A 210 kW photovoltaic system in Sacramento, California
Credit: SMUD
CANBERRA: As we head into another drier, hotter summer, we can expect that every scorching day, every drought-beaten farmer, every dust storm, and every bushfire will be cited as more evidence that we should abandon our reliance on fossil-fueled energy and turn to renewable sources to beat global warming.
Let's do that. Let's assume that the government flicks the switch to renewables. Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, has a penchant for changing policy to match public opinion and snatch political initiative. He is also known for starting election years with announcements of new funding for science.
Let us assume that in January he announces that his Liberal-National coalition government will invest an extra A$1 billion in wind farms and solar power generators over two years, with the first installations happening within six months, so that they kick in before the election is due in 2007 - as the next drier, hotter summer begins.
Let us assume that successor governments increase that commitment so that A$10 billion is spent on renewable energy infrastructure in the next decade. By January 2017 our hills and sea cliffs would be bristling with windmills, our housetops and car parks would glisten with photovoltaic panels, and solar-thermal mirror farms would sparkle alongside old coal-fired power stations.
Now lets swoop ahead to eastern Australia on a hot Friday evening in late January 2017, when most of us are back at work after the summer break. The climate has been warming steadily since 2007 and will continue to do so. Global greenhouse emissions have continued to rise despite efforts by Australia and some other countries to install renewable and nuclear power generation.
It is one of those stifling, humid nights when the air seems like a hot towel and a bed sheet feels like an electric blanket. The weather forecast offers no hope of relief. The Sun is now an obdurate red ball on the western horizon, too far from the huge arrays of solar generators in eastern Australia to tickle any more juice out of them. They have closed down for the night, ready to restart 12 hours later when the morning Sun rises high enough to stir their molecules into motion.
A few wind generators are lazily turning in response to sea breezes and local storms, but most are idle in the sultry air. Those that are turning are producing too little power, too intermittently, to be useful. The eastern grid managers have switched them to bypass mode, so they too have stopped contributing to the electricity supply.
Australia is playing England in a cricket final at the Sydney Olympic Stadium. It is a night match, beginning at 6 pm and finishing around 2 am, a timing shift from earlier years in response to high daytime temperatures that have become commonplace since 2013, the hottest year on record. With players struggling in 40°C-plus afternoons and spectators opting to watch from their air-conditioned homes, the shift to night matches has revived the annual tournament.
But as the solar generators sleep and the wind farms lie fallow, where will the power come from to flood the arena with light? What will power the trains to take spectators to and from the ground?
What will power the trains in all our eastern cities, the trams in Melbourne and the trolley-buses in Brisbane, to take our workers home through the sweltering dusk? What will power the system of lights and switches that keep those public transport systems functioning? What will power all the traffic lights and street lights that make our roads safe? Where will the energy come from to keep essential data systems alive - like the databases of banks and financial institutions, welfare agencies like Centrelink, and our defence and police systems? Where will the power come from to keep our airports functioning, to pump our water and sewage around, to sustain our hospitals and power our mobile phone networks? What will drive the lifts that so many people need to get to their high-rise apartments?
So many essential things rely on electricity. So do many other things we take for granted. Keeping food and drink cold in refrigerators in our homes and shops. Air-conditioning our homes and offices. Running the television studios and their broadcasting networks to transmit their signals across the continent. Running the printing presses that hum through the night to produce our newspapers, the aluminium smelters that require huge power inputs to keep their processes running non-stop, and the dairy processing factories and bakeries that work through the night to provide fresh food for the morning.
The list goes on. What is clear is that we need electricity at night. Solar generators cannot provide that while wind farms may run overnight and during the day but cannot be relied upon. And there is no technology in sight that would enable power from these renewable sources to be stored during the day and efficiently transmitted overnight to meet baseload demand.
The mundane reality is that the power required to run eastern Australia on a hot night in 2017 will come from fossil-fuelled power stations. That will still be the case even if we spend A$10 billion on renewable generation - or even A$20 billion - over the next decade.
And even though we could get some reliable power levels from renewable sources during the day, we will have to build new fossil-fuelled power stations at the same time to keep up with Australia's growing demand for electricity. Those power stations will need to keep their fires burning 24/7 because they cannot be turned on and off quickly. So our fossil-fuel emissions will actually increase, despite the massive investment in renewable energy that the prime minister could initiate in 2007.
Which is why he won't do that. He may announce a few hundred million dollars towards renewable energy research - perhaps skewed to assist potentially reliable sources such as geothermal energy and thermal towers - and for research into storage technologies.
But he knows that if there is A$10 billion to be spent on new greenhouse-neutral power sources in Australia over the next decade, the best bet is nuclear power.
Simon Grose is the science editor of The Canberra Times, in which this article first appeared.
NOT TRUE
you could be right... BUT
in the future, if we keep burning fossil fuels the temperature is going to rise faster than ever before. The world will suffer a lot more!
solar power can be stored in batteries!!
If placed in the correct areas wind energy can be used 24/7 (like out west of Australia, wind can run for hours after dark)
solar and wind aren't the only answers!!
there are other solutions... tidal, biomass, geothermal, and fuel cell
so don't give up, and keep burning fossil fuels. Because that will cause more harm in the future than you might know!!
cool fact!!
the sun produces enough energy in one minute, that normal fossil fuel make in a year!!
the government just needs to help muster that energy...
Taxpayers = Losers in the Energy Market
What? Wait a second, so your saying a private company wouldn't be able to change the face of renewable energy on its own. That without government funds (tax payers money), we wouldn't have renewable energy?
Don't you think that Mr. Grose has a point.
That's why Andrew C. Revkin and Matthew L. Wald of the New York Times wrote"But for all the enthusiasm about harvesting sunlight, some of the most ardent experts and investors say that moving this energy source from niche to mainstream — last year it provided less than 0.01 percent of the country’s electricity supply — is unlikely without significant technological breakthroughs. And given the current scale of research in private and government laboratories, that is not expected to happen anytime soon.
Even a quarter century from now, says the Energy Department official in charge of renewable energy, solar power might account for, at best, 2 or 3 percent of the grid electricity in the United States.
read the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/business/16solar.html
The way I see it, the government should give grants for research. I'm all for some small grants. Grants might give us something more than solar power, which was invented in 1941 by the American Russell Ohl, and is only useful for its original use by AT&T.
Nuclear energy currently holds the biggest promise. Private companies are pumping money into research. The ideas are flowing. But still, renewable energy is a huge gamble for investors. Someone could lose it all on the wrong companies ideas. Just like the government could do if they invested with the tax payers money. The best way for the government to help is to loosen regulatory restrictions and allow the market to flow more smoothly. Private research will find the next renewable energy source that will cure the energy crisis. This is when the government hops on. THE END.
Solar power
The article "False dawn of solar power", where are you getting you facts? Firstly, the aim is to reduce the need of coal power, not get rid of it all together. Why I say this? We have to balance any change that will put an industry of workers out of a job carefully. I believe that 75% of our power can come from renewable and even more in the long term. Not only is there sloar, wind, hydro, there are others that escape me at the moment. We can also get power from less polluting products such as gas. Another question is why can't we store power from renewable power but we can from coal?
I believe the biggest reason why the change (or movement) hasn't happened yet, is that too many stand to lose too much. They are big business, the government and also the econimical cost of an industry.
The most important thing is that Australia needs to stand up and lead by example that we can all easily reduce the about of green house gases. The rest of the world will follow. Why? 90% of the world are many up of sheep and 10% are leaders.
False dawn of Solar Power
How much money is coming from the fossil fuel industry to dumb down this "scientists" arguements. If I get rid of 3/4 of my Coal fired stations and only keep 1/4 for that 1 night when Simon wants to watch the cricket we have just saved the planet an enormous ammount of emmissions, managed to keep our reserve power on the ready and extended the life of our coal fields 4 fold. Yet the do nothing approach is somehow acceptable? Why do people not want to accept renewable energy? Why is the negative arguement always it can't replace what we have now? It can if you stop fighting it and start supporting it. I hope to see Simon in the next Ice Age where other scientists will digging up his prehistoric fossils!!
Clean power generation.
Simon,
You seem to be saying that by 2017 there has been no new technology developed to generate power.
Already there is hotrock on the cusp of development, there is solar pond technology, which is capable of running 24/7.
There is also the solar tower project, although I don't know if it's a goer yet.
The wind is always blowing somewhere, even if not in the suburbs where the poor rsident wants to turn on the cricket and switch on his/her aircon.
There just doesn't seem to be a serious effort by the govt to see funds allocated to development of alternatives, but there's plenty of money available to prop up current dirty generation.
OK, let's throw the switch
OK, let's throw the switch to that balmy summer's evening in 2017. We know that since 2010 and the production of next generation solar thin film that solar power is cheaper than coal (even without subsidies and not counting the cost of emissions) and therefore has been contributing most of the power to Australia during the day. It is evening and the power is coming from some wind farms, some biomass generators (geothermal is still in development). Some of it is coming from the energy storage being tested by the CSIRO some ten years earlier, but somehow missed (or ignored) by Simon Grose. Some of it is coming from the increasingly uneconomical coal fired power stations.
Many houses have power generating roofs and windows and their own energy storage systems such as ultra capacitors or next generations batteries.
In total renewables are contributing to about 90% of domestic power supply and about 30% of industrial/commercial supply - about 50% of Australia's total power needs, providing emissions reductions in excess of Kyoto targets.
The Australian nuclear power industry is still trying to convince investors that their expensive, water-hungry product which results in an almost indefinite waste storage cost is a really, really good idea. Having ex-Prime Minister Howard on their PR team is not helping.
Robin
I must counter the comment:
I must counter the comment: "there is no technology in sight that would enable power from these renewable sources to be stored during the day and efficiently transmitted overnight to meet baseload demand."
The Snowy Hydro system has recently been using cheaper electricty to pump water back up into their dams and releasing the water to generate power when the price is higher. How about using Solar and Wind to pump water uphill into Hydro power reservoirs? This would mean the hydro power stations can act as batteries and store the energy, and they're already connected to the national grid. Excess energy generated during the sunny days and windy periods could be stored and released as needed. It's then just a matter of investing enough to generate enough power, it's not a problem when it's generated.
So as far as no technology in sight, perhaps going to the Snowy hydro or Tassie hydro stations and opening your eyes would help the matter. They've been around for decades.
Shady deal
It's true! Check the price of solar panels, and the return on investment is just wayyy too long (as in, decades, if ever) to justify it for everyday consumers. Even a moderate grid-conected solar unit costs tens of thousands, at best a few hundred $ in savings p.a. Check all the websites selling these units for their pricing if you don't believe me (just google solar power in Australia). So, how is it a good alternative? I really wish it was, but honestly, the numbers don't add up right now!!!
back in the day
when i was young we lived in the bush with no electricity we had 3 solar panels on our roof this covered about 5% of our roof these panels were by todays standards less efficent. we stored the power they generated in a battery bay and from this we had lights, tv, power points and all the usual stuff. of course if it was overcast for 5 days we lost all the power but just think, if every home in australia had a roof full of solar panals which are now more efficent, a large battery storage area. every home in australia would return power to the grid instead of taking it.