It’s unrealistic to expect detailed policy prescriptions to come out of two days of discussion - though the choice of two days of discussion with SFA preparation was entirely the government’s. And a variety of sources are saying that the interim reports really struggled to capture the tenor of the actual discussions. But the interim report of the “population, sustainability, climate change, water and the future of our cities” subgroup at the 2020 Summit fits right into Jeremy Sear’s typically snarky critique. While there is some substantive and good ideas, it’s mixed in with a collection of meaningless motherhood statements, populist pandering, prediliction for bureaucracy, and an overly narrow focus.
Below the fold, I’ve outlined the “top ideas” proposed by this stream, with some brief comments, and some reflections on the stuff that didn’t make the cut.
The “Top Ideas” are italicised, with my responses interspersed. I’ll follow it with a general comment on what I thought was missing.
We could adopt a National Sustainability, Population and Climate Change Agenda and develop robust institutions to support it. Australia would have a whole-of-government approach to climate change and sustainability policy, encompassing government expenditure, taxation, regulation and investment.
As part of this agenda we could include an audit function to report on governments’ performance against these climate change and sustainability objectives.
We could implement a set of national environmental accounts, including carbon and water accounts, to inform government, business and community decision-making. These could be linked with the current national economic accounts. We will explicitly link the environment to productivity and innovation to underpin our future competitiveness.
So, we’ve agreed we should have a policy on these matters! Genius! Glad we’ve cleared that up.
That said, the point that these outcomes should be audited - something mentioned in Hugh Possingham’s LP comment that I’ve referred to earlier - is a good one. We already collect a lot of this kind of data, but greater systematic accountability for environmental policies may hopefully reduce the tendancy for the environment to be treated as something you can just throw money at and all will be good.
Through a National Sustainable Cities Program the federal government could lead a nationally consistent approach to urban and regional planning which drives water efficiency and reductions in emissions. This could be supported by the implementation of tax and other policies that encourage the use of public transport relative to other modes of transport.
The “national” aspect of this strikes me as a complete irrelevance, and symptomatic of a more general assumption that the solution to any serious problem - whether it inherently crosses state borders or not - is to get the federal government to act on it. Furthermore, urban water usage is a fairly minor engineering challenge. It is not a crucial economic or environmental issue.
Those quibbles aside, urban and regional land use planning does hold some scope for reducing Australia’s environmental footprint, but not to nearly the extent people sometimes think. The big gains are in housing energy efficiency, but for some reason they’ve decided to make specific mention of transport, where the potential gains are far more dubious. For one thing, until we stop powering our trains with coal-fired electricity and our buses with diesel, public transport networks are more emissions intensive than you think (remember, they use basically the same amount of fuel to run at 11:30 pm as they do at peak hours). Furthermore, even a tripling of public transport’s share of passenger-kilometres travelled would still leave more than two-thirds of urban travel done by car. So given all that, it’s hard to see a shift to public transport making much of a difference to emissions.
In any case, the proposal is so vague as to be almost meaningless in its current form.
That a National Indigenous Knowledge Centre be established and maintained with indigenous people. This centre would examine multidisciplinary research and program delivery pertaining to climate change, sustainability and water.
This is one of the few proposals that actually bothers to look outside the suburbs - a good thing, given that our urban centres make up a miniscule fraction of Australia’s land area. And, clearly, our indigenous people know a thing or two about sustainable use of the natural resources available to them!
That said, this is a tiny idea that could be funded tomorrow out of pocket change - which is, perhaps, the point; it’s an easy one for the government to say “look at the concrete outcomes from the 2020 summit!” complete with photo op of minister listening sagely to Aboriginal elder wearing Akubra. Our environmental research needs go way, way beyond this.
Australia will have a population policy, and immigration program that works truly in the national interest and that is a model for the world.
“Population policy”. Now, there’s a phrase that we haven’t heard for a while…
I’m sure some of the people pushing this one had in mind the “carrying capacity” concept, arguing that Australia has more people on it than we can grow food for.
I can tell you right now that the zero net immigration policies these crowd would like are not going to happen, any more than they were going to happen in the 1980s when I heard this idea floated on Hypotheticals. Given that nobody is going to be happy with any explicit target, no government is going to dare try and set one.
In any case, it’s a crock. Australia’s land and water resources are under pressure from producing stuff for export, not from domestic consumption. We export roughly half our agricultural production (by value). The ones that take up most land - sheep, cattle, and grains - are even more export-oriented. Fiddling with our population is just going to alter the proportion exported overseas.
So we’re left with a “model immigration policy”, which, again, could mean anything. Heck, how about a massive increase in our refugee intake? There’s a model for the world for you!
Further investment could be directed into research, development and deployment to enable a low emissions energy revolution.
Well, jeez, I would have never thought of that one…
On this general point, it’s often assumed that we should be investing in this because the technology we need to use to reduce our emissions will have to be invented here. In fact, the majority will be invented overseas. We make up well under 2% of global R&D. Given most other countries are spending up big on R&D in this area, it’s likely that their scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs will come up a proportion of the good stuff roughly akin to their relative size. So, like in other fields, we’ll buy much of what we need on the global market, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Australia’s part in the process is to invent stuff that works particularly well in our conditions, and make its contribution to the global R&D push.
Note, of course, that it’s a “low emissions” energy revolution. Not a “renewable energy” revolution. Labor clearly intends to flog the clean coal horse until the corpse’s bones are completely uncovered, and perhaps beyond. Or maybe, as attendee Anna Rose claims, it was hijacked by the coal industry. That said, Anna appears to be in the “renewables at all cost” camp…
We could transform the ecological footprint of the built environment by taking the lead on national planning, building and product standards to minimise waste and reduce water and energy consumption in our homes and in our neighbourhoods. Early action could include support for energy efficiency measures in low-income households and consider housing affordability implications. A particular initiative in this point could be to require carbon neutrality for all new buildings constructed beyond 2020.
Again, what’s with the national obsession? Product standards, sure, but planning?
That rant aside, much of the lowest-hanging fruit for carbon reduction (as distinct from water usage, where the overwhelming majority of reductions will come from agriculture) is indeed from more energy efficient homes, businesses, schools, and whatnot. And standards do have a role - for instance, in overcoming the market failure that is energy efficiency for rental properties. But standards have a nasty habit of getting gamed. Without financial incentives to actually cut emissions, I have every confidence that McMansion developers and purchasers will continue to treat them as obstacles to be evaded.
As a final note, does “carbon-neutrality” mean that every new house after 2020 is supposed to generate its own energy - essentially, implying solar panels for all? If so, chalk one up to populism - as previously argued at length, it is by no means clear that distributed generation is going to be sensible policy. It may turn out that the cheapest way to supply energy to households remains large-scale centralized generation, no matter how much certain sections of the green movement love their solar panels on every roof.
Before 2020 all Australians could have the tools to enable them to measure and manage their personal carbon footprint. This could include access to smart meters for energy and water consumption.
Again, the difference that this can make is exaggerated. For a start, this information is readily available now for anybody who cares all that much (and most people don’t - only 15% of consumers buy Green Power, and only a small minority of those buy 100% Green Power). It may help, a little, to adapt energy use to intermittent renewables, and reduce demand spikes. But, at least for the next decade or two, it’s just as likely to shift demand from gas-fired peak load generators to baseload coal - as this article reports.
We could expand the use of a wider range of market mechanisms to acquire water entitlements from over-allocated systems with a view to encouraging sustainable water use and assisting communities to adjust.
The urgency of responding to climate change makes it imperative that the ETS and the ensuing long-run carbon price drive a transition to clean energy technologies.
We’ve talked these to death on LP. These were the two biggies that Quiggin was referring to when he said that “the real message was not so much the need for new ideas (though there were some good ones) but the need to act much more urgently on what we already know”.
At least the National Party’s view that current irrigation entitlements should be fixed in stone for all time - whether the water exists or not, let alone whether removing it is environmentally sustainable - is dead, both here and in the (admittedly very timid) steps the government is taking to buy back water from the Murray-Darling.
Some overall thoughts
So, if I may be so bold as to summarise, we’ve got strong endorsements for a couple of very important and good policies which already have broad acceptance, a token research center, exceptionally vague proposals for urban planning and energy efficiency reforms - again, areas that have been argued to death recently. There’s also even vaguer proposal for examining “population policy” and an obsession with the minor problem of urban water supplies. Oh, and there’s recognition that low-income households will need help with the transition to a low-carbon future - worthy, but hardly new.
But where is the boldness? Some of it undoubtedly got squashed in the debate - as the report notes, there was never likely to be a resolution of the perpetual clean-coal-vs-renewables argument, nor a commitment to redirect money from roads to public transport. But even allowing for this, there are massive challenges in this area that we will need to tackle by 2020 that weren’t even dignified with a mention.
I’ll go back to Hugh Possingham’s comment, and note that the only sustainability challenge given serious attention was climate change. What about soil? What about biodiversity - which is, after all, a primary reason why we care about climate change in the first place (frankly, if all it meant was a warmer, sunnier, and dryer suburban Melbourne, I’d think climate change was all for the better). There is a sentence about promoting ecosystem “resilience”, but, frankly, it’s probably going to be too much for that. We are likely going to have to make wholesale changes to human activity to cope with the changed climate, and assist our ecosystems to cope as best they can - and, given the fragmented nature of our wilderness areas, possibly deliberately move species into new , climatically suitable areas, where that’s possible. For instance, how are we going to save the Great Barrier Reef, which is going to cop it not only from warming but from ocean acidification?
In fact, the complete lack of any mention of ocean ecosystems, in a country that’s just claimed another 2.5 million square kilometres of it is amazing. And you’d think that carbon dioxide was the only pollutant our society releases - despite the fact that urban air pollution kills thousands of Australians every year.
As Andrew Leigh’s column noted, there were some good and (relatively) new ideas floated at the summit. But, in the sustainability stream, there was little more than a confirmation of where the government was already heading, and no reported outcomes that really challenge them to do anything much more.
One of the very valid possible conclusions from a call to the public at large for their input, is that the public at large fdoes not have the answers and further input is required.
As a final note, does “carbon-neutrality” mean that every new house after 2020 is supposed to generate its own energy - essentially, implying solar panels for all? If so, chalk one up to populism - as previously argued at length, it is by no means clear that distributed generation is going to be sensible policy. It may turn out that the cheapest way to supply energy to households remains large-scale centralized generation, no matter how much certain sections of the green movement love their solar panels on every roof.
Robert, I’m not sure if you were frightened in your crib by a solar technician or something, but whenever you stray onto the topic of energy generation your tone changes from evenhanded engagement with the topic to snippy snarkiness a la Alex Downer. I don’t see why we shouldn’t, in a land where sun is the most plentiful resource, distances are often a problem and connecting infrastructure has been neglected, try the distributed model. After all, in the olden days the pundits at IBM opined that there would only ever be about 6 computers in the world, or something - because we all had mainframes in a special room in the building, didn’t we? and what happened to that model?
The distributed model: you’re typing on it.
Helen: I think you’re projecting snark onto that specific statement. Sometimes I do get rather snarky on this topic; perhaps, might I suggest, similarly to how you get slightly frustrated with at people on some feminism-related issues where you undoubtedly are particularly knowledgeable. In this case, all I said was that the assertion that a distributed energy model is so certain to be superior that we should entrench it in government policy is not supported by the facts.
To take your specific arguments; appealing as they sound, if I may be blunt they’re not particularly compelling. Yes, there is no shortage of sun in Australia. But so what? There’s no shortage of seawater around the coast - does that make desalination a good idea? Hardly. The key question is how cost-effectively that this abundantly-available energy can be tapped for our purposes. In some cases - solar hot water, drying clothes, and passive solar housing design come to mind - the answer is “very efficiently”. In others - notably “using battery-backed solar panels to provide electricity” the answer right now is “not very cost-effectively at all, even compared to other renewable options”.
Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of Australians live in urban or large regional centres. Australia is amongst the most urbanized countries in the world.
Solar passive house design is so easy to do but it still seems there is little will to enforce known good designs principles. Governments are not facilitating this either. Brand new suburbs in Canberra are being laid out so as to make it harder to site houses properly:
FFS! More, better sited, houses and more community space!? What are urban planners doing?
I know when I was trying to buy a house I found 2 houses with a long east-west axis in 3 months of looking. Even then the one I bought (the other one sold too quickly) has bedrooms on the north side and doesn’t have brilliant solar access (south facing slope). It shouldn’t be this way.
Robert, “populist” is a derogatory term, at least I’m sure you meant it in that sense. And I don’t know why supporters of solar energy should be put down in that manner. The really “populist” approach is “business as usual, find more fossil fuels, and you can wrestle my air conditioner from my cold, airconditioned, dead hands!” (I’m not referring to you Robert, just the usual zeitgeist I’m getting from the popular meeja, coworkers and so on.)
So, let’s take it as read that solar energy can never satisfy all our energy needs.
What’s wrong with drawing as much energy as possible that way, in order to minimise our reliance on fossil fuels? Is it an all or nothing situation - why?
What’s wrong with turning around the disgraceful situation in which a solar energy industry was allowed to wither on the vine, to the great delight of german and spanish industry players, and developing a burgeoning export and R & D industry, employing not just knowledge workers but lots of old-fashioned metal and electrical tradies and assembly workers? (What about using the just-vacated Mitsubishi complex for starters?)
I don’t accept the analogy with desalination, as desalination is an energy user and, furthermore, puts out a lot of waste aka salt which must be dealt with.
Good post Robert.
The arguments for and against a decentralised power system can be resolved objectively, they are not a philosophical debating point. The evidence is not conclusive yet, but it certainly does not seem to be the sensible way to go to put solar panels on every urban rooftop. Solar hot water absolutely, but centralised power generation logically should be with us for a long time to come.
(That said, I’m in the process of getting grid connected solar onto my roof (because I’m an affluent green consumer)).
I really don’t understand what role anyone thinks the federal government has in urban planning. Why on earth would we want ‘a nationally consistent approach’? The problems that beset Melbourne are different to those faced by Sydney, Perth, Darwin etc. And all of the expertise is locally based as well.
I’m not surprised biodiversity got missed. It’s the unspoken blind spot that’s so easy to forget. Kinda like happiness in economics.
Helen, I think you’re missing (what I take to be) Roberts point. There is nothing wrong with harnessing solar energy to satisfy our energy needs. The point is whether or not this energy need be drawn from distributed energy model, (a solar panel on every roof) when it may be that it is much more cost effective to get the same results using a centralised model, such as large scale solar thermal plants.
Does it have to be either/or?
helen, my small, not entirely adequate system is going to cost me $3500. Far more than the average family would possibly be willing to pay. But this system is subsidised to the tune of $8000 from the federal government. This is crap policy, but I’ll still respond to the incentive. A million and a half households in Melbourne, $12 billion in subsidies using this approach, that’s several large solar plants as well as a new CCGT plant, and it’s still not providing us with all of our power.
For remote areas it’s clearly the way to go.
The real missed opportunity is far more work on negawatts - energy efficiency. We’ve got some new labelling standards, but sod all else.
Robert, the key to biodiversity protection in a time of climate change is (IMHO) radical changes to agriculture. Which just isn’t being contemplated.
No it doesn’t Helen. Don’t get me wrong, nobody would be happier than I am to whack some solar panels on my roof and batteries in the attic, if it was genuinely cheaper than the alternative. But the numbers simply don’t add up right now.
Generally, those people calling for decentralized energy grids want special assistance for them, over and above the assistance already given to renewable energy (primarily, the MRET). Feed-in tariffs, grants for domestic solar cell installations, and so on. A carbon-neutral building, taken at face value, would presumably be one that generates its own energy locally. If you’re buying energy off the grid, all buildings can be carbon neutral (ignoring direct combustion of natural gas for a minute…) if the grid is supplying energy from non-emitting sources, in which case the statement is meaningless.
I just don’t see a compelling argument to favour small-scale renewables over large-scale renewables. A lot of the arguments for doing so seem to boil down to not liking centralized energy systems and the corporate structures that support them. Which is fine, until the same people on another important environmental topic - transport - will argue until they’re blue in the face for public transport (centralized) over cars (decentralized).
Helen: “What’s wrong with drawing as much energy as possible that way [from solar], in order to minimise our reliance on fossil fuels?”
Because its picking in winner and may end up being an awful waste of money and resources. The Government should put in place an appropriate policy fraemwork, including a carbon tax and/ or carbon trading scheme, keep MRET and provide a modest amount of grant money to fund carbon minimsation projects in an even handed fashion.
Your command and control model is a proven failure.
Small scale renewables are ideal when they are appropriate. The most appropriate clear cut example is solar water heating. There is no reason why most domestic dwellings cannot use this predominately. This will free up some power for vehicle charging or reduce non solar period load on a national solar grid. The ugliness of the solar panels can be solved easily. A national fitout of solar water heating would make good investment sense. Sterling cycle power generation is potentially commercially viable for domestic distributed generation,and competitive at retail rates, but there is no package available at present to make this possible. And if it were it would require significant building modification to fit in with out being an eyesore. So this along with solar photovoltaic will have minimal impact in the fore seeable future.
So in general, at this time, Robert is correct. But that position will gradually change.
my small, not entirely adequate system is going to cost me $3500. Far more than the average family would possibly be willing to pay. But this system is subsidised to the tune of $8000 from the federal government…
Wilful, are you saying you got a $8000 subsidy for a $3500 system? What happened to the rest of it? *sends out for brochure*
Robert, what about the system where the solar unit feeds any excess into the grid, rather than battery storage?
BilB wrote:
Except everywhere in Australia that gets a frost early in the morning (which is a lot of it). Up here in New England, it seems the least carbon output from hot water is achieved with on-demand propane heaters. When you buy a solar hot water unit up here, they also sell you the little propane heater for winter. It’s easier and cheaper just to install the propane heater by itself. At least, that’s what we’re doing to get rid of the inefficient off-peak tank we currently have.
No helen, I got an $8000 subsidy for an $11,500 system. And this is grid connected, not battery. But with the sun not shining at night, I need another source, we can’t all be grid connected solar.
Point is, even grid connected solar would cost at least $20 000 a house. This is not the best way to spend our money for the foreseeable future. I’m only doing it ’cause I can.
As for solar hot water, yeah make it mandatory or something. You’ve got rocks in your head if next time you are installing a HWS you don’t at least strongly consider it.
David Rubie, Here in Canberra solar hot water is very popular. The evacuated tube types seem to be immune to frost/freezing problems. A colleague was telling me about a system he has been quoted for that uses high pressure high temperature water storage (obviously with cold water mixed in before delivery) that the installer guy reckons virtually never needs boosting. I am currently trying to get in touch with this bloke to get a quote on such a setup.
Just wondering whether adopting the distributed model would drive prices down?
Robert, on the subject of smart meters, I had a look at the article in The Age and a quick look at the actual report, and the article in The Age seems like a bit of a beat up. The Age article stated that:
These figures are confirmed by the report, but 3.8 Mt is much more than 95,000 tonnes.
The actual report is at [link], it comes in two volumes that are each over 200 pages, so I can’t say that I have read it properly! The figures for Victoria are on pages 87 and 89. While the gross rollout cost could be as high as $1.5 billion, the net benefit is estimated to be anywhere between -$540 million and +$690 million. The claim in The Age that a smart meter rollout will have very little gain seems to be wrong.
If there was an ETS then I suspect the benefits will be greater. If the carbon price was sufficiently high that gas would be cheaper to burn than coal then I suspect that substituting baseload for peakload electricity would no longer increase emissions.
Overall I agree that most of the ideas proposed at 2020 in this stream were a bit timid and vague, but I think that their proposal that “Before 2020 all Australians could have the tools to enable them to measure and manage their personal carbon footprint. This could include access to smart meters for energy and water consumption.” was actually a very good one.
su: well I suppose economists would argue that markets with lots of suppliers are good at driving down prices.
The problem with that argument is that engineering experience has shown that big heat engines of the same technology are more efficient than small ones. That includes solar thermal energy as well. Only solar cells (not heat engines) and wind turbines aren’t subject to this problem; however, in practice, bigger wind turbines - at least up to multi-megawatt sizes - are more cost-effective than small ones. Even in the solar industry, while the solar cells themselves are sold in very small units, the doodads necessary to convert from 12V DC to 240V AC are much cheaper if you buy one big unit rather than many small ones spread across lots of houses.
A housemate of mine who works in the public service, and is in a position to opine on such things, was commenting that from a government/power utility perspective residential solar power that fed back into the grid was really annoying. It’s expensive, a hassle for the utility, people think the power they generate is worth WAY more than it really is etc. at least when done on a property by property basis anyway. Apparently what they really want is someone to buy the roof space on e.g. a whole block (or more) and pop PVC setups on the lot, thereby requiring only one grid tie-in inverter, and actually generating a decent amount of power. I don’t know if this could be made to work as a business proposition, the roof rights negotiations alone would be treacherous I imagine, and the pay off would be some years away…you’d probably get lots of government $$$ thrown at you though.
Anyway, food for thought.
(Sorry off topic - Wilful are you WayneS?)
David Rubie,
There are many types of solar collectors for water heating. If you are in a frost prone area then the evacuated tube type collector is what would be used. These are used throughout Europe where the frosting is more severe and the solar durations are shorter.
Robert:
Good post as your posts invariably are. This is only my second contribution to LP since I’m a bashful old bloke who finds blogging rather too hectic and frenetic! I suspect that by the time I post this, everyone will have moved onto something new.
I’ve been drawn to the attractions of utility-sized solar thermal in places like the Southwest US, Mediterranean Europe and Australia (and North Africa for that matter), ie places with plentiful largely uninterrupted sunlight. (I’m not silly enough to suggest the same solution for places like Scotland and Scandinavia, where plainly nuclear and other solutions need to be in the melting pot).
As I wrote to someone the other day (I’m over 60): “I hope I live long enough to see 90% of Australia’s power generation come from large solar thermal farms located, say, between Mildura and Broken Hill, somewhere near Bourke, somewhere near Cloncurry, somewhere south of Geraldton, and somewhere near Port Pirie”. (The best locations need some meteorological modelling.)
I’ve been very much attracted by the arguments of David Mills, the former Sydney Uni academic who is now with Ausra in Silicon Valley. I’m not spruiking for David, because there is intense competition in the large-scale solar field and any one of many similarly young companies could emerge with the best and cheapest technology. I did, however, find his presentation at [link] last month enormously inspirational because it suggested an energy-rich future (and indeed an energy-unlimited future) for places in sunbelts (including Australia).
It is plainly going to require (a) a price put on emissions/carbon; and (b) a very large investment in large-scale steel and mirror installations in arid bits of Australia and transmission lines to populated areas.
Note my fundamental proposition that Australia has a potentially huge competitive advantage in that it has almost unlimited low-cost unproductive sundrenched land that could support solar farms.
My guesstimate, depending on whether we want enough energy to (a) substitute for present domestic/commercial/industrial electricity generation; or (b) power a number of desalination plants (including incidentally the trivial matter of powering large vessels to transport the salt waste back into deep fast-current waters; and/or (c) to power a society where electric cars are the norm for non-public transport; and/or (d) where we export electricity to neighbouring countries via high-voltage DC lines: then:
My guesstimate is that the cost of (a) and (b) above is around the $150-$200bn mark. Seem like a big sum? There’s $50bn a year and rising rapidly going into super and the superfunds are crying out for prudent investment opportunities. There’s precious little that’s attractive or that isn’t crook on the ASX at present. We could easily do this in 20 years.
If there’s money for research, I wouldn’t be putting it into carbon capture and storage: I’d be putting it into things like modelling how solar thermal can reach baseload guarantees, where to situate the solar farms on a national grid so as to reduce any risks of brownouts and I’d be calling a meeting of trustees of large and industry superfunds to ask them what policy settings they need to fulfil their prudential obligations for investing in this sector.
As for Penny Wong’s chairing of the Population, sustainabilty etc. stream of the 2020 Summit: I thought it was a disgrace. I’ve got a lot of respect for Penny Wong and hope that she switches sides sometime in the future once she realises that coal is Australia’s cargo cult. I think we need to make a serious distinction between thermal coal (bad) and coking coal (arguably OK),
I’ll take sides with the utility-scale solar people any time against the rooftop crowd. If it’s rooftop stuff against coal, then sure, vote rooftop (1). I find all this feed-in stuff an extraordinary waste of public money when the same money could be devoted to building a utility.
Cheers
I agree with you Paul H. If someone wants to fund their own rooftop install, fine. But govt shld be spending those rebates on utilities instead. As you say. The inefficiencies inherent in the rooftop business must be enormous. It’s governments pandering to the green lobby without committing themselves fully to the agenda I suspect.
(As well, there’s this insidiously romantic notion out there that solar will mean the end of large energy corporations etc as we all become power generators.)
Robert Merkel and All:
Interesting topic.
Two points that nobody seems to notice:
[a] Why is so little ever said about lowering household demand for electricity with, for example, fridges that meet one’s actual needs. What’s wrong with a bit of old-fashioned frugality?
[b] So just which foreign aid agency is going to help those living in The Other Australia get CHEAP household solar power systems? It is ridiculous to talk about families living way below the poverty line being able to rush out and buy - and have installed!! - small-scale efficient CHEAP household solar power systems. Subsidy or rebate, the reality is that many families who would benefit most from such systems are the very ones who can least afford them. [It’s a similar story with vermin-proof rainwater tanks and composting/waterless toilets too].
Paul H, you might be interested in this article from the Scientific American. I recall seeing a map showing premium areas for concentrated solar power. In Australia it covered almost the whole continent except a strip about 150 k wide down the eastern seaboard.
I’d question whether it was wise to ever go 90% solar though, simply because you have to build in contingency supply arrangements to cover whatever power is unavailable through inclement weather.
This is where geothermal has a marked superiority (or will have if it is proven to work large-scale) because the weather is simply irrelevant.
On roof-top photovoltaic, I’m uncomfortable about depending on large-scale use of batteries. Also while the Chinese have not yet geared up to produce solar panels cheaply en masse and new materials are being developed it’s hard to see them becoming cost competitive with large-scale renewables.
I was a bit surprised with Robert’s statement:
A decision will have to be made on the Traveston Dam soon. I’m betting that Garrett will give it the all clear. Apart from flooding prime agricultural land when all the indications are that the world is going to need all the productive land it can get some very important rare species are going to be put at risk.
I’d favour another desalination plant instead, with the provisos that the required energy be 100% carbon free and the salty brine be adequately distributed.
Please note that I don’t accept the greens’ claim that retro fitting water tanks will do the trick mainly (but not solely) because their costings seem way out.
Graham Bell - my recollection is that the QLD govt heavily subsidizes solar systems for households who are remote from the power grid. Still not cheap, but less than the cost of a new 4WD.
Yes, Brian. Rooftop solar should be grid connected.
Big problem with this, Brian. The desal plant will take the hypothecated green power which otherwise would be available to supplant coal power. We can only build so much green power in so many years and with so many dollars. Would prefer not to divert that precious green power on desal (unless ppl are going thirsty - and I would want official Big Government check that their lips are cracking.)
Agree with Robert, actually, about urban water. (Here in Vic leastways.) CO2 is the issue. Urban water waste is still monumental.
The Feral Abacus [27]:
There is an order - or two - of magnitude involved here. These are people who are lucky if they are running around in an ‘eighties Falcon or Holden, let alone a modern fuel-efficient vehicle …. as for a Toorak tractor, forget it.
The Queensland government also had a rebate scheme for new solar-electric hot water system installations - that might have been within reach of some lucky enough to have that much cash …. but solar electric power systems are way way beyond their wildest dreams.
Graham Bell - I think the objective of the scheme was to make solar a viable alternative to petrol/diesel generators for remote households.
I knew someone living out of Esk (about 90 minutes drive out of Brisbane for all you Southerners) who had been quoted something over $10 K to connect to the grid. In their case subsidised solar was almost an attractive deal.
But I suspect that re-jigging the tax-welfare system would be more effective means of assisting rural people on low incomes than providing heavily subsidised solar power systems.
Graham: nothing’s wrong with a bit of old-fashioned frugality. In fact, nothing’s wrong with a lot of old-fashioned frugaiity.
But I think history shows that the best way to get frugality is through the hip-pocket nerve.
Furthermore, it’s a question of how best to help those in the Other Australia. Do we give them big subsidies to install rooftop solar, or would it be better to increase their welfare payments so they can afford to buy green power from the grid? At the moment, it makes much more sense to do the latter.
Graham, Robert, melaleuca
Nothing wrong with frugality, and nothing wrong with a MULTI-pronged approach, to reducing greenhouse gas emission, saving energy, reducing pollution, saving water, etc etc. I get a little sick of advocates of ONE energy system pooh-poohing all the others. We currently use a mixture of sources. We currently aren’t yet doing very well in passive solar for houses & offices; urban design - but we are learning. Grid-connected photovoltaics make sense to me: and why not a subsidy of some size [argue about its size but don’t prohibit a subsidy].
We’re learning to build lighter vehicles, improving battery design, improving both photovolataic and solar hot water designs, and AT LAST getting serious about windpower generation.
I see many hopeful signs for a long-term conversion to a more energy-efficient transport/homes/industry system. Public opinion has shifted remarkably, at last.
Of course there will be many, complementary energy sources for the foreseeable future.
melaleuca decries “picking winners” - well yes, we should never “put all our eggs in one basket”, but giving consumer decisions a gentle nudge in a positive direction sounds like a policy that has the potential to get us a win-win outcome, to me.
Agree wholeheartedly that the needs of poor hoseholds require special attention. IMHO the poor are the “forgotten people” of modern Australia.
cheerio
Ambigulous says: “melaleuca decries “picking winners” - well yes, we should never “put all our eggs in one basket”, but giving consumer decisions a gentle nudge in a positive direction …”
Problem is we only know what direction is positive after the event. It may turn out that wind power or tidal power or geothermal or something else will end being more important. Another possibility: the Oz Government could put one billion dollars into various solar programs here that turn out to be duds while someone in lets say, Spain, makes the breakthrough that makes solar the best available option.
As I say, spread the grant money around.
hi melaleuca,
I wasn’t referring to grant money: that should certainly be spread around. Because the better energy outcomes for society will still, IMHO, be multi-pronged. I thought you were referring to giving subsidies to home-owners and factory operators (planning to install energy-saving devices, solar collectors, etc).
Research funding: let a hundred flowers bloom!!
Yes, some’ll be duds but we won’t know until the figures come in.
I think we’re in agreement.
What is the practical effect of this debate against the ‘business as usual’ construction of a third coal loader at Newcastle and the development of the Anvil Hill mine in the Hunter Valley?
Mug Punter, apparently if coal is exported and burned overseas then the emissions do not matter anymore.
Robert Merkel [31]:
Big subsidies is not really the way to go. Suggest instead mass-producing standardized solar power units - simple, dirt-cheap, robust - and since the holy Market has been such a consistently abject failure in mass-producing things that would make life so much easier in remote and rural Australia, let them be produced in government facilities …. such as in - shock!! horror!! - prison factories [run humanely and of ultimate benefit to the prisoners, of course].
Melaleuca [33]:
I have to agree with much of what Ambigulous said on [32].
You said
That’s only partially true. We don’t have to pick winners but we can eliminate some obvious duds - for instance, like having only one thickness of cladding on an exterior wall [and there are money-free ways of overcoming that heat-loss/heat-gain problem].
I’m with Robert, put a (hefty) price on carbon and do away with all these subsidies, rebates, MRETs etc, and let the market work its magic.
However, the market rarely works perfectly, so here’s a couple of suggestions to help the market work better:
# Smart meters for all, attached to every appliance.
In my experience the level of ignorance about energy use is staggering. Most people have no idea which appliances are energy intensive, and which are energy-efficient. Better metering will give householders the information they need to become more energy efficient.
# Feebates for all cars and appliances.
We have to reduce the ’sticker shock’ factor for energy-efficient cars and appliances. Hybrid cars are great, by why would anyone fork out $40K+ for a Prius when they can buy a similar car for $25K? Similarly, why spend $1000+ for a gas convection heater when you could get a 2400W electric heater for less than $100? Feebates lower the price of efficient cars/appliances and raise the price of inefficient cars/appliances, in a more or less revenue neutral way
Of course, this still doesn’t help with tricky problems like home insulation. No-one likes the inconvenience and disruption of getting your home properly insulated, and the benefits are not immediately obvious like switching on the A/C or electric heater.
Any ideas how to make insulation more attractive Robert?
Given the near zero chance that any of our coal export markets will put a price on carbon anytime soon (except perhaps Japan), why not tax it at the port?
It doesn’t help when the likes of Gittins cheer on our fabulous new found wealth derived from enemy of the human race. Ross should know better.
Australia has made a deal with the devil and the devil is coal. Its like we’ve harvested a bumper crop of opium poppies and the economists are applauding the high price of herion and telling us how much richer we’ll all be (ugh!). It may be a radical view now, but I am utterly convinced this is how we will view this dark period in Australia’s history in … oh, around 2020.
I’ve heard it suggested that we should put $100 notes in the packaging…
Seriously, I think Labor had a policy to encourage energy-efficiency audits to overcome intertia on the issue. Beyond that, not sure…