisation efforts with conventional renewables that are the products of manufacturing. According to Mathews, the world is much more likely to follow the second route. Renewables, he argues, are benign, provide energy security, create jobs and above all are the least expensive option. How we envision the future of our energy systems is important as this tends to drive our policies and decisions. In a new scientific paper, “Competing principles driving energy futures: Fossil fuel decarbonisation vs. manufacturing learning curves”, published this month in the journal Futures, I contrast two broad energy visions. Read More here
22 November 2016, One Step off the Grid, Victoria town (Newstead) calls for partners for 100% renewable energy plan. he Victorian town of Newstead is seeking proposals from potential project partners who could help refine its plan to reach 100 per cent renewable energy within 5 years, and which could act as a blue-print for other towns in the state to follow. Newstead, a town of around 500 people, is considered a flagship project project for the state, and is looking to build up its renewable energy capacity and then integrate these into the local grid with battery storage and new “energy market” ideas. Tosh Szatow, director for Energy for the People, which is advising the township, says the call for expressions of interest is designed to flush out ideas from solar companies, retailers, trading platforms and others that could be adapted to the town’s plans. “We have sketched out a plan, and know what a model could look like,” Szatow says. “Now we want to test some of this thinking and identify some of the partners that could help in the project.” The Newstead plan is seen as a fore-runner for other towns and cities in the state, and elsewhere in Australia. And far from being a rogue proposal, the idea has the support of the state Labor government and even the local network operator, Powercor, which is co-operating on data, network capacity and tariff design. Read More here
21 November 2016, Yale Climate Connections, Fuel Cells: Promising, but struggling to catch on. Fuel cells are efficient, generate clean electricity, and they run around the clock. So why aren’t we using them on a mass scale? Fuel cells have been the next best clean-energy thing for, well, a long time. The byproducts of that reaction are heat and water. The heat can be recycled into the fuel cell itself and/or used for external heating and cooling – generally referred to as combined heat and power. That makes stationary fuel cells – the kind used for electricity, as opposed to ones used in vehicles – extremely efficient and as clean an energy source as solar and wind.A technology with roots in the 1800s and modern-day use in every NASA-manned space flight from Apollo through the end of the space shuttle program, fuel cells just kind of look like a big box. Inside, they electrochemically combine hydrogen and the oxygen from ambient air to create electricity. But because the hydrogen source for most fuel cells comes from natural gas, they are generally not considered renewable, leaving them in an environmental limbo. Read More here