Taking into account electricity generated from the solar array, our house has:

* half the carbon emissions of a small holiday home with no fridge
* one sixth of the emissions of a normal Australian home
* saved 3.25 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year compared to a normal Australian home.
* saved over 13 tonnes of CO2 over a four year period from 2002 to 2007 compared to a normal Australian home.

For me, this is the payback. More information and a graph is available here.

Solar and wind are here and now – just look at Europe. Nuclear and CCS are not renewable and are 15 years out.

The average price of a house in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane has increased more in the last 5 years than what it would have cost to install a 2kw solar array. It is interesting how powerful government policy & legislation is in driving behaviour and outcomes. We could be investing in our future with renewable energy rather than speculating on housing and inflating prices so home buyers have increasing loans . . .

If we fit eight more panels, we become net generators and go into the electricity business. I am getting the panels priced.

An absolute no-brainer example would be that everybody gets offered, say, 20% accredited green power by default when they change their electricity supplier.

I’m sure the idea could be applied in the energy efficiency domain as well, but like you said, requires a bit of thought.

Definitely worth thinking about. Gets over the hurdle of people getting narky about mandatory measures.

How would you see that working in energy efficiency? The govt organises consultants to go in, do an audit, present the options and then implement savings, with the householder / company able to tell them to stop at any point. Assuming that they wouldn’t opt out once they realised how beneficial it would be.

I like it.

Yes, cost is a barrier, but apathy is by far bigger. I’ve done analysis of take-up of Greenpower, for example, which shows the cost barrier is tiny compared to the “do I realy care enough to pick up the phone and get it organised” barrier.

Only way to leap that one is to go in and do it for people.

It’d probably achieve a heck of a lot more than subsidising solar panels.

And, indeed, I acknowledge that there is an expectation in the industry that government should hand things to them on a platter. But I ask you and your conservative friend – why does the industry have that expectation? Because government has handed their competitors everything they wanted on silver platters for years. It sets up a paradigm in the energy industry that it very hard to break. Returning to my original point a few posts up – the paradigm is handouts to coal and uranium. It’s got to be broken down before there can be any suggestion of a level playing field.

Re the latter point – that’s why we need comprehensive policies. I’m not saying that rolling out energy efficiency is all that we need to do. I’m saying it’s a huge start that’s easy and cheap and we should do it. Alongside a price signal of some kind, a strong feed-in law, cradle to grave packaging legislation, etc, etc.

Most importantly, it should all be bound up in binding emissions limits. That’s where I think you get the best benefit from a cap and trade emissions trading scheme – you can effectively cap emissions and keep pulling them down over time. If a business wants to expand, let them go ahead and do it, so long as they can keep within well-defined emissions caps. It’s possible to do that, but you need regulation to ensure that it’ll happen.

I have a politically conservative friend who has become involved in a renewable energy related business in the past year or so. His strong belief was that there’s an expectation in the sector that the goverment will hand things to them on a plate.

In any case, you’re making the assumption that all these energy efficiency audits will result in less energy consumption over the entire economy. The businesses may well turn around and use the money saved to either a) expand their business, or b) distribute the profits which are then spent in energy-intensive ways, completely negating the savings.

Just look at programs like the Greenhouse Challenge or the Energy Efficiency Opportunities Act, both of which do exactly what you’re talking about – bring in expert consultants to do energy audits for big corporations and show them how to make the savings. How many have actually signed up? Bugger all. How many of those who signed up have implemented the savings? Bugerr all of the bugger all.

I don’t understand why it is. Something about human nature that wiser heads than mine need to grapple with. But it shows me that simple price mechanisms will just not deliver the goods. The market response is not rational, so we can’t rely on it to achieve something as vital and urgent as emissions reductions.

Let’s get in there and mandate it. Roll out audits across the country and require them to be implemented for a certain payback period. 4 years, 6 years, 8 years for those who can afford it. Still a hugely good ROI.

We know that across Australia we could get cuts of 30% in energy demand through simple, off-the-shelf technologies with a payback of 4 years.

tim, another way of stating this is that investment in energy savings typically yields a business an internal rate of return of 25%. Actually, from memory, the figure was 26% when I checked out that National Framework document when you mentioned it some time ago. That’s more than the many company’s make in their normal business.

Why don’t businesses do it? It seems they don’t think of it, or don’t realise what savings can be made, or they are too busy with their mainstream business and energy prices are not a big issue for them. It seems they typically need some expert consultancy work to see the need and design the savings strategy.

I believe there are consultancy businesses working in this area (one at least) but it cries out for government to give it a kick along. Some of Howard’s advertising budget, perhaps?

For instance, you quote the costs of transporting yellowcake. Annual uranium demand is roughly 63,000 tonnes. At a rough estimate, about 65% of the yellowcake is uranium. So we’re talking roughly 100,000 tonnes of material. Let’s assume we throw it on a truck and drive it 1000 km, then put it on a ship and transport it 20,000 km.

According to Queensland Rail it takes about 0.0224 litres of fuel to carry a tonne of freight a kilometre. So to carry 100,000 tonnes of material 1000 kilometres would require about 2.24 million litres of diesel.

Then, let’s throw it on a ship and cart it 20,000 kilometres. Getting fuel economy numbers for shipping is much harder than for trucks, and it varies a lot (really big bulk cargo ships are the most efficient), but this page says that it takes somewhere between 10 and 20% as much energy to ship long distances. We’ll take the high estimate and say 20%. That gives us about 9 million litres of diesel used, for a grand total of 11 million litres of diesel burned to ship the world’s entire yellowcake supply.

Now let’s compare to how much electricity is generated with that uranium. The world used 16.33 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity last year, and nuclear energy supplied 16% of that. That’s roughly 2.5 trillion kilowatt hours, or 9 trillion megajoules. That is the energy equivalent of more than 20,000 times more diesel than was required to transport it round the world.

OK, that’s only one aspect of energy inputs for a nuclear power plant – the actual biggest energy input at the moment is actually the uranium enrichment process, but that’s mainly because obsolete technology is still being used in the USA and France (and will be replaced in the next few years). But it’s illustrates that you can’t just go throwing around claims in this area without some actual numbers to back them up.

“As I’ve said many times, if renewables are really cheaper than nuclear or CCS even when you take the cost of energy storage into account, why spend so much energy fighting them, if you’ll pardon the pun?”

The point is, there is tremendous inertia in the world of energy planning and in the way governments move on such issues. A huge, systemic failure of imagination, is how I characterise it. The evidence on costs of CCS and nukes vs renewables and efficiency is irrelevant if no key decision-maker is willing to even consider the latter options.

And that is how extreme the situation is. They are so deeply wedded to the idea that only coal or nukes can meet our energy demand that they simply don’t believe in the other options.

Take energy efficiency. I’m not telling _you_ anything new to say that efficiency is the obvious first place to start with greenhouse emissions reductions. It’s by far the cheapest way to get very substantial cuts, particularly in an economy as greenhouse intensive as ours. We know that across Australia we could get cuts of 30% in energy demand through simple, off-the-shelf technologies with a payback of 4 years.

It’s worth re-stating that. A return on investment of 4 years, achieving effectively 15% reductions in Australia’s greenhouse emissions. If you don’t believe me, google “Towards a National Framework on Energy Efficiency”

So why don’t people do it? Coz they don’t have the imagination adn they couldn’t be bothered. My firm belief is that, even if you whacked a bloody great cost signal on it, they still wouldn’t do it. That’s based on the simple fact that it makes 100% economic sense to do the damn thing right now. An extra cost wouldn’t create the stimulus. Only regulation to make it happen will drive it.

We have to put the effort in to promoting efficiency and renewables because there is such entrenched bias against them in the system.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/a-game-of-follow-the-leader/2007/06/05/1180809518057.html

Every part of the nuclear energy cycle consumes fossil fuel energy except for the actual fission reaction.

Large amounts of fossil fuel energy (coal & oil mostly) and huge amounts of money in the form of Government subsidies ($b) are required for:

* mining and processing of ore to create yellow cake
* shipping yellow cake considerable distances to refining plants
* refining yellow cake to uranium
* building the power station
* transporting waste from it after the reaction to a processing plant
* processing the waste for storage (e.g. burial)
* burying the waste
* decommissioning the power station after about 40-50 years of operation

In addition:

* uranium is not a renewable resource, it will effectively run out sometime before the end of this century, so it is not a long term option, only a possible transitional one

* large amounts of water are required to safely operate the plants – France halved its energy generation from nuclear last year due to water shortages.

* there would be significant transmission losses to get power through the grid to consumers – unless the nuclear power stations are very close to major areas of consumption such as Melbourne, Sydney and other capitals

* if we started building nuclear power stations now, they wouldn’t be ready within 10 years, so they won’t be available in time to realise immediate emission reductions, even if nuclear can actually deliver any net reductions

* renewables such as wind, solar and biomass will be economically competitive with nuclear and CCS (if a reasonable carbon tax exists) by about 2020, after which the cost of operating nuclear and CCS would rise, making them both more expensive and financially risky over the entire investment cycle (e.g. up to 2050/2060)

* there is also a link to the nuclear weapons proliferation – countries with the capacity to produce nuclear fuels also have the capacity to produce highly enriched uranium for weapons

* nuclear waste has not long tem safe solution – it imposes an unethical burden on future generations

* the risk is not acceptable – while probability of an accident might be low, the outcome could be catastrophic, particularly near major population centres.

In Europe, more nuclear is now not part of the debate for future energy supplies – the battle is between coal/gas and renewables. If they increase the MRET to 20%, which is under consideration, then renewables will be boosted further. In Australia, the Government has only set a measly 2% MRET by 2010, which has had some benefit, but should be 25% by 2020 (and 15% by 2012).

Renewables is a rapidly growing market in the EU with $38b invested in 2006 and $45b investment predicted for 2007. The renewable sector now employs about 500,000 people in the EU while the coal industry employs about 30,000. Coal mines and power plants don’t actually employ many people.

It is a pity that Australia is missing the boat on reshaping its economy to a renewable energy basis, and our political leaders are fixated on chasing and throwing huge amounts of money at nuclear and CCS.

The good news is I think the general public is seeing through their obfuscation and intransigence. Why else would Howard have (unconvincingly) shifted from climate change denial and skepticism to attempted greenwashing?

Regarding the payback for embodied energy (latency) for renewables is:

* Wind turbines – about 7 months of operation
* Solar panels – about 2.5 to 3 years in Europe and about 1.5 years in Australia (we have more sun)

Unlike most of his policy reforms, the Prime Minister’s conversion on climate change is about realism, not morality. Do you think he is being poll-driven?

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/paulkelly/index.php/theaustralian/comments/howards_policy_change_without_the_real_passion/

Yes, nuclear plants need to be constructed, but so do wind turbines and solar panels. And aside from the screwball Storm van Leeuwin and Smith study, the net energy inputs of nuclear are about the same as wind and solar (probably a bit more than wind, but less than solar).

The answer is blowing in the wind and streaming in the sun, which is the only nuclear (fusion) reactor we really need.

It is a pity that the myth that we have to keep on growing and consuming is still being peddled, but underpinning our rampant use of fossil fuel – not because we need to but because we choose to – is the economic doctrine of infinite 4% growth being “good and healthy”.

No system is capable of infinite growth, but as have been wallowing in it, it feels pretty good. Peak oil will change things – and is already with increased oil and petrol prices.

The choice is very clear – we either really start addressing climate change by transitioning to zero emissions energy or we visit Dantes inferno.

As I’ve said many times, if renewables are really cheaper than nuclear or CCS even when you take the cost of energy storage into account, why spend so much energy fighting them, if you’ll pardon the pun?

We have a grid interactive solar array system installed on our house. It cost about 40K to install in 2002, but the system was more expensive than it needed to be as we have a 5kW inverter and batteries. We received about an 8K rebate for the panels.

With economies of scale, more manufacturing capacity (there is a worldwide shortage of panels) and new technology such as sliver cells (locally developed, but about to be manufactured in China, not here), rewewable energy is forecast to be priced equivalent to fossil fuel energy (with a carbon tax) by about 2020.

Yes, renewables are more expensive, but so is the real cost of carbon emissions in the Latrobe Valley and elsewhere. In Germany, there is legislation to mandate that all new houses must generate 20% of their power requirements – which also encourages focus on improved efficiency and good design. Contrast this with the situation in Victoria where most of the new homes currently being built are consuming 20% more power than similar homes 5 years ago.

Solar won’t solve all our energy requirements – but it will be an important contributor. A mix of wind, wave, geothermal, biomass (appropriate use) and solar combined with 30% efficiency improvements would go a long way to solving our energy requirements.

Nuclear and carbon capture would both arrive far too late (10-15 yrs from now), both are very expensive and neither are zero emissions or renewable.

Let me get this right. Our Prime Minister now applauds the idea of a long-term goal to help us cut greenhouse gas emissions. He just doesn’t like any of the goals he has heard of.

http://petermartin.blogspot.com/2007/06/tuesday-column-theres-building-in-bruce.html