Solar is good for humanity
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott declared while in office that coal was “good for humanity” and current Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg recently echoed the sentiment. Petra Liverani explains why renewable energy makes much more economic, environmental and democratic sense.
There is no denying that coal has been good to us over the last century in providing us with energy. However, it has been at a cost of great harm to health and the environment. Moreover, it will become unaffordable for a variety of reasons before it runs out.
The statement “Solar is good for humanity” needs much less qualification. No doubt there are impacts in producing solar infrastructure but there is not the massive continuing impact of fuel supply. It is also destined to be the major energy fuel source of the future so it’s time to really get on board and start shedding fossil fuels as an energy source and – in Australia –as a source of export revenue as quickly as possible. Those who aren’t proactive about the shedding will have it done for them as the global force of renewables starts to take over, creating a much more difficult situation than active transition.
Solar, like wind, is much better distributed across the globe and within nations than mineral fuels. It is an especially good resource across many poorer nations, making it more democratic. It is also getting cheaper and cheaper: from US$76.67/watt in 1977 to US$0.47/watt in 2014 and projected to drop to just US$0.36/watt by end of 2017.
The statement from the Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg that the Adani mine “will help hundreds of millions of people out of energy poverty not just in India but across the world,” only indicates how scarily out of touch with reality he is. Solar distributed through micro-grids in India makes economic and environmental sense while a new large coal-fired grid (India has very little grid in place) makes none at all. What the fossil fuel lobby does not understand is that the times they are a-changin’ and doing so much faster than even the forward-thinking among us can comprehend.
It is not just the rapid advancement of solar technology making it cheaper than fossil fuels; the way the grid selects supply is also contributing to their demise. In the US, although renewables currently only make up a fraction of supply, whenever renewables are available, being the cheapest, they are chosen above coal and gas. This means that coal and gas plants operate at a lower capacity than normal making their supply more expensive which in turn initiates greater build of wind and solar. Hence the “virtuous cycle”.
“The economic advantages of wind and solar over fossil fuels go beyond price. Still, it’s remarkable that in every major region of the world, the lifetime cost of new coal and gas projects are rising considerably in the second half of 2015, according to BNEF [Bloomberg New Energy Finance]. And in every major region the cost of renewables continues to fall.” (‘Solar and Wind just passed another big turning point’, Tom Randall in Bloomberg Business, 6 October 2015)
The fossil fuel industry’s last bastion is continuity of supply but even that is starting to crumble. Batteries are being developed at car, house and community-scale much more quickly than was anticipated even only five years ago. And an old technology, pumped-hydro storage, is being expanded and built anew to complement both solar and wind installations. In La Muela, Spain a pumped-hydro plant underwent an expansion to 2GW in 2013 to support a nearby wind farm. A 400MW pumped hydro project is planned in windy Montana, USA, 10GW is under construction in China and a similar amount in Europe. Australia already has 1.5GW pumped hydro within its hydroelectric schemes in NSW and Queensland; however, pumped hydro needs only an upper and lower reservoir of relatively small size at sufficient height and incline to be viable, so seacliff locations in South Australia for example could be exploited to maximise its generous wind resource. Genex Power have just announced plans to build a 150MW combined solar PV/pumped-hydro plant at an old gold mine in Kidston, Queensland.
There are so many types and sizes of batteries zooming at us, it’s hard to keep up. There’s the sexy lithium cobalt phosphate Powerwall from Tesla; the Canadian Aquion, based on 200-year old saltwater battery technology; from Australia the Redflow zinc bromide battery and the Zen Energy lithium ferrous phosphate battery, also the format for the battery from SimpliPhi. Then there’s the intriguing 3D copper foam battery from Amy Prieto, not to mention the massive battery production from China, Korea and Japan and developments in other countries.
As well as storage there is also continuous supply potential from biofuels derived from waste and crops. There are many interesting developments in energy from microbes including carbon-sequestering algae.
It will not be all that long before the exciting, clean renewables plus storage package is viable. Let’s bring it on.
Petra Liverani was captivated by a presentation of the straightforward and feasible 100% Renewable Stationary Energy plan given by Beyond Zero Emissions at the Climate Summit in Canberra in 2009 and soon joined the organisation. Since then, she has promoted the feasibility of zero emissions in the near rather than distant future.
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October 30, 2015 at 6:33 pm
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Gregorysl
October 31, 2015 at 4:10 am
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Gregorysl
November 1, 2015 at 11:10 pm
Informative forum topic
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frank6th
December 7, 2015 at 5:06 am
We can do it now
I have been in the energy sector for over forty years and the promise of a better battery has been on the horizon most of that time….it has also been an argument that we need to wait for a better battery and then we can go renewable….which is rubbish! We know how to go renewable now but the lack the will power and vision has us stalling for time. It is hardly rocket science to know if you need electricity at ten o'clock at night, all you have to do is install solar panels at a location where the sun is shining at that moment! Yes I'm talking a global power grid, DC naturally. If allowed to be priced according to demand we would see solar installations going in everywhere and a new golden age of cheap plentiful electricity would begin. Yes it would be expensive to start with, yes it would be big, but so is the problem of burning fossil fuels that we are trying to solve.