Projects to be credited with RECs under 'Business as Usual' scenario
It’s fair to say it’s been a lobbyists’ feeding frenzy in Canberra lately. Here’s all you need to know about the Renewable Energy Target in the same sense that all you need to know about emissions trading is that it’s going to cost 45 000 jobs in the EITE Industries. Under Larvatus Prodeo Equilibrium Modelling we can authoritatively inform you that the red part of the pie, representing actual renewable energy, will be 5% wind power and 13% Residential and 7% other PV, which are both now competing with each other.
As for the purple part of the pie, also known as the Bullshit Share, conservative estimates [pdf] suggest the other 75% will be taken up by ‘phantom RECs’ and solar hot water, neither of which actually produce Renewable Energy solar hot water produces, um, hot water, and phantom RECs are middle class welfare masquerading as industry policy. See the EnVict Briefing Somewhere in that 75% are the grandfathered coal seam gas credits and ‘dead koala’ credits for burning unsold native forest woodchips.
No wonder ExxonMobil thinks it’s going to take 100 years to get anywhere on changing our energy systems. At this rate, I suspect they’re right.
Larvatus Prodeo Equilibrium Modelling LOL. But I’d be more likely to believe it than concept economics equilibrium modelling any time.
The phantom RECs and the inclusion of coal seam gas make a mockery of the target. That said, dk, I don’t understand why you object to the inclusion of solar hot water in the scheme. It *is* renewable energy. Increasing its use *does* reduce emissions. What does it matter that it’s not electricity?
The RET could be better, but its important to highlight that, unlike the CPRS, the RET actually drives investment in renewables. The Treasury modelling makes it very clear that the CPRS does nothing to drive out coal and encourage renewables. How can that be? simple really, the carbon price is capped to make sure that it never gets high enough to make wind and solar competitive against coal.
So lets reflect on the CPRS: It doesnt apply to agriculture, doesnt apply to transport, and the price is set so low that it wont effect the status quo..it would be funny if its wasnt so serious.
Solar Hot Water and Heat Pumps have produced over 25% of RECs. This has depressed prices, crowding out the development of a proper renewables industry.
Just to return to the kind of economically formalist analysis that keeps us spinning around in circles on energy policy: if the CPRS passes, getting rid of electric hot water heaters and replacing them with straight gas or gas boosted solar (depending on your city of residence) will be one of our cheapest abatement options. (see here for some numbers)
Oh absolutely. It’s clear that we’d need a politically unfeasible carbon price for it to make a difference to energy investment. Why any environmentalist advocates the introduction of emissions trading for Australia is completely beyond me.
With apologies to the copyright owner of this: it’s pacman, going north-west …
Richard@3
I thought I’d rectify the syntax for you to reflect the substantive claim.
This CPRS was indeed rubbish, as you rightly say. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t favour a better one.
I also agree: including solar hot water heaters was simply a way of rorting the targets. I’ve no problem with means-tested subsidies for people seeking to reduce their exposure to carbon charges. But they aren’t renewables. They are a form of energy efficiency which deserves separate accounting.
I have actually been playing around with aluminium pie dishes of the Alfoil type.Indeterminable results because of extremely bad experimental design.Shooting my Dog chaser-repeller into assemblages of alfoil including pie dishes,changed the sound and made it discernable and other experiments ending up feeling like the alfoil was given off a coolness similar to negative ions ..in negative ion generators. Experiments with salt ,very small grains,including Bi Carb really zinged and danced across the Alfoil. I should of stuck a battery charged pin in a dish ,and played around with a magnet as the salts zinged.You know if we had really good alternate energy thinkers,it wouldn’t evolve around the usual consumer matters.But would address problems like getting Helicopters to fly purposefully in cold and windstorm activity,such as looking for the missing MP Holding.All that chopper blade activity would need to produce more heat than the cold atmosphere it was travelling in.Like it would need its chopper blades to be spinning in air heated by say, a gas. That then had the complete moving helicopter enveloped in its heating,whilst the chopper blades created enough disturbance in that heated area to propel and exhaust the cool hot air interface.I mean ,what is the point of alternative energies,if the only bloody thing they are going to be used for is a sort of mass conformity that supplies enough electricity to sit and watch the latest imported TV drama on a very large screen.http://KeeleyNet.com.whatsnew or try googling for water pyramid will show how non conventional thinking actually can help in this case using water condensate from brackish waters.I didn’t know someone was on the way of designing such.Yep!Rudd Labor shit,doesn’t even force the coal fired power stations and miners to do anything at all.Must have their plasmas already.
This is a misconception. Solar hot water heaters are a form of renewable energy. If you object to their inclusion in the MRET scheme because you would prefer that scheme to be limited to electricity generation, fine. But get your facts straight. If solar water heaters are just a form of energy efficiency, then so are grid-connected PV systems. In fact, both are forms of solar energy.
Solar water heaters presumably not being a “proper” form of renewable energy because nobody really needs hot water. If the aim is to reduce emissions, I can’t see how rolling out the cheapest emissions reducing tech available first is a bad thing. I’m sorry the technology isn’t sexy enough for you, dk.
On a more serious note, if the CPRS goes like the RET legislation, then the Liberals will present some amendments to make it ‘browner’ and more friendly to polluting industries. They might also present some amendments to make it ‘greener’. The government will then agree to the browner amendments (they didn’t agree to the greener ones for the RET), the Government and Liberals will then pass it.
I am going to explain this in very simple terms.
Hot water is required for washing and stuff.
You get hot water by heating it.
You heat it with:
Wood – zero emissions but inconvenient
Coal – Lots of CO2 emissions
Electricity – lots more CO2 emisssions
Gas – Lots of CO2 emissiions
Solar – No emissions after embodied energy accounted for. It also displaces a lot of Coal, Electricity and Gas.
In fact solar hot water is the most efficient way to collect and use solar energy there is. It is more than 3 times more efficient than that Photo-Voltaic stuff and it contains its own energy storage system.
Put solar hot water on every domestic rooftop in Australia and you would remove the need for a couple of power stations ( at 2.5 kW per installation and 8 million houses – you do the math)
Huggy
“[If] you would prefer that scheme to be limited to electricity generation, fine.”
Yes. I would.
Huggy read my comment @4. I’m not questioning the destination (lots of solar heaters on rooves) just the means.
(((Hugs Huggy)))
Also, create a manufacturing industry for it here. Employ all the out of work process workers and skilled Metals and Electrical workers. Roll it together with R & D facilities. Train more apprentices too. How good would that be? And if anyone wants to moan about such a scheme being “picking winners”: The good old invisible hand has been picking the wrong winners for a while now – Business importing stuff from China, mainly. It’s time we tried picking a few winners using brains instead of the Invisible Hand.
Tim @2 and dk.au @4, perhaps you guys can explain something that has always had me wondering? Why does a solar hot water system cost 4-6 times more than a fridge, or half as much as a cheap car?
They have no moving parts, no space-age alloys (to my knowledge) and very simple technology. It is basically a hot water tank with a sunbed and a bit of plumbing, isn’t it?
Is the high cost of solar hot water a function of a oligopoly which thrives on government support and limited competition for green dollars?
It all sounds like a typical Wayne Swan pork barrel with lots of little things being done to please different groups of people instead of hard headed decisions being made on the basis of minimizing the cost per tonne emission reduction. (Unless there are good, non-political srategic reasons for doing something else.) Key features of a good system are:
1. It is based on the need to reduce emissions/kwh to below 5% of the current figure by 2050 at the latest.
2. Intermediate targets should not assume that the rate of clean-up will speed up some time down the track.
3. It should provide steady employment in green industries over a long time. (Not sudden spikes in activity followed by downturns.)
4. Positive steps to ensure that investment occurs at the right rate. For example, setting up contracts for the supply of clean electricty instead of putting a price on dirty electricity and crossing our fingers.
I have an open mind about the desirability of using gas fired power as a transition step. Key point is that everyone should understand that by 2050 almost all of the gas fired power would need to have been replaced by something cleaner. There is certainly an argument for using conversion to gas to give some quick gains (40% reduction by 2020 instead of the lousy 20%?) while waiting for the expected advances for some of the alternatives.
I have an open mind too on hot water. My only comment is that significant gains can be made by installing low water consumption shower heads and resisting the temptation to use the shower as the place of meditiation.
Elise, I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. I’ve wondered the same thing myself. The price seems to vary quite dramatically between installers.
A lot of solar hot water systems are Australian made, so labour costs could be a factor (compared with fridges and cheap cars made in Asia, to follow your comparison). I’d hazard a guess that it may have something to do with solar hot water systems needing to be rated to a certain standard to be safely installed on rooftops. I’d also surmise that it’s partly because solar hot water systems are “hybrid systems”, as the presentation dk linked to points out. So you’re buying two hot water systems in one – a solar component and an electric or gas component. A gas booster system will add around $1,000 to the cost straight up (it surpises me that gas water heaters are that expensive, as well). Most of the parts (i.e. tank and panels) have pretty long warranties as well, at least compared to fridges.
But after the Federal Government subsidy and the REC sales, you should be able to get a family size (i.e. 300L tank) close coupled unit for well under $2,000 if you look around.
dk.au
I disagree with your putting the mockers on solar in the way that you do, but you also qualify that by suggesting that a range of approaches are needed.
What this shows me, is that it supports the champions of bottom-up change by suggesting that there is a great deal of capacity in reduced emissions that can be taken up very quickly. If that is the case a top-down market scheme will be subscribed very quickly.
So, as you point out, either we need a better range of horses for courses (the multiple policy approach) or just tighter limits (and let the players sort it out for themselves). I wouldn’t blame an MRET specifically for that but it shows the weakness of an ersatz CPRS.
Solar hot water, that is
Tim @14, I don’t think labour costs explain it.
Westinghouse stainless fridges are made in Australia, and they cost under $2000 retail, without Federal and State rebates and REC’s rebates.
I don’t think safety concerns explain it either.
Instantaneous gas hot water systems cost less than $2000 installed, and I doubt they have less stringent safety regulations.
Choice quotes solar hot water as $4000 – $10,000. A brief look online suggests that is a fair representation. It still seems to me that these solar hot water systems are WAY overpriced, in terms of componentry.
You’re probably right Elise. I was just speculating as to what might account for the costs. But they do seem overpriced. It could well be that the subsidies create an incentive for the suppliers to bump up the price, in a similar manner to the way the first home buyer’s grant tends to bump up housing prices.
Tim @18, if they were around $2000 retail, perhaps we would have 100% takeup, without wasting taxpayer money on subsidies?
Perhaps a bit more competition in the solar hot water sector would bring the price down?
My electric hot water system has an average power draw of 0.25kW for an average of 2.3 people taking showers/day. Assuming solar hot water costs in the choice range of $4,000 to $10,000 installed and all the heating is done by solar this represents a capital investment of $16 to $40b/gW average saving! This suggests that it would make better economic sense to the spend money on clean power stations or even rooftop PV. Perhaps subsidizing solar hot water makes better political sense?
The figures would look better for larger families, particularly if they didn’t have water saving shower heads.
Perhaps the government should offer a prize for a better solar hot water design/
John D @21: “…or even rooftop PV”
Is your calculation in terms of taxpayer dollars spent, for the cost of rebates, or in terms of total payments to the solar hot water sector?
From a household perspective, without the government rebates, a combination of instantaneous gas and more solar PV appears to be a better use of north-facing roof area, in terms of kg CO2 reduction/$ invested. Especially if water-saving taps and shower heads have been fitted, as you said.
We are not eligible for the rebates, except REC’s, since we have a gas storage system. It would appear that replacing the old gas system with a solar hot water system does not make economic or footprint sense, with current prices.
Incidentally, many solar hot water systems use an electric heater to top up the temperature of the tank, and others use a gas-fired system. Furthermore, I suspect that most people tend to shower in the mornings before work, so the tank is kept warm ALL NIGHT in order to supply the hot shower in the morning. This seems like an inefficient setup, in terms of power consumption?
Ideally, the solar system generates hot water during the day, so the shower/bath would be better taken in the evenings, without further energy consumption required. This may work OK for retirees (with a suitable habit-retraining program!), but not for our workforce lifestyle.
Perhaps a rooftop solar system would be better coupled with instantaneous gas on the outlet line, rather than in-tank continuous temperature maintenance, to maximise energy efficiency on the hot water requirements?
Is it my imagination, or is this sector (solar HW) a little too cosily protected and lacking innovation?
Electric hot water systems usually have an element size of 2.4 kW – not 0.24 kW – they run for 2 – 3 hours after midnight in most jurisdictions so they consume a lot of energy. Solar hot water saves most of this.They are controlled by by the power utility with a ripple signal to even out the load. (The US does not have ripple control because “that would be communistic” – Americans are so stupid)
Why do solar hot water systems cost so much?
Answer: because they are subsidised at the point of sale. The subsidy goes directly into the pocket of the installer/provider – same as PV. The manufacturers /instaler have a major incentive to inflate the price.
You can buy solar hot water systems in Indonesia for about AU$400 or even as low as AU$60 for the really simple low cost plastic moulded ones. (you could buy a new one of these every yaear and still come out ahead).
Huggy
Thanks Huggybunny. This says it all, I reckon!!
“Answer: because they are subsidised at the point of sale. The subsidy goes directly into the pocket of the installer/provider – same as PV. The manufacturers /instaler have a major incentive to inflate the price.
You can buy solar hot water systems in Indonesia for about AU$400 or even as low as AU$60″
That is one or two ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE difference in price! It would appear that a lot of taxpayer dollars are going towards profits in a lucrative and inefficient little industry?
So why can’t we get imported solar HW systems from Indonesia?
Don’t tell me, let me guess…ummm, perhaps the solar HW guys have organised to have a tight “safety” spec which excludes all systems except their own?
There’s more than a few ways to create trade barriers, when one has a cosy little goldmine to protect.
Interesting – thanks Huggy.
Elise, most of the variations on solar configurations are you mention are available. There are many solar systems with instantaneous gas boosting. It bumps the price up, of course, because instantaneous gas heaters are more expensive than electric heating elements. You can also put a timer on the house circuit for the hot water system to prevent the electric heating element from operating all night in winter – my electrician installed one in his system.
I’m not convinced you’d get more emissions reduction per dollar by installing PV and instantaneous gas instead of solar hot water – I’d need to see some compelling figures before I accepted that. Of course, if you install solar hot water and a PV system, you’ll get much lower overall emissions in an absolute sense.
An advantage of solar hot water that hasn’t been mentioned is that it works without any electrical or gas input at all except in cold, cloudy weather. In Perth’s climate, this means that the electric or gas booster can be switched off for at least 7 months of the year. It also keeps working during power outages and gas crises (we can’t rule out the possibility that there’ll be more of those).
Tim @25
“You can also put a timer on the house circuit for the hot water system to prevent the electric heating element from operating all night in winter – my electrician installed one in his system.”
Soo, why haven’t the solar HW guys installed this facility on their systems, not leaving it as an after-market cost for aware consumers? Why so little innovation in that sector?
“I’m not convinced you’d get more emissions reduction per dollar by installing PV and instantaneous gas instead of solar hot water – I’d need to see some compelling figures before I accepted that.”
OK, I didn’t do the numbers before, but here is an estimate. We use 4.5 – 5.5 kWh/day of gas (taken off our Alinta account records), which includes gas storage HW and cooking. We would not save the entire 4.5 – 5.5 kWh/day if we installed solar HW, due to cloudy days as you say, and due to gas cooking. Let’s assume we could save 70% by replacing the HW system, say 3.5 kWh/day.
Our 6 panel solar PV system produces 6 – 9 kWh/day. An extra 2 panels should give us an extra 3.5 kWh/day, at a cost of about $1500/panel, giving a cost of $3000 for the PV and $1600 for the instantaneous gas HW (Alinta prices), for a total cost $4600.
That cost is similar to the cheapest solar HW system.
One advantage of the option for solar PV + instantaneous gas, is that the kWh/day from solar PV would be reducing the carbon footprint by MORE than the reduced gas consumption, because it replaces coal-fired power.
Another advantage of solar PV is that excess solar energy from the panels in the summer generates a feedin tariff, thus reducing our bills further, which excess solar energy on a HW system can never achieve.
I don’t know if you see this as compelling, but this household has significant reservations about the excessive cost of solar HW. Their prices would have to come down below about $4000 retail (WITHOUT government subsidies) to justify going that way.
Their prices aren’t cost + margin (as Huggybunny showed), their prices are more likely “how much can we sting those suckers, before they find another way of spending their green dollars”
Elise, I can see how going with PV + instantaneous gas would be appropriate for you, given that you have a gas storage system at present, so moving to a solar/gas system wouldn’t reduce your emissions profile as much as it would have if you were starting with an electric system.
Yes, but this is only half the story. Offpeak was designed to fit the supply characteristics of coal fired power stations, so it’s not entirely true that saving power necessarily meant saving GHGs.
Doing energy policy calculation without considering supply is dangerous and stupid. It’s naive to scale up the energy usage of your system nationally. The most cost or greenhouse effective solutions in Tasmania, Perth and the East Coast are quite different, as Wilkenfeld’s presentation shows. In fact, the most elegant solution in many jurisdictions is instantaneous gas. Simple, effective and only one device doing the job instead of two (main+backup/booster).
Solar hot water is more accurately described as a hybrid system by fiat – as far as I understand, there are laws forbidding standalone solar hot water system without an electric or gas backup (there may be exceptions to this for offgrid properties). The cheap systems in Indonesia and elsewhere are free from this constraint and the puritanical assumptions about cleanliness, rationality, reliability and mastery of nature that accompany it.
Maybe some of that CCS money that is being wasted on “GEOsequestration” (trying to stuff CO2 gas underground), should be better spent on “BIOsequestration” using green algae? Puts a new meaning on “green energy”, wouldn’t you say?
MIT researchers seem to be making some significant progress on this:
“Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, courtesy of the power plant’s exhaust stack, the algae grow quickly even in the wan rays of a New England sun. The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with 40% less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates) and another bonus: 86% less nitrous oxide.
After the CO2 is soaked up like a sponge, the algae is harvested daily. From that harvest, a combustible vegetable oil is squeezed out: biodiesel for automobiles. Berzin hands a visitor two vials — one with algal biodiesel, a clear, slightly yellowish liquid, the other with the dried green flakes that remained. Even that dried remnant can be further reprocessed to create ethanol, also used for transportation.”
First you soak up the CO2, then you reuse it to make bio-diesel and bio-alcohol. The CO2 goes around twice before being emitted to the atmosphere, thanks to the solar energy contribution to growing the green algae. This presumably improves the efficiency of energy extracted per tonne CO2 emitted? Not being a biologist, can someone confirm this?
A cut-&-come-again Magic Pudding?!! Amost too good to be true?!!
Are Aussie researchers looking at this, or are our heads stuck down a dark hole with “geosequestration” pipe dreams?
Elise,
Sounds like it would work but the devil is in the details. A power plant produces a lot of CO2 so you are talking about a huge bio reactor here. A lot of these experiments don’t scale that well but it certainly sounds more promising than thousands of sq km of solar panels
Peter, why either/or, why not a bit of both?!!
Well, I’ll agree to a trial of 1Km2 of solar as long as you agree to 1 medium size nuke in return:-)
Peter, do I get to choose where you should put your nuke?
A few alternatives spring to mind…
Well I live in suburbia so next door is out of the question if that is what you mean. In principal though I’d be happy to live near a nuke (prefer it to a coal fired plant in fact). As are lots of people in France.
Peter, I’d rather we looked at this idea of biosequestration with green algae first.
It will take some time to shut down the coal-fired power plants, even with “cash for clunkers” to remove the worst offenders. The Chinese and Indians are unlikely to shut down theirs either. As such, we need some CO2 removal system pronto.
If a later model version of nukes is ever developed which solves all its inherent risks, then it is worth further discussion. Until such date, we have more immediate problems with an atmospheric CO2 level perilously close to the tipping point.
There seem to be some totally hair-brained ideas being floated in the UK at the moment, going by the name of “geo-engineering”. The ideas seem to include spraying sulphur and other solids into the atmosphere to block out the sun, and building giant reflectors to re-radiate the energy. And you thought a 1 km2 solar array was mad…
Why not look at what nature does already when there are high CO2 levels, and go with the flow, rather than introducing other pollutants (sulphur, etc) or building giant arrays that can’t be used for anything productive (mirrors rather than solar thermal arrays)?
Apparently green algae can thrive on sunshine and CO2. Well great, why not encourage what comes naturally?
It should be cheaper and easier to manage large vats of green algae than drilling large numbers of deep wells, capping them securely, and trying to keep the lid on increasing amounts of CO2 stored underground indefinately.
Elise,
I agree with much of that – there are lots of hair brained ideas floating around. I suspect the algae idea will fall into that as well. When people show you a ‘vial’ of something its hard to envisage running a substantial part of the economy on the idea in the near or mid term. I think the solar energy for the algae will turn out to be the limiting factor again, requiring truly vast areas of vats – hundreds of square kilometers in fact!
Nuclear power is fast gaining acceptance with both China and Russia developing programs to mass produce mid size power stations that can be built in a couple of years. France built 50 odd in the space of 15 years. We could do the same. We *know* they work – most of these other ideas are just wasting time.
Great to see a lively debate on this issue.
I firmly support solar hot water (SHW) as a GOOD THING, especially in places where the sun shines a lot. Solar hot water has over 50% market share in the Northern Territory for sound reasons.
Technically, SHW works very well because solar energy is well matched to the temperature rises needed for household water heating, and a tank of water is a great way to store heat overnight.
Commercially, SHW in Australia is a cosy little rort for the makers because they have set up Australian Standards which shut out foreign products and inflate the cost of local ones. Nice work if you can get it.
The Regulators have then compounded the matter by inventing the infernally complex REC system. The concept is so intellectually pure it squeaks. It is also perfectly suited to political manipulation.
Now we see the REC scheme being bent to the purposes of the 20% MRET and as dk complains above the result is likely to be far less new renewable generation than anyone expected. 20%? You’re joking. Lots of SHW though , which is good but perhaps a lesser good. I think I’ll check out becoming a hot water installer.
Cheers, Mark
Solar hot water: My assumption was that the choice figures were total cost, not subsidized costs. The 0.25 kW figure was average power draw, not installed capcity.
Elise @ 26: your figures look interesting but it is not clear whether the $3000 is just for extra panels. What is the average kWh/day and what was the total cost excluding gas. The $3000 for 6 to 9 kWh/day works out at a capital cost of about $8 to 12 billion/gW which I think is very expensive green energy. (Has anyone got some reliable capital costs for large windfarms or other green alternatives?)
The algae proposals are interesting but it is important to keep in mind that it is the sun that provides the energy for the photosysnthesis that converts CO2 to oil etc. For this reason I suspect that the algae ponds (not vats) would have to cover similar areas to that required for solar thermal. Also keep in mind that all the carbon recovered by the algae ends up being burnt. We have gained more effective use of energy per tonne coal but the gains are still less than what would be acheived by switching to gas. (But gas plus algae would give an even better result.)
Actually the algae proposal is a good one John D. At worst, when the energy content of the algae is consumed the CO2 is recycled, which is obviously better than tapping new sources of hitherto sequestered carbon.
Of course, it need not be consumed but simply dried, placed in some stable inert material — salt? — and dropped into the deep ocean, to be sequestered permanently.
Other options would be to use the glycerine left over post transesterification for polymers or pharmaceutical bases, the starch for alcohol-based fuels, the lipids for diesel the protein for animal feed and even the catalyst for fertiliser.
More on solar hot water. There may be a number of reasons why Aussie solar hot water costs so much:
1. The water is heated and stored at mains pressure. For this reason the water is stored in a pressure vessel which requires thicker walls and comes with a host of regs and safety requirements. In addition, the panels have to be made in a way that contains this pressure which probsbly rules out floppy plastic like the solar shower heater we use on camping trips. We could get around this running the system at atmospheric pressure to allow us to use much cheaper tanks and panels. With this approach you could either have a pump to boost hot water pressure before it is used OR use the hot water in the tank to heat mains pressure water flowing through a coil that sits in the tank. Might also make it economic to have larger system that will need less back up heating.
2. The storage tank is usually on the roof to avoid the need for pumping. However, you can convert to solar by using the exisiting tank with a small pump to circulate to the panels.
3. The panels are on the roof. Good for efficiency but it may actually be cheaper to put larger panels on, or leaning on walls or other structures. May be particularly cheap if the water is at atmospheric pressure.
Any other ideas?
Why have hot water in solar water heaters,when there is methylated spirits,kerosene, turpentine,oxygenated forms of those,gases, even carbon dioxide!?Want to see the world start hopping then use alternatives to produce alternatives!I haven’t gotten over my mother’s whistling kettle for a further re-engineering,so the whistle enters back into the hot water and air stream,and cannot escape.Dorrigo Steam Train Museum has an endless number of steam trains,I am sure that with the right experiment in mind Mr.Jones would lend one of them.And yet the tardy still survive.This site with its endless reruns of alternatives is like sitting on a styro foam Poof for the first time.And seemingly having to go back to sit on the Poof over and over again to recognise one is indeed sitting on a poof!I am a little bit disappointed that,the idea of bacteria research didn’t spread into peoples’ backyards into their compost bins etc.Thus the heat exchange may have become another worthy energy production to even add to synthetic and bio fuels!? I have some writings on stinging nettles as therapeutics,compost tea research is well advanced as fertiliser enhancer etc.,but not fuel booster in same realm or added to ethanol.Ethanol can be found in compost.
What Mark said at 37.
Including Solar Hot Water (SHW) in the eRET would only make sense if you could demonstrate economic barriers to their uptake. But the dreaded principal/agent (landlord/tenant) and planning law problems are often more important. Pumping the industry with RECs does nothing there.
Many councils have planning permission barriers for SHW that is visible from the street. Planning permission takes weeks. This means that SHW will rarely be substituted for old electric HW systems that reach the ends of their lives.
dk – definitely agree that the planning obstacles to SHW uptake are a bigger issue than cost. A regulatory approach like banning electric storage systems would proably be a more efficient way of improving the uptake of low-emissions water heating methods than subsidies, which do seem to play a role in the expense of SHW.
dk and Tim, remember SHW is a mature industry. It has been around for 30 years and all these issues have been discussed to death. I can give you a stack of earnest reports. SHW continues to suffer from several barriers to change – simple inertia on the part of householders and installers is the biggie, not planning restrictions.
Remember that an SHW installation replacing electric is often a serious multi-day job so the installer can sell and fit several little instant gas heaters for the same effort. To do SHW he must charge a lot more to cover the time taken and the inevitable problems encountered. Similarly SHW is a pain in the a..e for new home builders because it involves additional tasks and tradies – roof work, tank and pump work, and more complex electrics as well as plumbing.
Consequently all the subsidies in place have grown up to overcome the transactional barriers to installing SHW in recognition of the multiple good things about a properly engineered SHW system. And for heavens sake don’t waste time dreaming about plastic boxes and other nonsense. The major credible technical innovation in SHW since the 1980s has been the evacuated tube collector.
Yes, Australian SHW systems are over-engineered as are all our HW systems. They also perform superbly and last for 20+ years. Accept that SHW is a Good Thing and move on to consider other issues with the MRET and the hoops the REC system is being made to jump through.
Cheers, Mark
Tim @ 43,
Be careful what you ask for. The unintended consequences of banning things in the name of some purported good is probably not a great idea. Less than 10 years ago we were encouraged to put in off peak electric, now you want to ban it?
Banning most incandescent bulbs will now lead to mercury filled cfl bulbs everywhere and we’ll probably end up regarding them as hazardous waste and expensive to dispose of with special disposal points and all sorts of unintended costs.
Same thing will happen with SWH, roof top solar PV, individual water tanks and the like. Peoples lives are complicated enough without having to fuss with these sorts of things. Inevitably there will be hundreds of thousands of badly maintained installations leaking all sorts of nasties, with leaking batteries and being a haven for mosquitos etc. Not to mention the lifespan of most of these items are maybe 20 years so you are going to have a huge increase in the amount of waste.
I know we all like to think that we’ll all be responsible and maintain stuff. I know I would. But I’m also not so naive to believe that the majority will. Much better to keep it simple and leave the power generation and supply to the experts.
Anawhata @44: “Accept that SHW is a Good Thing and move on to consider other issues with the MRET and the hoops the REC system is being made to jump through.”
You wouldn’t be working in that industry by any chance? Your list of reasons why it is expensive sound like excuses. And demanding that people drop the subject? If it is a Good Thing, but has poor takeup rates, then it should be discussed to the point of resolution, not to the point where you tell people to drop the subject.
Actually, this household will NOT be accepting that SHW is a Good Thing at its current prices. We will most probably be buying an instantaneous gas HW system. Have a look at these graphs, for CO2 produced, environmental impact and economic sense:
http://www.goingsolar.com.au/php/cat_shw.php
The difference between instantaneous gas and solar, is about 0.6 tonnes CO2/year and around $100/year Opex (running costs), but at least $3000 Capex (purchase price) differential. The 0.6 tonnes/year of CO2 could be alternatively achieved by reducing coal-fired power usage by about 600 kWh/year, or about 1.6 kWh/day average. In other words, a couple of solar PV panels would achieve at least as much reduction in CO2 footprint.
John D @38, that cost was just for extra panels, as we already have a solar PV system installed, and planned ahead with an over-capacity inverter and electrical system to allow for future expansion. Thus the only cost is for the extra panels, and an electrician to wire them in. The hard work has already been done.
Our decision to go for the over-capacity inverter could be termed a “call option” (in financial jargon), where we spent a little extra to secure the opportunity to buy more panels at a future date (like call options for shares).
In engineering terms it was just good old-fashioned design – building-in the capacity for future expansion. Not done so often by companies these days, perhaps thanks to short-sighted business school training with an overweighted focus on short-term profits?
Anawhata @44: You say
. You could have said the same thing about coal washeries 25 years ago. However, if you look at modern coal washeries they are radically different and cost a lot less to build (after adjusting for inflation) than the ones built in the mid eighties. The change has occurred because irritating bastards like me have trouble accepting the “mature technology” argument. Go back to your comment and ask what you could do to solve the problem. Keep in mind that the country might be better off with a much cheaper installed cost even if the cheaper version only acheives 80% of what the rolls royce version does. (I would be curious to know what you think about what I suggested @40 – no claims of expertize.)
Thanks for the information Elise. The link has some good data.
Elise @ 46 you and I have made the same decision – go for instant gas. My decision was expedient – my electric HW rusted out (12 months before the replacement rebates started!) and solar HW was too complex to install because we are planning future renovations so instant gas it had to be, and it works fine. Installation complexity or shading tends to knock out solar quite often. And no, I do not work in the industry – I just took a good look at HW a couple of years ago. Note my comment @ 37 above about how well the manufacturers have organised the industry model for themselves.
Elise if I were you I would check the capital cost and rebates for different HW systems. With the combination of RECs, rebates and subsidies the capex penalty for going solar can be quite small if you live in the right state and are replacing an electric unit. My instant gas unit cost about $1,000 and I could have had solar for far far less than $4,000 after all rebates etc.
Also be aware that the charts reproduced on the Rinnai website regarding emissions from different HW systems are based on some generally accepted but quite debatable assumptions by government bodies and industry analysts on “typical” hot water usage patterns. I could do some analysis showing quite different emissions outcomes depending on solar exposure and local factors like whether the family tends to shower in the morning or the evening and how the gas or electric boost settings are configured on the solar unit. My two brothers have both installed evac tube solar HW systems recently in a lowish solar zone (Auckland NZ). Both are delighted with the performance and both have simply turned off their electric boost for most of the year and run 100% solar, zero emissions.
Cheers, Mark
Anawhata @48, yes we have looked at the rebates for solar HW, and regrettably we have an old gas storage system so are not eligible for the Federal rebate.
The REC’s system had a nasty crisis with all the argy bargy recently, and the credits almost halved in value, compared with last year. Hopefully they are recovering now.
We ran into a similar problem of ineligibility for rebates some years ago in another house, where the 25 year old LPG gas storage HW system unexpectedly caught fire one day. I suspect the piping (or one of the fittings) might have developed a leak. We were keen on getting a solar HW system, on green principles, and an attraction to the concept of the newer evacuated tube technology – actually better justified for less sunny parts of Australia, but never-mind-about-that…
Without the rebates, the most cost-effective, low carbon alternative was instantaneous gas. We installed a Bosch system and there was no detectable difference in its delivery of hot water, aside from the fact that the hot water doesn’t run out when the rels come to visit!
Certainly agree about not taking the numbers in various reports as gospel truth, and John D’s comment “much cheaper installed cost even if the cheaper version only acheives 80% of what the rolls royce version does”. There are often easier ways of achieving objectives than striving for a 100% solution.
Looking at actual numbers, in our case we use 4.5 – 5.5 kWh/day of gas for HW and cooking, as I said previously, which translates as 1,600 – 2,000 kWh/year.
According to the WA govt site: Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• Consuming 1kWh of electricity from Western Power’s south west electricity grid emits approximately 0.99 kg of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.
• Consuming 1kWh of natural gas emits approximately 0.21 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent.
• Consuming 1kWh of LPG emits approximately 0.22 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent.
• Consuming 1kWh of kerosene emits 0.24 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent.
• Consuming 1kWh of wood emits 0.34 kg of carbon dioxide. If the wood is sustainably regrown the new tree absorbs this carbon dioxide making the fuel greenhouse neutral (ignoring transport emissions).
In short, roughly speaking 1000 kWh of coal-fired power is about 1 tonne of CO2, and gas-fired power is about ONE-FIFTH of that. Gas is obviously superior to coal-fired power, and would give Australia the Kyoto/Copenhagen reductions it needs in very short order. Really, I don’t know why we are faffing around with more complicated ideas like geosequestration when we have a cheaper alternative.
Anyway, returning to the problem of the old gas storage HW system, we consume 1,600 – 2,000 kWh/year on both HW and cooking. Let’s say it is about 1,800 kWh on hot water, for the sake of an estimate. If natural gas produces 0.21 kg/kWh, then we are producing 378 kg of CO2, i.e. 0.4 tonnes CO2/year.
Rinnai say that their solar HW with gas booster will produce 0.3 tonnes CO2/year under normal usage. That would be a benefit of an enormous 0.1 tonnes/year less than what we are doing now with gas storage.
On actual data, the decision between solar HW and instantaneous gas is a laydown mazaire for the latter. Even IF we were eligible for rebates. The extra money would be better spent on more solar PV panels.
John D @38: “We have gained more effective use of energy per tonne coal but the gains are still less than what would be acheived by switching to gas.”
Exactly so!!! As per the government data above, gas produces ONE-FIFTH the emissions of CO2 per kWh of energy.
“But gas plus algae would give an even better result.”
Exactly so again!!!
Elise, if you’re going for instantaneous gas, I believe there is a new product which uses condensation from the gas flame to preheat incoming water, significantly improving the effiency compared to conventional instantaneous gas heaters. I won’t mention the brand name as I prefer not to promote a particular brand (and in any case there may be more than one version of the product), but it shouldn’t be too hard to find info on it (if you haven’t already).
Tim @51, Yep! Definately!
That would be the “Eco+”, I guess you mean, which apparently gives you the most energy efficient gas hot water system on the market “with a 6.9 star energy efficiency rating”.
We were looking at it, at the recent Perth Home Show. When our old gas storage system finally falls off its perch, then we will most probably buy one of those cute little numbers.
Incidentally, never seen an energy rating better than 5 star before. How did they arrive at 6.9?
Whatever the marketing hype, extracting the maximum thermal efficiency with a secondary heat exchanger is clearly a more elegant solution.
More power to them, for being innovative in a “mature industry”! As John D said, “mature” doesn’t have to mean that innovation should completely stop.
Elise: Keep in mind that some heat is lost in gas heaters while all the heat from a heating element actually goes to heating the water. Electricty used to drive heat pumps is even more efficent than elements. Having said this, direct heating with natural gas is still.
You might be interested in the following article on new battery for household use. On the information supplied it would actually make sense to buy one of these to take advantage of the difference between off peak and instantaneous power. Benefits for someone using PV would be a bonus.
John D: “Electricty used to drive heat pumps is even more efficent than elements. Having said this, direct heating with natural gas is still.”
Looks like something got lost here. Although heat pumps and electric elements may be more efficient, they would give a worse carbon footprint than double-exchanger gas, owing to 5 times as much CO2 from coal-fired power. As such, the natural gas HW is still a winner.
Of course, if you had enough solar PV, then probably the optimum configuration is a heat pump HW which makes use of the solar power and minimises total carbon emissions.
Speaking of new batteries, have you seen how the Chinese have almost cornered the global market in the “rare earth metals” that are needed to make them? Clever and long-sighted at times, those oriental businessmen!
The latest attempted aquisition is an Aussie company, and it is with the FIRB for review at this minute. What say we sell the rights for the assets to these guys for a song today, and worry about being held to ransom tomorrow?
As Peter said about nukes on another thread, this must be a good idea because lots of people are doing it.
Sigh,
For people claiming to want everyone to consume *less* you sure are keen on every household buying *lots* of stuff in the interests of the environment!
Lets see:
quite a few square meters of PV panels, inverters etc. to generate a dollar or two of electricity per day
Whopping big solar hot water heater
Huge water tanks to hold a buck or two of water
Now a refrigerator sized battery to store our dollar of power!
I reckon everyone is going to need a McMansion just to store this stuff.
The alternative of course is a nuke where you’ll consume *in your entire life* barely a handful of material and the waste will be even less. And it will be reliable, and cheap.
Elise yep, that’s the one I was thinking of.
Peter, I don’t think anyone has mentioned water tanks on this thread or the other one apart from you. I’m sorry the water restrictions wrecked your garden. I really am. Losing a good garden is a damn shame.
Like a great many people who visit this site, I’m interested in the related issues of climate change, renewables, and environmental and social policy more generally. I think it only fair to avow that on the question of renewables, I’ve long been on the enthusiastic-at-the risk-of being-too-credulous side of the argument.
For a very long time, I’d been reluctant to acknowledge this predisposition. Like many on the left, I’ve always set great store in arriving at inferences through resort to pertinent evidence, sound modelling and a rubric within which the wellbeing of humanity, and most especially those parts that can be described as working or disadvantaged humanity has been key. In an ideal world, as I see it, every human gets to be the best that they can be, and the social context in which they pursue this, facilitates this effort.
Unsurprisingly, often, as I read back over the things I’ve
written and reflect on the way that I’ve gone about deciding what is worthy and what is not, I’ve found myself deploying the language of general utility as one might find it in Mill or Bentham. I often describe myself as a humanistic left-wing utilitarian and draw comfort from that. And yet, on reflection I think it would be inadequate to describe myself or left-of-centre politics in these terms. We are, as far as I can tell, no mere humanistic bean-counters or actuaries. We lefties (no less than our right of centre counterparts) are to a greater or lesser extent, the result of a whole range of cultural and aesthetic mores. I’m a late baby boomer, coming of pubescence on the cusp of the 60s and 70s. This was a time when a gee-whiz fascination with what can be broadly called scientific progress jostled with counter-cultural angst over authority, elites, notions of the natural and a a more fluid notion of what it was to be truly human. The world of moon landings and the bomb ran up against Woodstock, Timothy Leary and the notion that contemporary life was analogous to the narrative in The Sorcerers Apprentice. Slogans such as Stop the World, I want to get off and The Kinks track “Ape Man” were prpfoundly resonant. While not all that was countercultural was left, and not all that was left was countercultural, the overlap was large and we were all forced to respond to it, one way or another.
With this in mind, it is perhaps not surprising that much of the left, in its vision of what would be a better world, opposed the widespread rollout of nuclear energy, sometimes with a fervour that was borderline religious, and truth be told, I was amongst the offenders here. At the time, it seemed so obvious, and though I looked hard for Bentham-style rationalisations for my positions, some of which were plausible, I do rather suspect that if nuclear energy could have been seen as ‘natural’ and not possessed by large corporations that I, along with much of the left, would have found ways of shrugging my shoulders. There is something very culturally and aesthetically pleasing to us leftists in the notion of community owned wind-turbines or wave machines or in everyone pitching in to recycle waste into biofuel. There’s a huge warm inner glow factor. It conforms marvellously well to that simplest of leftwing secular humanist notions of a better world — one in which everyone should ‘play nicely with others’.
I’m not sure who it was who first uttered the maxim that to will the end is to will the means but he or she was certainly onto something substantial. While means and ends need to be reconciled to create solutions that are maintainable, you do need viable means to get to worthwhile ends. Just saying that some end would be worthy is pointless unless one can show means that would get us there and for which one takes political responsibility. While we leftists are not mere prisoners of cost-benefit feasibility we are surely not entitled to parry its insistent demand with a perfunctory nod at our ideals or a wave of the hand at what would be nice. From such gestures do misery and failure fall.
In my opinion, it is time for us to re-examine our fascination with renewables, because at least as I write these lines, it does seem that renewables, perversely, are not sustainable, if by sustainable one means meeting human need indefinitely into the future.
I’d encourage people here to look at David Mackay’s excellent e-book Without Hot Air. Here, an eminent physicist goes beyond the generalities with which we are mostly familiar to drill down into what is possible, in terms of reconciling use of renewables with life lived in the way most people regard as dignified. What he finds is that while some countries may well find living on renewables viable without substantial cuts in the standards of living, this is not close to being true of most countries. In the UK, for example, on average, each citizen gets by on about 125KwH per day of energy (not including the energy embedded in imports from outside the UK, which might add a further 40KwH per day, and the figures for the US are much worse still — double the European average and triple that of Hong Kong). Depending on which figures one accepts or how one does the calculations, somewhere between 10-60% of the UK demand might be recoverable by resort to renewables, in theory but much of it only at what would be an unacceptably high price and over the trenchant opposition of the NIMBY elements in the UK.
Nor are people, by and large willing to accept significant cuts in the standard of living of each person, and IMO, this is broadly reasonable. While some usages of contemporary society are wasteful and perhaps even noxious, nowhere near enough are so readily discarded to make this strategy viable for bridging the gap between what renewables can deliver and what we westerners demand. Nor is importing renewables (eg solar thermal from North Africa to the UK) really an equitable strategy anyway for it simply shifts the burden someplace else — in that case onto people a lot less well off than in the UK. If the Golden Rule applies then Africans and others in the LDCs are entitled to aspire at least to what we are minimally ready to live with. We have to allow them enough energy to live as we do, AND reconcile that with protecting the biosphere and its services, on which all human possibility rests.
Plainly, we cannot go on as we are — that much is self-evident. So what to do?
Frankly, I believe we do have to factor in very substantial amounts of nuclear energy if we are to have any realistic hope of avoiding a human catastrophe. This course is not without its risks, but then, this is true of any system configuration we can adopt. What seems inevitbale though is that if we become stuck in old arguments about what is natural and what is not, about big centralised technological fixes and small local ones, we may authort a future in which no substantial part of our vision is capable of realisation, and that, I take it, would be self-evidently paradoxical. If we leftists continue to block with the enemies of nuclear power, then the big winners will not be wind and solar thermal, but dirty coal and dirty liquid fuels and the losers will be all of working humanity.
We ought, I believe to propose an immediate plan of replacing the 1000 worst coal fired power stations with the best equivalent nuclear replacements. This one line item could cut the output of CO2 from coal fired electricity by about 72% and likewise cut emission of toxic particulate by whatever the antecedents were producing in the fuel cycle. A whole brace of coal miners would lose their jobs, but their lives and health and those even of their children would be extended. That latter is surely something over which every leftist could feel a warm inner glow, particularly since the bulk of these deaths would be avoided in places where the said miners are poorest.
Fran – yes, I’ve read David Mackay’s e-book. I found him quite convincing. While IMHO the potential for renewables is greater in Australia than in the UK, due to our smaller population and larger endowment of renewable energy resources, I strongly suspect that we will have to revisit nuclear energy if we want a reliable baseload power system that provides the sort of energy services we are accustomed to in modern society. The likelihood that we are going to need to move to a more electrified transport system will only increase this need.
That said, owing to the timelines involved in setting up a nuclear industry, reducing emissions in the short to medium term will require a combination of energy efficiency, an increase in renewable energy and a cap on the expansion of fossil fuel power. It’s clear to me that Nuclear cannot be part of the immediate policy mix for reducing emissions, even though it’s highly likely to be a part of the energy mix in the longer term.
Fran – yes, I’ve read David Mackay’s e-book. I found him quite convincing. While IMHO the potential for renewables is greater in Australia than in the UK, due to our smaller population and larger endowment of renewable energy resources, I strongly suspect that we will have to revisit nuclear energy if we want a reliable baseload power system that provides the sort of energy services we are accustomed to in modern society. The likelihood that we are going to need to move to a more electrified transport system will only increase this need.
That said, owing to the timelines involved in setting up a nuclear industry, reducing emissions in the short to medium term will require a combination of energy efficiency, an increase in renewable energy and a cap on the expansion of fossil fuel power. It’s clear to me that Nuclear cannot be part of the immediate policy mix for reducing emissions, even though it’s highly likely to be a part of the energy mix in the longer term.
Bugger – double posted. Sorry.
Elise: Sorry about the missing bit. It should read “Electricity used to drive heat pumps is even more efficent than elements. Having said this, direct heating with natural gas is still going to produce less emissions.” Keep in mind that many of us do not have access to natural gas and, for us, heat pumps may be the best way to go.
Interesting post Fran. I agree with the proposition that, for most of the world, nuclear is the only real option. However, this is not true for Australia.
I have an open mind re Australia and gen4 nuclear but can see no point in rushing to install gen3 or being a technology leader with gen4. However, we need to start doing the homework for gen4 now. It will take yonks to to do this so we shouldn’t wait to see how gen4 goes.
My current view is that:
1. The amount of CO2 we produce in the next 40 years could be crucial.
3. For this reason we should be looking low cost ways to fast track emission reductions now, even if it means using technologies that will have to be replaced by 2050. With this in mind I am suggesting:
a. Converting all coal fired power to gas where this makes sense. (Should cover most of our coal fired capacity.)
b. Continue installing wind etc. so we don’t lose skills and are starting progress towards very clean electricity. (Say increase of one gW average output each year?)
c. Use regulations to drive the average fuel consumption of new cars down to at least 5.5 litres/100km by 2015. (Half the current level of 11/litres/100km)
d. Use other regulations, subsidies etc. to drive down emissions for cases where the total cost/tonne CO2 reduced is less than the cost of this reduction by cleaning up electricity.
e. Review what we are doing by 2020. My reading says there are a whole range of options that will be much cheaper and/or for which we have much better data by 2010. My guess at the moment is that rooftop solar PV will be the cheapest form of household power before 2020.
I agree about the need to minimize the effect of climate action on people’s quality of life. It is the reason I am so strongly opposed to CPRS, carbon taxes and other strategies that are dependant on putting a price on carbon.
this seems awfully pertinent to those still thinking nuclear might be good for Australia, the hottest and driest inhabited continent.
myriad @ 62
Virtually all OZ nukes would be built on the coast where you can use sea water. Talk about misinformation. Par for the course, of course.
Peter you’re going to have to do better than the pro-nuke WNA as a reference. The industry telling us everything is ok is hardly peer review.
I’d also point out I linked to a discussion, because the issue is very pertinent given how water is needed for most kinds of energy generation, and is essential to nuclear as a base load power source. So perhaps you’d like to show some courtesy and withdraw your allegation of misinformation.
Your dismissive and not particularly well thought out ‘solution’ about ‘just locate them by the sea’ ignores a) siting difficulties given Australia’s strong population concentration along the coast [the NIMBY politics alone will be extremely challenging], b) major future issues with sea level rise impacts including storm surges and c) the impacts to the coastal environment of releasing either the waste heat into delicate and highly productive near-coastal environments or hyper-saline water if they are combined with desal as some like to suggest.
when IFRs or Thorium nuclear plants exist there will be real reason to look hard and carefully at nuclear power, but at this stage it simply doesn’t stack up for Australia on economic grounds without even getting into the nuclear power – nuclear weapons cycle, waste hazard (although part of the economic cost certainly), pubic health hazard assessment etc. If it did stack up I rather suspect I’d be for it.
Liz Jackson is doing a piece tonight on the ‘clean coal’ scam. on Four Corners. As PR, CCS is understandable, but really, given that it can’t work this side of a CO2 price of $100 per tonne, a price nobody making policy is toying with …
The other bizarre thing is that when people object to nuclear power they often say the “waste” has to be managed for 50,000 years. That’s of course an order of magniture and then some too large, even for the small volume of most hazardous material — about 1000 years is closer to the mark. But how long do they think CO2 buried in acquifers @ 650 + bar pressure has to be stored securely?
Effectively, forever, and unlike with radioactive hazmat, which will simply sit wherever we put it, any flaw in the containment could trigger sudden release. Anyone who wants to see what would happen in such a circumstance should google Lake Nyos.
People often express fear of living near a nuclear plant, but I wonder how keen people would be to live near a carbon dioxide sequestration point containing massively compressed CO2 in volumes that make Lake Nyos, Cameroon or Lake Monoun appear trivial?
I agree Fran. Really the ‘choice’ between nuclear and CCS/coal is a completely false one – it’s a neat tool for lobbyists of both industries but when there’s an ever-growing smorgasboard of renewable energy sources, not to mention serious energy efficiency gains to be made, it’s ultimately a red herring IMO.
With regard to nuclear waste, I actually tend to agree based on just the science that storing nuclear waste isn’t quite the hazard that some people make it out to be. Where my largest objections around nuclear waste come into play is around the politics of it; this has driven by obfuscation leaving many doubting the safety claims; obvious signs of cost-cutting and/or protection of vested interests leaving the public liable; and most critically, there’s the issue of ‘where’.
If anyone in the world was showing an interest in storing nuclear waste on land other than that belonging to indigenous people (eg yucca mtn, indigenous lands in northern australia), I’d have more serious inclination to pay attention. But the nuclear industry has a long and sordid – indeed shameful – history of serious violations of the human and land rights of indigenous peoples (enabled by govts of course) and I see no signs of that diminishing.
I entirely agree about the dangers of CO2 sequestration – it simply doesn’t add up to believe that we can shove millions of cubic metres of gas underground and not have it leak. Mind you the same geniuses are still suggesting storing under sea beds too – because the ocean floor is so stable, and having massive amounts of CO2 leak into and acidfy huge areas of ocean is a completely acceptable risk – not.
Myriad@66
We’re clearly on the same page on CCS … so moving on …
Can I suggest on the question of the nuclear hazmat people take a look here at pp169-170
While I’m very keen on renewables, I’d be cautious about claiming they can do the job we expect of coal everywhere in the world at acceptable cost. The challenges of rolling out at speed a geographically dispersed but connected to the grid by 500Kv HVDC copper cable set of intermittent energy sources with sufficient storage at a price competitive with the all-in cost of nuclear (which can be placed close to the grid or to major industrial energy usages) should not be underestimated. Even if this can be done in Australia — and I’m certainly not saying it can’t, and even if the steps we’d have to take would be politically acceptable — and that’s not clearly the case, we still have the real question of what to do with the other 98.6% of emissions plus the new emissions certain to arise as a resuilt of the parallel processes of economic development in the LDCs, the accretion by 2050 of world population to about 9-10 billion people, and in tandem with those things, the adoption of the CO2-intensive changes in diet to those based on harvest of ruminants.
Keep in mind also that we have no real say in what energy sources the rest of the world chooses, and unless (improbably) places like Russia, China, India etc find ways to cheaply generate renewables, they are going to be choosing between coal and nuclear. I know which I’d prefer they chose. To put this into some perspective, a part of China’s renewable capacity is the Three Gorges Dam but the environmental footprint of this project is hardly benign. Sure it forecloses emissions but see here and and here.
One of the hard realities is that in most of Europe is that of the average 125kwh per person per day (not including embodied energy in imports) that is consumed only about 25-40% could be raised by genuine renewables, and that at very great expense. And as Mackay points out, the NIMBY factor in the UK is a significant obstacle. There’s also significant resistance to the idea of using less energy in housing and making other adjustments that might help bridge the gap between renewables and consumption. The position in the US, where they consume twice as much as the Europeans each day may be even worse.
It would be a horrible thing if those of us who favour the environment and remnewables ended up supporting measures which, because they failed to meet the need to generate the enormous quantities of power needed gave indirect support to coal. It is apparently ther case that if the 1000 highest emitting coal plants were switched to equivalent nuclear then electricity-related emissions of CO2 would fall by 72%. To me, that sounds very appealing, especially when you throw in the absence of the other pollutants (including radioactive ones) from the atmosphere and the waters.
John D @61, agree wholeheartedly with your suggestions 1. and 3. parts a) to e), and the comments on a watching brief with nuclear.
What happened to suggestion 2?
Elise@68: Thanks Elise. There was no number 2 – just an old engineer who has forgotten how to count.
Fran @67: “1000 highest emitting coal plants were switched to equivalent nuclear then electricity-related emissions of CO2 would fall by 72%”
Do you have the numbers for the equivalent gas generation?
Since gas turbines have a carbon footprint about 20% of coal, you might get a similarly impressive improvement with a much easier technology? Certainly in Australia, we could replace ALL coal-fired power with gas, since we have the “Saudi Arabia of gas” (as one journalist called it).
I suspect that gas would be our 80/20 solution, without major NIMBY dramas or long lead times. Instead of the unproductive “Julia Gillard memorial school halls”, we could have had an impressive actual commitment for Rudd/Wong’s political fascinators to wear in Copenhagen
I think it is worth pointing out to those who think increasing energy efficiency will help – historically increased energy efficiency has *increased* the amount of energy used. This is unlikely to change.
Elise
IIRC the CO2 footprint of gas is about 70% of coal combustion (near neutral if you use biogas obviously but that’s not germane here) unless of course you use the stuff that is fugitive from coal mining (and which thus depends on it).
Nuclear power is much lower than 20% — near zero, especially if you use an IFR.
Peter @71: “increased energy efficiency has *increased* the amount of energy used”
Could you walk us through, please, the reason why e.g. a 4 star refrigerator uses more energy than a 2 star one?
Don’t tell us that making a better refrigeration unit accounts for more manufacturing emissions than the total lifetime emissions of the less efficient unit?
Fran @72: “CO2 footprint of gas is about 70% of coal combustion”
The WA govt website has a MUCH different figure to what you are saying. Where did you get your statistic?
Incidentally, I have trouble with the idea that we concentrate on one form of long-term pollutant at a time. Both coal and nuclear power produce long-term environmental pollutants – aren’t you just substituting one form for another? How are we making progress here?
Elise @ 73
I meant more energy overall, not per appliance (obviously). For one example, the increased efficiency of a Boeing 747 over the previous 707 led to a huge increase in air travel and fuel consumption. There is even a name for it. Jevons Paradox.
Jevon’s paradox is one reason no-one here is suggesting that energy efficiency is a solution on its own.
Of course, the introduction of the 747 isn’t really an example of Jevon’s paradox, since it wasn’t the fuel efficiency of the 747 that increased the demand for air travel (it was, at best, one of a number of factors that reduced the cost of flying, coupled with increased affluence). In fact, the first oil crisis just a few years after the 747 entered services caused a significant downturn in global passenger numbers, causing some airlines to phase out their 747s as they were too big.