On March 3, the New South Wales government approved a new 2000 megawatt (MW) "baseload" power station, Bayswater B, to be built adjacent to the existing Bayswater power station in the Hunter Valley.
The power station will be built by the private sector and, according to the government, may be fuelled by either natural gas or coal. In reality, it is most likely to burn coal, as the Hunter Valley is home to massive deposits of this cheap, nasty fossil fuel.
In an opinion piece published in the Newcastle Herald on March 5, Hunter Business Chamber CEO Peter Shinnick argued: "3-5 [gigawatts of baseload electricity] cannot be provided from renewable sources by 2015 when less than 10 per cent of that is being provided in 2010."
The following article by Socialist Alliance member Zane Alcorn is a response to Shinnick. An abridged version of it appeared in the March 13 Herald.
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Peter Shinnick argued that, since Australia has a low base of renewable energy, a target of between three and five gigawatts (GW) of renewables by 2015 is unrealistic. This argument is illogical and defeatist.
We might as well say that if NSW only had a fleet of 100 buses, it would be impossible to expand that fleet to 1000 by 2015, or that if Newcastle were only shipping 30 million tonnes of coal each year, then it could hardly expand to 150 million tonnes within five years.
Buying buses or building coal loaders and associated train lines is absolutely no different to building 24-hour "baseload" concentrating solar thermal plants, wind farms and new transmission infrastructure.
Solar thermal and wind generators need mirror systems, towers, gearboxes, nacelles, blades. This manufacturing could be based in the Hunter Valley, using local industrial expertise and creating local jobs.
State and federal governments roll out the red carpet for coal companies, providing free rail infrastructure, subsidised fuel and a friendly regulatory framework for mining. The NSW government has not once knocked back an application for a coal mine once a company has been given an exploration licence.
Imagine if investors in clean energy technology were similarly treated.
All that is required to get renewable energy plants built is the political will. A solid regulatory framework with subsidies such as a feed-in tariff has been proven to stimulate solid private sector investment.
Perhaps the more certain way to guarantee a rapid and major roll-out of renewables is for the roll-out to occur as part of a public works project; this way the public also reaps the benefits of the project.
This is actually how Australia's entire energy generation network was funded — before neoliberal capitalist economics decided governments were no longer "allowed" to carry out big public works projects.
In Spain, the government provides a generous feed-in tariff for utility-scale wind and concentrating solar thermal with storage (CST) plants. As a result, Spain is home to 600MW of 24-hour CST plants and 19,000MW of wind turbines.
By 2015, this will have grown to 5000MW of CST and 25,000MW of wind. Modern solar thermal plants in Spain use large vats of inexpensive, non-toxic salts in their molten form to store energy collected in the day. This technology is not new and has been used for decades to transfer large amounts of heat in industrial applications.
Stored solar energy can be drawn off the salt to satisfy electricity demand peaks, which also means that this power can be sold at premium rates. Because they store energy as heat, CST plants are also an excellent source of "peaking" power (currently in Australia, gas-fired plants provide this extremely expensive extra power).
Using this technology, some plants can already run at full capacity for 7.5 hours after the sun goes down — or can run all night at reduced output, as demand drops. Newer plants in Spain and the US can produce power for 16 hours with no sun. Because of large, inflexible boiler systems, coal plants can't shed capacity (i.e. "slow down") in the evening. As a result, they produce vast amounts of wasted energy (and unnecessary carbon emissions).
The NSW state electricity company lacks a planning body of its own since it was trimmed and split up for privatisation. So, in 2009, AECOM consultants were hired to explore options for new baseload generation in the state.
The AECOM Preliminary Environmental Assessment report into the Bayswater complex, released in July 2009, dismissed solar power as a potential source of baseload energy.
By AECOM's reckoning, sunlight does not have a high enough energy density per kilogram to be competitive with coal, gas or nuclear.
This statement defies logic.
The fact that light is able to carry energy despite its lack of mass is well known. Just a few hours of research into how solar technology works should have identified this flaw in the report.
Of course, the energy density per dollar of fuel leads to a different outcome: while the cost of coal, gas or nuclear can only ever increase, the ongoing fuel costs for solar and wind are zero. They cost nothing, forever.
The AECOM report was similarly ignorant of the ability of distributed linked wind farms to provide baseload power capacity if they are located at suitably windy sites and far enough apart. And almost nowhere has more geographic diversity than Australia's eastern seaboard grid.
The people of NSW deserve better than 19th century coal-fired power stations with their cancer-causing soot and climate-changing carbon dioxide.
By 2015, NSW could build 6GW of linked wind farms for around $13 billion. Another $7 billion would get us 1GW of baseload solar. This is currently more expensive than coal, but costs would drop quickly.
With just another four Bayswater-equivalents worth of solar thermal plants installed globally, the price of concentrating solar thermal will be on par with new coal-fired plants. And far more than this quota is planned or under construction.
While CST is currently more expensive upfront than coal or gas, its advantages are huge. There are no fuel costs or greenhouse emissions (the carbon footprint of the plants themselves is paid off in up to six months). Solar thermal uses a tiny amount of water, so there is no need for new dams.
Zero-emissions power generation will not be exposed to carbon permits or taxes in years to come. With components for wind and solar thermal plants manufactured locally, the Hunter Valley could remain the power hub of Australia, while contributing to solutions to climate change — rather than contributing more coal.