Archive for March, 2009

The irony is clear — a tiny island nation under threat from rising sea levels has announced it plans to have 100 per cent renewable energy within 10 years.

Whilst the larger industrialised nations debate emissions trading schemes and who should be the first to lead the battle against climate change, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives is planning to turn his nation into the world’s first carbon-neutral country.

Reportedly costing $US 110 million, the project will include “more than 150 wind turbines, hundreds of thousands of square metres of rooftop solar panels and a power plant burning coconut husks,” according to the New York Times. Existing fossil-fuel-powered cars and boats will be replaced with electric-powered versions.

For a nation, that until the 70s had a bad reputation for destroying its coral reefs by using coral from outlying atolls to help build the nation’s famous island resorts, it’s a brave, inspiring goal.

Located in the Indian Ocean, the chain of coral atolls and its 400,000 residents had previously considered using tourist dollars to help its citizens relocate, effectively becoming a nation of climate refugees.

Reports state that the government believes the renewable energy conversion should pay for itself within 10 or 20 years, depending on the price of oil.

Whilst the biggest polluting nations squabble over the details of greenhouse-gas mitigation, it will be interesting to see whether the Maldives will become an inspiration to other island nations in our region.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has signalled a national gross feed-in tariff will be high on the agenda at the next Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting. Speaking to reporters whilst on the campaign trail in Toowoomba on Monday she indicated that Queensland would only move away from its current net feed-in tariff if a national approach was taken.

Currently only the ACT has a gross feed-in tariff, whilst other states still pay households only for the excess electricity generated from their grid-connect photovoltaic systems.

Net feed-in tariffs pay consumers for the excess electricity they have generated, or to put it in another way, the electricity they have fed back into the grid, minus the electricity they have used from the grid. (note: an important point on this is made below)

Gross feed-in tariffs pay consumers for all the electricity they generate from their grid-connect photovoltaic or wind, or hyrdo-powered systems regardless of what they have consumed from the electricity grid.

What do you mean by excess?

Well that’s a good question as most people believe a calculation is done at some time (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) whereby energy fed back into the grid is compared against energy used from the grid. This would be the case if two separate meters were used to display kilowatt-hours produced and kilowatt-hours used (as is done with a gross feed-in tariff).

If this was the arrangement with net feed-in tariffs, on the average grid-connect system, you would never be directly paid for the electricity your solar panels have generated. A 1kW system in southeast Queensland may, in the peak of summer, produce 5 kilowatt-hours per day. And that will only occur if the panels are installed correctly and not shaded at any time of the day.

However, in Queensland and most other states, it is standard national practice to use a single electronic meter in place of the principle tariff meter. Therefore, when the sun is shining, during each electricity cycle (AC electricity cycles at 50 times per second), the meter compares energy generated from the solar panels to energy used from the electricity grid. That means, comparisons are occurring in real time, and not over a standard billing period.  If at any one moment you are generating more than what you are using, you will get paid at the higher feed-in tariff rate.

How do I get the greatest benefit?

The greatest financial benefit for the consumer is achieved when you have all appliances switched off whilst the solar panels are generating electricity. You got to work, no one is home, and all appliances are switched off at the wall. But wait, what about the fridge?

In reality most energy efficient people can ‘net export’ about half the power they generate from their solar panels (remember you are never using the power from the solar panels directly – it is always being fed back into the grid).  Appliances such a fridges, cycle on and off during the day, and most families are not always away from the house during the sunlight hours.

Energy efficiency is therefore the most important factor for anyone considering installing grid-connect solar power.

If you currently have a large air-conditioner but want to go solar, then consider this: the air conditioner will consume about four times as much power as what you can produce from the sun over the same period.

Benefits of the gross feed-in tariff

So what of Bligh’s push for a gross feed-in tariff? Firstly it will require changing the existing metering. However, no matter what your power consumption, with a gross feed-in tariff you are being paid for every kilowatt-hour generated by the sun. Some have said this discourages energy efficiency.

However as the Garnaut report states “incentives to consume should come through the retail tariff paid for electricity, not through the feed-in tariff system”.

After all, households who have made the financial commitment and are producing electricity from a renewable resource, should be rewarded for every kilowatt-hour they generate. And financial incentives in the form of rebates should therefore increase so that renewable energy it is not beyond the reach of any household. On a world scale we can do little to deter coal-power electricity generation, but at the domestic level we should be able to make renewable energy a cheaper option for all Australians.

I’d be very interested to read your thoughts on this.

CSIRO research into community attitudes towards climate change and energy recently took to the world stage at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen.

The research has shown that people:

• are willing to make changes in their homes, such as installing solar hot water and solar power, to combat climate change.
• have a strong desire for government and industry to take the lead so that all our efforts are not nullified by big polluters.

The social research program is an initiative of the CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship. It began with three citizens’ panels and other small group workshops and is now reaching out across the kitchen tables of Australian homes.

The program now includes a number of large scale projects that examine the opinions and behaviours of community members in relation to climate change, energy technologies and the challenges people face when trying to reduce their carbon footprint and energy consumption.

CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship social researcher, Peta Ashworth, will join delegates from China, Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States to present her findings at the congress.

“Our social research team has spent countless hours with community groups over the past four years and found that people at a grass-roots level are very interested in climate change and understand the urgency needed to address the issue,” Ms Ashworth said.

“Participants show a willingness to make changes in their own homes and workplaces to combat climate change and they express a strong desire for government and industry to take the lead and tackle this serious challenge.”

And it appears education and good information is critical.

“People want to be properly informed and be able to make the connection between what they’re doing and the positive impact it’s having when it comes to climate change. The more people know, the more willing they are to accept new technologies and make positive changes,” she said.

“For example, it’s evident from our research that people have a strong preference towards solar energy and emerging technologies like geothermal and many people expressed a willingness to pay more for power to support the continued development and implementation of these technologies.”

The research forms part of CSIRO’s broader work into low emission energy technologies.

“Much of the effort to address climate change will be led by industry and government but energy users at the community level will also play a critical role so it is important that we educate and empower them to engage with this issue and work towards environmental sustainability,” Ms Ashworth said.

“We need to research and develop new energy technologies but if they’re not going to be accepted by people then we’ve missed the mark.

“Being able to present this research in an international forum that will feed into the United Nations Climate Change Conference later this year is a wonderful opportunity.

“CSIRO’s energy and climate change social research program has grown significantly and delivered plenty of positive outcomes so I hope to see a similar impact world wide.”

Whilst the homeowners of Australia continue to take steps to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and reduce their energy costs, the most important factor is going to be how well heavy-polluting industries and the government, understands the community’s concerns. Industry, in particular, needs to show that they are looking towards the future, and not trapped within a heavily polluted past.

If cutting global emissions is a marathon, then it looks like we need to start training and get ready for the long run ahead.

Many householders who have already installed solar hot water and grid-connect photovoltaic systems are already fit for the race ahead, but are our politicians seriously lacking form from spending too much time trying to score political points and catering for big polluters?

Cutting global greenhouse emissions is an international marathon that will only be achieved if developed economies like Australia are fit enough to finish the race on time. Australia’s priority should therefore be to immediately commit to an aggressive training regime of energy efficiency and deploying and developing clean energy technologies to speed up the transition to a carbon costed economy.

This is what the Clean Energy Council believes is necessary if we are to get serious about reducing our collective damage to the world’s climate.

Clean Energy Council chief executive Matthew Warren said the release of the federal government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) draft legislation on March 10, highlights the importance of getting on with effective renewable energy targets and other complementary measures.

“This is a marathon, not a sprint. Developing a national trading scheme ahead of a global framework is clearly challenging and may have significant consequences for emissions and the economy.

“It’s important to make a start but it’s more important to finish the race well and deliver the emissions reduction at the lowest possible cost.

Our first priority should be to get the economy fit enough to do this. Setting challenging targets might sound impressive but it doesn’t mean much if we can’t deliver them.”

The clean energy industry is working with government to resolve a number of specific design features in both the CPRS and the government’s draft Renewable Energy Target (RET) legislation.

“We should be realistic about the scale and complexity of the challenge at hand and stop pretending that there is a simple and perfect scheme that is easily deployed and ready to go,” Mr Warren said.

“We expect to be debating the details of domestic and global emissions trading scheme design for at least the next decade. But we can and should start saving energy and increase the take-up of clean technologies today.”

Like any good marathoner would know, the race is long and really only starts in the last six kilometres. Let’s just hope we have the courage to keep pushing on, even as the doubters and sceptics gain in strength. And as with any long-distance race, as they say, our only real competition is ourselves.

But the real test for any carbon reduction plan will be — will it actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions in time to make significant changes. The politicians have to remember — most marathons, while long, still do have a cut-off time. And concentrating on anything but the race ahead, such as making deals with big polluters, will be detrimental to us all.

Although fossil-fuel based electricity generation creates Australia’s largest greenhouse-gas emissions, fuel used for transport has the dubious honour of being placed second.

With so much talk of the impacts of bio-fuels displacing food crops around the world it has appeared good, ethical alternatives to fossil fuel are rare.

Solar power, solar hot water and other renewable energy sources are growing in popularity, and as a result they have showed how viable they are for alternative electricity sources to satisfy our energy needs.

But now it appears algae is set to provide a similar antidote for fossil fuel. Although not a new technology, Australian scientists have found the economic benefits of using algae to produce diesel, in place of its commonly used fossil-based cousin.

CSIRO Energy Transformed researcher Dr Tom Beer and his team discovered the humble organisms’ green credentials during a detailed life-cycle analysis of the benefits of algal biodiesel.

“Our research has shown that under ideal conditions it is possible to produce algal biodiesel at a lower cost and with less greenhouse gas emissions than fossil diesel,” Dr Beer said.

“The greenhouse gas reductions are the result of avoiding the use of a fossil resource for fuel production, capturing methane produced by the processed algae to generate energy and taking into account the potential greenhouse gas offsets from industry.”

Algae thrive on carbon dioxide (CO2), which means that environmentally damaging carbon dioxide emissions from industry could also become a useful resource.

Algal biodiesel could also offer a number of other benefits.

“Making biodiesel from algae removes the issue of competing land use because the facilities would not be established on land that might otherwise be used to grow food and the algal farm has a very low environmental impact in comparison to crops that are grown for biodiesel,” Dr Beer said.

“The Flagship’s research has made significant progress in a short time and our extensive biofuels program will continue to develop solutions that result in a secure fuel future for Australia,” he said.

“Our study also found that the establishment of a 500 hectare algal biodiesel plant in a rural area might create up to 45 jobs and provide opportunities to diversify in the agricultural sector.”

The CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship is working with a number of partners, both national and international, to develop a strong algal biofuel research program.

“The Flagship’s research has made significant progress in a short time and our extensive biofuels program will continue to develop solutions that result in a secure fuel future for Australia,” Dr Beer said.

Despite the global interest in the production of biodiesel from algae, further research is required to create a viable industry with widespread uptake and impact.

“Although the findings of our study are very promising, challenges still exist in relation to cost, infrastructure needs and the scale of production required to make algal plants feasible,” Dr Beer said.

“We see biodiesel from algae as one potential option for sustainable fuel production amongst a range of other technologies.”

The paper, Greenhouse gas sequestration by algae – energy and greenhouse gas life cycle studies, is authored by CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric researchers Peter K. Campbell, Tom Beer and David Batten.

On a related topic a new film has launched in the US. Fuel looks at America’s obsession with oil and the many alternatives on the rise.