It has already been noted, not least by the Ruddster, that climate change didn’t get much of a look in in the budget. Instead, as foreshadowed, we got a stunt: the doubling of the rebate for installing solar panels on your roof, from $4,000 to $8,000.
Don Henry of the ACF was interviewed on ABC radio to provide a green perspective in response. To summarise, he correctly noted that the project was “modest” in scope (ie, a stunt), but said it was good as far as it goes.
No it isn’t. Not only is it a stunt, it’s not even a useful one.
Let’s ignore the fact that householders will have to spend their own money as well as the government’s to achieve these cuts. Even in Victoria, which has the worst emissions in Australia because of its filthy brown coal power stations, and ignoring the fact that solar panels are likely to cut usage of less-polluting gas-fired peaking plants rather than the coal-fired baseload, the cost to the government of the emissions saved is more than $300 per tonne of CO2 avoided. If, instead, they simply used the money to buy green power for electricity consumed by the government, they’d avoid emissions for roughly $50 per tonne.
In other words, the government could have cut emissions six times as much for the same amount of money (well, actually, more - conservation measures would probably have been even cheaper), but it was more important for backbenchers to get their photo-ops in front of solar panels.
To be fair, Labor is not immune from this sort of thing either, as Howard fan Harry Clarke has gleefully pointed out in the past. But the sheer economic looniness factor in the Costello scheme exceeds anything Labor has proposed.
That the conservatives regard climate change as purely an electoral problem is long established by now - this ridiculous gesture is just another in the conga line of climate change tokenism. What gets my goat almost as much is that they’re not going to be fully called on it by the green groups because of their bizarre love affair with the zero-emission but hopelessly overpriced photovoltaic panel.
It’s also worth pointing out that when the rebate was first introduced in January 2000, it was worth up to $8250 per householder. The CPI has risen from 125.2 to 155.6 in that time (link)
So Costello’s stunt has not even returned the rebate to its previous value.
Thanks for the post Robert, and for the bloody obvious suggestion that governments ought only to use green power.
Good one, and I intend to spread it around my neck of the woods and ask, why the hell not? Although we really know the answer, dont we? Any financial incentives for green power might impact on Big Coal profits, and Hugh Morgan has got Howard by the old and shrivellies.
Rudd should be on top of this too, as you say….the problem is both parties are in unfamiliar territory and looking for attention-grabbing technological fixes that can be provided by the private sector, rather than approaching the problem logically and looking in the first instance for significant energy efficiencies in current operations, without huge start-up costs. Heck, we are all prepared to do our bit on the home front as well if we are given some inspired leadership.
As for Howard, there is no doubt that he simply ‘does not get it’ (must be the most obvious campaign slogan for the ALP surely, because that’s what everyone is already saying). He sees it as no more than another election issue to be neutralised through reactive wedge tactics. No thought for the future at all, and it is this attitude that will take him down in the end.
I think he’s got it perfectly right:
Voter in marginal seat: You guys aren’t serious about climate change.
Lib candidate/MP: Yes we are! We’ve increased the rebate on solar installations. The fact that solar panel manufacturers have upped the prices by the same amount isn’t our fault.
Voter: What a pissant response! It’s clear that I can’t vote for you.
Lib candidate/MP: Now if this was a real Liberal government, I could go into bat for you and get the policy changed. But it isn’t, I have to take what I’m given so you do too.
Voter: Fuck that, and fuck you too.
Lib candidate/MP: Would you like a brochure? I’ll get my staffer to put you on our database. Whenever Malcolm Turnbull farts, you’ll get a brochure posted to you.
It’s always an advantage for the clueless to advertise themselves so that you can give them a wide berth.
The trouble, Andrew, is that a lot of punters think that the solution to climate change is solar panels on house roofs, Iit may be a substantial part of the solution in the future, but it’s certainly not right now.
But the likes of Don Henry are happy to perpetuate this illusion, and I don’t know why.
Robert, what do you think then about the Labor policy to turn public schools solar?
Iit may be a substantial part of the solution in the future, but it’s certainly not right now.
When does the future start?
Of course the silicon used for photovoltaic cells is necessarily of the same purity as that used for transistors and ICs.To achieve this purity needs specialised equipment and a lot of energy in addition to the stringent vacuum requirements for etching and doping.This is the reason the price of panels is high.
What bugs me is the popular portrayal of domestic solar installations as devices for making money during the bright days when there may be an excess of domestic power produced which can then be inverted and sent back to the grid for a rebate.If there are widespread overcast conditions along, say, the East Coast then a greater strain is placed on the quick start generators such as at the Snowy and the various gas turbine driven systems to take up the failure of what would ordinarily be domestically generated power.
It would make more sense to use photovoltaic power from a farm of panels to pump water uphill at the Snowy so that the downward flow can supply a nocturnal source of power via their water turbines.The power from photovoltaics starts life as D.C. and can be used directly to drive pumps without the lossy and almost boutique conversion to A.C. which is necessary in order to send it onto the grid.
A farm of panels would of course be directly or indirectly the responsibility of governments and reduce the need for consumers to buy their own.
Also a waste of money, though you might argue that having the solar panels on the roof has some educational value.
The simple fact is that even when you take into account distribution costs, it’s much cheaper to buy power, even green power, from the grid.
The future for solar photovoltaic, as a mainstream power source in areas that have grid connections, starts when it becomes as cheap as buying green power from your retailer. Until then, it’s best used for off-grid power in remote, but sunny, areas.
One thing that might help to tilt the playing field is the introduction of “smart metering” - electronic electricity meters that record when power was used as well as how much. But, even so, most of the studies I’ve seen, even by people like Mark Diesendorf, don’t seem to indicate solar photovoltaics playing much of a role in our energy needs for the next few decades.
The Lies seems to have upset someone.
By the way, anyone know when this (new, higher) solar rebate kicks in?
Is it July 1, or after the election?
So the Government has an expensive (per tonne CO2-e) solar panel rebate and ban incandescent light bulbs while Labor and the Greens have emission reduction targets and MRETs. It is quite peculiar to see the Government’s climate change policies being symbolic and Socialistic while Labor and the Greens are more market based. I guess MRETs are not entirely market based, but are more ‘least cost’ than Commissar Howard’s “picking winners” re CCS and nuclear.
I don’t have a problem with banning incandescent light bulbs, I’m not a fan of the free market either. How many economists does it take to screw in an incandescent light bulb? None - the free market is supposed to do it.
I like the idea of smart meters, I think the main reason that people are not saving money through energy efficiency is the huge lack of information that presently exists when it comes to energy use. That is a probably a big factor in why people continue to use inefficient technologies such as incandescents.
dany le rou is correct. Domestic solar is a waste (for the time being at least). The conversion to AC to put back into the grid also has to be almost perfectly in phase or it cause energy losses (I believe greater than the energy being ‘pushed’ into the network).
Much the same can be said of rain water tanks in a different context. It is hugely wasteful. The water is already efficiently collected and it would be much better to treat the storm water at the end of the pipe than every one having a tank. Not to mention the increased disease possibilities of tanks (mosquitos).
Robert,
I would argue that a positive spin-off of an increased rebate on solar panels is that it will increase the profitability of the solar industry and this will mean the industry has more money for R&D. Still, I’m not sure how this policy would stack up cost-benefit wise.
Robert, I agree this $8000 measure is completely crazy. The interest cost on the Labor loan is a fraction of this so, yes, the Coalition proposal is sillier.
One of the difficulties in approaching an election is that the parties compete with each other in foolish ways.
Did you notice press reports that some councils were seeking to force compulsory water tanks and solar panels on new homes? This is crazier still.
From the Clive Hamilton article steve linked to.
I’m not sure how Clive counts emissions, but according to the National Greenhouse Inventory 2005 stationary emissions, which the solar panels are meant to save, have gone up 42% since 1990. The Government is not seriously addressing this issue.
The Greens weren’t too impressed:
That was after the budget. Before the budget they said this:
Steve: maybe. But buying more green power would subsidise the R&D for the wind industry, the geothermal industry, the in-stream hydro industry, and so on. And they’re just as low-greenhouse (in fact, in terms of life cycle emissions, lower).
Harry: thanks for being a good sport on this. As to local councils proposing compulsory rainwater tanks and solar panels, if it goes any further maybe it’s time for a letter to the local paper pointing out just how inefficiently they are foricing their constituents to spend their own money.
Robert, we’ve had a couple of spits of rain here since the second week in February. Nearly every garden has dying shrubs and trees.
There was a letter to the editor the other day saying that the Wivenhoe dam was essentially a flood mitigation project rather than a sustainable water storage facility. He reckoned it would have filled in the Brisbane flood in 1974, but since it was built there have been only two really large downpours, in 1992 and 1999. Only in 1999 was it actually filled.
But for a comparable rain event in the catchment before 1974 you have to go back to 1927.
I’ll concede the expense of water tanks, but you have to get the water from somewhere. If we don’t limit population, which would be fine with me, we’ll need to depend on desalination, storm water capture and recycling.
Meanwhile tanks are an attractive proposition for water security. But that doesn’t mean the tax payer should subsidise them, of course.
I am on the turnaround about the ‘tank in every back yard’ mantra, because I am not sure the expense is justified before something is done about the amount of water that goes pouring down the stormwater channels in my city after every big rain. Like most people I kinda like the idea of tanks, and my dog sure loves trying to drown himself in the rushing stormwater after rain, but…
I don’t know much about the engineering issues in harnessing stormwater but it would presumably be more more cost-effective than a tank in every backyard, at least in the first instance, and it could be used for semi-industrial and council purposes before it reaches the water catchment and pollutes the cleaner water (which then has to be purified to a higher standard for drinking water).
Where is our expertise on stormwater capture, or is this another basic engineering solution that we have also neglected over the past decade? Yes, I know its not a federal government problem, its for local councils, but where’s the R&D, where’s the incentives and the expertise, and where’s the leadership?
Brian: quite true. But there’s a study that the ACF even commissioned which says that tanks are not cost-competitive with desalination, recycling, or collecting stormwater from drains.
It is also possible to use the D.C. current produced by solar panels to electrolyse water to make hydrogen for use in gas turbine driven power stations.Why has not this idea ever received attention? Hydrogen can be stored from day to day without the need for it to be liquified in the same way domestic gas used to be i.e. stored in large water displacing tanks. Storing it in this way takes into account dull days and night time generation and of course emissions of greenhouse gases are zero.
I think if one discusses solar panels simply from the perspective of their use in a capitalist society it confines the conversation to their cost to the consumer rather than to their most efficient and imaginative use.
Both of my suggestions for the use of solar panels allow for energy storage and both therefore mock the Federal government’s arguments supporting nuclear as a night time greenhouse emission free baseload supplier.Both of my suggestions are greenhouse gas free methods for generating power and both are essentially established technologies.
I hope the discussion on this blog continues past the fairly irrelevant comparisons with storm water.
Robert, I think the perception is more that solar panels are the most practical solution available to suburban individuals on average incomes, along with installing tanks or turning down the aircon. The difficuilty of putting an opposition case is: if not this, what?
New rule: your political thinking will be a lot sharper once you stop referring to your fellow voters as “punters”.
Don Henry has always struck me as a low-hanging-fruit man, I think he has the capacity to achieve for the environment what Greg Barns has done for the republic.
“there’s a study that the ACF even commissioned which says that tanks are not cost-competitive with desalination, recycling, or collecting stormwater from drains.”
Any chance of a link or a title for this study?
Peter: Inverters used to feed solar energy to the grid are designed to synch with the phases of the grid. It takes them less than a second to synchronise. They also generally produce higher quality power (that is, with almost no voltage fluctuations) compared to the grid.
An argument in favour of solar panels and distributed power in general, is that in a country like Australia where the grid is sparse, power from large centralised generations is lost during transmission - in Australia about 30% of electricity that leaves a coal fired generator is lost in transmission. Small decentralised generators located close to the source of consumption have fewer losses.
Solar panels on schools is an important measure - for any technology to penetrate a new market, there needs to be significant buy-in from government.
dany la roux: If you live in Sydney, solar panels do make you money during the day. Due to Energy Australia’s time-of-use tariff, electricity costs twice as much during the afternoon as it does int he morning - this coincides with the best generation time for solar panels. Remember that solar panels will supply any loads in the house first, before they export energy. So if you have your air-con on on a hot summer afternoon, it will run off your solar panels, not fromt eh grid.
Dany, pumped-storage hydro is a well-established technique, and one that may see more use if the deployment of intermittant renewables expands further. The use of hydrogen as energy storage is receiving a lot of research at the moment. The capacity of pumped-storage hydro is limited; the efficiency of electrolysing hydrogen and then burning it again is very poor. Work continues on improving this, but right now it’s a very expensive energy storage method.
Andrew: Sadly, Don Henry’s organization talks a lot of nonsense - and they should know better.
As Peter Martin points out, the ACF commissioned a report on rainwater tanks that said, in essence, that rainwater tanks were a very expensive way to provide urban water - and then claimed with a straight face that the report justified their widespread rollout as an efficient way to solve water shortages.
Secondly, they’re still flogging the “food miles” canard, which is a completely useless way of evaluating the environmental impact of food transport (because intercontinental shipping is so fuel-efficient).
Thirdly, they’re advocating a 1 billion dollar solar roof program, when 1 billion dollars spent elsewhere could cut greenhouse gas emissions by far greater amounts.
By the way, they also make a lot of BS claims about nuclear power.
But as to your point about the most practical way for suburbanites to “solve” greenhouse, the stationary energy sector’s emissions are probably going to be solved by changing the type of power stations the grid is currently connected to, from (mainly) unsequestered coal to some combination of renewables, geosequestered fossil fuels, and nuclear. That, and changing our practices to reduce the amount of energy that needs to be sent over the grid in the first place by adopting more energy-efficient technologies.
As for what can be done at the domestic level, it would be not only far more equitable, but far more efficient, if we made sure everybody did the cheap and easy stuff to reduce emissions, rather than a few people going for spectacularly expensive means to avoid domestic emissions entirely.
They are not going for low-hanging fruit - they are cherry-picking particular ideas for reasons which I am not sure but suspect are a philosophical objection to any centralized, large-scale, industrial, solution to anything (except perhaps public transport).
Darryl: Peter Martin links to it.
There’s always room to quibble with the numbers, certainly. But the study they commissioned doesn’t seem to support their own position, despite their claims that it does.
Photovoltaic systems are expensive but so are BMW and Mercedes cars and they fly out of showrooms. If the purchasers of luxury cars put off just one upgrade (perhaps for 5 years) and installed solar instead they would in effect get the photovoltaic system for free. The depeciation on a car of 60k would cover a solar investment of 20k.
Further, the garages for luxury cars are usually attached to houses that are high consumers of energy. Installation of photovoltaic systems increases general awareness of power usage and encourages efficiency. This saves more than photovoltaic systems alone.
There are a number of reasons why photovoltaic systems remain expensive (about 80c/watt currently, I think).
1. The cost of the high grade silicon. There has been a bottleneck in supply for at least 10 years and there is competition with the semiconductor industry. New silicon supply is coming online now and some is via lower cost methods. World governments could (and should) encourage the expansion of silicon suplies.
2. Demand outstrips supply. There is no reason for the market to reduce prices at the moment. There are many new photovoltaic manufacturers today that 10 years ago and existing players are expanding production but they can’t meet demand. There’s a new plant run by Origin Energy in SA producing panels with reduced silicon content but normal efficiency. Their panels are priced at market rates because they will sell all that they produce at that price even though their profit per panel will be higher.
Even ignoring the numerous effiency and manufacturing cost reductions in the pipeline, if the supply can be raised to meet demand, we’ll see the cost per watt falling substantially.
The retail photovoltaic industry in Aus is small and installers are few. These “silly” rebates are expensive but are vital to keep people in the industry, increase knowledge and increase the visible presence of solar in the community. Billions have been spent in the past by governments to support other industries. This mere trickle of money is money well spent.
David Allen: if your luxury car owners instead gave $2,000 to ten pensioners to install insulation in their roofs, you’d avoid a pile more emissions.
As to the rest of your argument, you seem to be begging the question - to wit, you are presupposing that solar deserves to be specifically supported by government subsidy not available to any other technology. What is the point of supporting solar over other, cheaper renewable technologies, and energy conservation, even setting aside more controversial options like geosequestration and nuclear?
ABS have just released study into energy use in NSW homes
More sand mining, David? What are these methods?
What if a factory in China/India/(insert other developing economy here) began churning out good-quality photovoltaic cells (doing to that industry what Toyota have done to the car industry) at low cost? Would there be a market for Australian sand/other silicon supply (David please advise) and would that market be an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen?
I have been trying to get reliable figures on unsubsidised costs of producing electricity from coal-fired stations - available figures are so compromised by subsidies and concessions that they are meaningless, or else they are yours-is-as-good-as-mine guesses. Anyone?
Andrew E: What about NEMMCO’s market data?
It varies hugely from place to place, depending on how far the coal has to travel from the mine to the power plant.
Ichure said:
Peter: Inverters used to feed solar energy to the grid are designed to synch with the phases of the grid. It takes them less than a second to synchronise. They also generally produce higher quality power (that is, with almost no voltage fluctuations) compared to the grid.
Oh, I wasn’t meaning to imply they didn’t. When you have a few hundred or a thousand of these things connected to the grid by enthusiasts it won’t be a problem. I’m not so sure when there are a few hundred thousand or a million of them though.
Jeepers, Robert!
“As Peter Martin points out, the ACF commissioned a report on rainwater tanks that said, in essence, that rainwater tanks were a very expensive way to provide urban water - and then claimed with a straight face that the report justified their widespread rollout as an efficient way to solve water shortages.”
Have you read the ACF press release http://www.acfonline.org.au/articles/news.asp?news_id=1222&c=104734 and the recommendations of the report?
ACF presser:
Marsden Jacob Associates report:
and
ACF:
MJA:
There’s a touch of the PR overstatement to it, but what do you expect from a press release?
“Secondly, they’re still flogging the “food milesâ€? canard…”
And you’re still flogging your ‘food miles’ strawman!
For those who came in late, back in Feb Robert had a post up lamenting how ‘“food milesâ€? [are] given so much attention by various environmental groups when they seem to be very much a second-order issue’. When pressed on the matter, Robert couldn’t actually name *any* environmental groups who gave it much attention at all, but he did find one single page on the ACF site that said buying food locally would reduce costs associated with traffic congestion and transport and doesn;t mention climate change. ‘Food miles’ are the fifth of five tips to ‘eat Green’ - less important than “reduce how much food you throw away”.
IF these are two of the strongest bits of non-nuclear evidence for the ACF talking ‘a lot of nonsense’, then they’re making more sense than any other major organisation I can think of right now.
d
Darryl, when I went to the ACF’s page a week ago, food miles came up on the front page.
I checked again when I did the post, it’s gone again.
As for rainwater tanks, the key point was that they’re a colossal waste of money under present circumstances, and even if you assume the use of renewable energy to power desalination it’s still much cheaper than water tanks under all but the most favourable of circumstances.
Pot vs Kettle # 115: Peter Hendy quoted in Fin Review, saying he was disappointed Rudd’s Reply didn’t offer climate change initiatives…
My 2c worth on rainwater tanks is that, clearly, it is a good policy to have them everywhere - provided people use them when full to displace ordinary usage, rather than just have them to justify their pools. But at present, in Brisbane where all car-washing, most yard hosing etc is verboten, the lavish subsidies seem like middle class subsidies, keeping some people’s lawns alive and cars clean.
Robert, when I heard those claims from the ACF on the ABC I thought “That can’t be right” but didn’t get around to checking. Thanks for the links.
I’ve had a squizz at the Marsden Jacob Associates reports. My main criticism is that they assume that future rainfall will be the same as the past. No-one knows what it will be but it will almost certainly be less. The CSIRO apparently reckons 40% less by 2070 in Sydney. If this pattern is now beginning to emerge the dams will suffer more than the rain on our rooves.
My other main impression is that 5000L is not a lot of water. We seem to have stalled at 155L per person per day in trying to get to 140. If we assumed a more liberal 200L pppd a 5000L tank would only take 10 days to suck dry with 2.4 people per dwelling.
I see a future where we continue to rely on desalination, and personally I don’t like the idea of watering my garden on desalinated water. I’m prepared to drink the stuff if we have no choice, but given the environmental negatives I think we’ll continue to use tank water on our garden even in better times.
So even if tank water is more expensive than desalination, there are other reasons why we should prefer it.
Graeme is right about subsidies for tanks being a middle class lurk, but frankly I’m not aware of anyone watering a lawn from tank water. I know one who tried and they emptied their tank in week.
Back on photovoltaics, Saturday Extra had a discussion on the topic. The general line is that sun panels on your roof is not the most cost-effective thing you can do - energy saving is.
It shouldn’t be a case of either/or, there should have been a whole range of things funded. It is important, they said, to continue the momentum in the supply and installation industry.
Cost-wise solar panels have been getting more expensive in recent years because of demand around the world, but the Chinese are coming and shortly the world will be flooded with cheap solar panels.