Larvatus Prodeo

If you judged by press releases, you’d reckon this was the greenest budget ever. And it is indeed good in parts, though not nearly as good as you might think. The first thing to note is that the CPRS targets and the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target haven’t changed, so emissions won’t change at all (though it may mean we buy fewer permits overseas), nor will the fraction of our electricity generated from renewable sources. What the funding in this budget might do is change the technology mix available to us to achieve those targets.

In the energy space, the big deal is a bunch of new funding for large-scale demonstration projects for both solar and geosequestration in comparable amounts – 1.5 billion over six years to the solar industry, 2 billion over nine years to geosequestration. John Hepburn at Rooted argues the value-for-money case for the solar investment, on the basis that the solar demonstration projects will deliver “…1GW of real, emissions free power within the next 6 years. Wheras the larger investment in CCS will support the development of demonstration projects over 9 years.” CCS research does indeed need to start poohing or be pushed off the government funding pot, but Hepburn is overselling the current state of the renewable energy sector. That 1GW of capacity might be “real” (if only delivered a few hours a day), but it will be very expensive, unreliable, and – until energy storage technology improves – only available when the sun shines, not when the power is wanted. Until these issues are sorted, the contribution of solar energy to Australia’s power grid will remain limited to little more than demonstration levels anyway. Incidentally, solar thermal is highly unlikely to ever be cheaper than Australian coal-fired power (ignoring externalities), because if the fuel is free and at the power plant, most of the rest of the cost is the steam turbine and generator. Guess what – a solar thermal plant needs the exact same steam turbine and generator.

In any case, for what it’s worth I strongly question the policy (as distinct from political) merits of singling out the solar industry for help. While my little investment, Geodynamics, has managed to bugger things up again, it’s just one of a number of alternative sources of renewable energy that can be turned on and off when required, not when the wind deigns to blow or the sun deigns to shine. Why not throw the money for demonstration projects open to the entire renewables sector and see what ideas turn up?

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