I think renewable energy is a case of build it while you can. The hydro schemes of the 60s would not get off the ground today due to constant bickering. Since the article acknowledges problems with energy storage and geothermal it is should offer a solution to low carbon baseload. Could be why there is no sign of any coal fired power stations being closed. The figure of 25% gas fired backup for wind and solar seems optimistic. I predict that Australia will build a series of new gas fired power stations. At the same time gas will be in heavy demand as a transport fuel and for LNG export.

The path on which Australia seams headed is no reduction in coal use, slow growth in renewables and high growth in gas fired electricity. The CPRS and RET programs will be repeatedly compromised. Emissions won't decrease until there is an unrecoverable energy and climate crisis some years down the track.

“Technology improvement to renewable energy continues, so the longer the transition takes, the better the outcome for electricity generation if not the environment.”

Mark, this to me is woolly thinking. If we do this, we will effectively be maintaining the business-as-usual model of economic management as the size of our whole society and rate of consumption of non-renewable energy sources just continue to increase rapidly. This will ultimately make it that much harder to effect the transition.

We are also likely to run into the situation where a very urgent transition becomes necessary, especially with oil.

So I would suggest that a maximised effort into weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels is needed now, especially for oil. As part of this urgent effort, technological advances would presumably be made at a faster rate than if we took the whole kaboodle more slowly.

We particularly MUST address the peak oil situation, which will probably mean very high fuel prices in the near future rather than shortages of supply. When the price of oil really starts to increase, it will impact very strongly on the price of just about all food and commodities and will affect the viability of businesses, employment and social coherence in a major way. And it is likely to happen very quickly.

So in the interests of holding our society in Australia together (and the same applies around the developed world) it is with the utmost urgency that we particularly need to address the transition off of oil.

Aaaargh. Sorry Martin. What a silly mistake - getting the author's name wrong.

Ooooow (:>(

Surely a couple of the latest generation of nuclear power plants would solve the problem very quickly. They could replace the coal fired stations and give us more time to get renewable sources on line with the necessary intelligent control system. The radioactive material comes out of the ground in the first place and only needs to returned.

its sad/funny to read about the hydro scemes=[centralised power],why couldnt we build smaller..[decentralised power generations..[because they are harder to monopolise..and thats the game play huge scemes [monopolies]

see how alternate decentralised power creation is a better way[instead of daming a river line it with small mill type power gathering plants..[recall getting power in the past was as simple as running a water wheel into a stream]

[why cant the river have hundreds of water wheels in the rivers]..or millions of windpower generators on peoples roofs..because the game is..to limit and control..who can generate/sell power..[control the power you control the people

the scam is build govt subsidised.monopoly big/few..not many smaller units spaced out,..many that make power locally and sustainably...we need to practice decentralisation of power generation

[thousands of small solutions not huge overseas monopoly positions..that began with enron..[with huge debt and huge income..allowing the take over of the small fish

we learned the lessons of too big to fail..[its tinme we decentralised power generation..[went big on solar heating and small energy distribution systems..interlinked for security..

[but decentralised power generation..as a matter of govt policy...no more big scemes..but thousands of small scemes..[no more big fish..but many smaller fish..easilly controled and regulated

Unfortunately for those pushing renewable energy in all its forms, Martin is right but does not go far enough. As matters stand renewable projects cannot be used to replace electricity generation in any significant proportion. The target of replacing 20 per cent of energy by renewables remains a fantasy. At present - and all the overseas reports are unanimous - the people who have to run power networks regard wind energy as an expensive nuisance. It is so variable that even when the wind towers are working at full capacity they have to run a significant portion of the conventional power it might otherwise save because the wind may die at any moment. It hopeless. Now this may be partially offset, as Martin suggests, by a geographical diverse network with different types of rewewables backed by a pumped hydro facility. But, tellingly, there is no indication that this is going to happen in Australia. What may very well happen, should the 20 per cent legislation get through, is that the power generators will buy electricity from renewable generators - along with the necessary emission abatement certificates - but still keep their own generators going. Electricity consumers will end up paying for renewable energy projects that are merely symbolic as they will little actual effect. As it stands, and with current technology, the scheme is madness.

An interesting article by a clearly well informed author!

I wonder if Martin has an opinion on the potential of algae in
the whole energy equation.

Some time ago I read various research reports on the potential of
algae as energy harvesters, done in the US in the late 90s. The
figures were pretty impressive, but with oil at 10$ a barrel at the
time, the economics did not stack up.

Algae are such simple life forms and can multiply amazingly quickly,
given enough sunlight and enough CO2. Using CO2 from coal fired
power stations to feed algae farms, rather then sequester the stuff,
makes lots of sense to me

Maybe Howard wasn't that silly when, with his last gasps, he started to push for Nuclear Reactors. Easily adjusted to load variations they no doubt would make ideal base-load Electricity Sources.
Building Nuclear Power Stations is a long-time project and starting them now would be a good investment in peace of mind, even if they will no longer be needed by the time they are ready to come on line.

So why does the author continue to look backwards instead of forward. The latest generation of nuclear power electrical generators are fission powered which have no control rods to jam (the leading cause of "meltdowns), use non-weapons grade enriched fuels (eliminating the weapons proliferation argument and minimizing waste) and are very safe and tiny, a unit that could sit on a kitchen table would power a residential neighborhood.

This addresses many of the problems that the renewables still can not address such as who wants huge windmills whirring in their back yard and destroying the pastoral views (anybody seen the former East German landscape or the southern Norwegian coast line lately?). Who wants thousands of hectares of mirrors and solar panels built so far outback that the cost of connecting them to the "grid" is prohibitive. We are probably not going to build any more water fall powered generators since the government has decreed we are going to be perpetually in drought and is busy building desalinization plants.

I guess we could hang out for the oxymoronic "Clean Coal" but I wouldn't hold my breath as this is just pandering to the miners union.

And for those among us who want to always be concerned about terror cells knocking out power stations and the "grid" which would blacken the major cities this would present a panacea. The power generation would be so highly distributed that a complete blackout would be impossible. Not renewables, nor huge existing coal generators, can ever address this potential disaster because they must all be attached to the grid.

The single biggest problem getting these little beauties to market is a significant road block enacted by the anti-nuclear crowd that requires that all nuclear technologies be approved by the US Nuclear regulatory commission AND the full cost of approval must be borne by the applicant. Since the cost of gaining approval would be upwards of US$80 million it is a quite effective roadblock to future development.

For more information on this latest technology please read this article from the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124580572129645069.HTML

Business as usual can't help us, Nuclear plants take 15-20 years to approve, build and horrifically expensive. Sequestration is a dream, as are other supposed ways to mitigate our reliance on non-renewable polluting energy.

The elite demand we continue with wasteful unreliable and heavily polluting single point generation and distribution. The only sensible economic option is to establish local generation using a variety of alternative and bio/gas backups.

The population are programmed to believe what politicians and corporate fools say, rather than common sense and the facts of alternatives. Local generation would lowers costs, as there's no need to produce huge amounts of power to compensate for transmission loses, constant base loads required to cover the entire country and would provide employment and rural small business growth.

The technology is being used by smart people, solar collectors are far more advanced than people are led to believe.

<“The average family with two cars recharged at home will increase their electricity use by 50 per cent.”>

This is false propaganda, people were creating their own energy at home, would cost nothing. It's single point control which raises costs, not diversified and local energy production.

I've been on alternatives energies for more than 20 years and make my own fuel. Saving thousands a year and never suffer blackouts, bills, shortages or price rises. Electric cars are the next step, already they are capable of outperforming fossil fuel cars and have similar ranges. The Tesla vehicle currently is expensive, within the next couple of years, the new lithium ion batteries which charge in minutes, have longer lives, smaller and lighter, will bring the price down rapidly, as will competition and need. If solar energies so poor, how come it powers the space station and every probe or satellite launched. The voyager vehicles launched 30+ years ago, have passed out of the solar system, still running on solar power with nuclear batteries designed and built in the early 70's. The deniers are trying to tell us solar isn't good enough, sounds like a psychological fault in some.

http://www.teslamotors.com/

Nuclear power plants have been built elsewhere in 3 years. http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/WebHomeCostOfNuclearPower
As stated elsewhere in this forum, solar and other renewable sources are incapable, at this stage, of providing base load.

The cost of nuclear power is more expensive than coal but at around $1400 per kw it is way cheaper than solar.

Renewable Energy, cringeworthy Australia-Inc ads, the Kurnell desal-plant, denial of free-to-air sports & bloody immigration ... its all about business corrupting elected governments, usurping parliamentary accountability in the name of economic-growth.

Its about same-old infinite-economic-growth on a finite-planet by deferring RISKS using hedge funds. NOW, having suffered major losses, big business plots with our governments to GET TOUGH on citizens, force them to make room for new immigrants/tourists, who by all accounts only benefit Government(GST&votes) and Business(marketplace consumers). All Aussies(of all races) get is beaten up on friday-night or knee-deep-waits in emergency wards.

Its about deferring business RISKS, to poor nations, to future generations and to the weaker individuals in our society. For example people in the Blue Mntns have their land routinely zoned 7E conservation (where 7E owners still pay rates & are hit with weed control orders over lands that they no longer have any rights to) This defers RISK of a public-backlash. Big Labor-developers build mega-condos on precious habitat at Huskisson. The politicians speak: "Look what wer'e conserving in the Blue Mnts so don't complain about Huskisson where we a making a world class accessory to Australia-Inc". No land owner in the blue Mnts can afford JUSTICE. That's the LEVERAGE. That's deferral of RISK. It's getting worse NOW& the rights of Blue-Mntns-citizens are essentially being DEFERRED to immigrants who buy new condos.

ITM Nathan-the-PyramidScheme-builder mounts a lying PROPAGANDA campaign saying that water is scarce not because his immigrant fodder is using it but because WE are hosing our cars and must pay double. Adolf Hitler couldn't get away with that propaganda! With the scare of higher water,energy& entertainment prices plus Carrot-On-A-STICK renewable energy promises, NSW citizens have been FOOLED.

Renewable energy schemes? I mean isn't that what farmers tell slowit donkeys when they dangle the carrot above their nostrils: "the longer the transition takes, the better the outcome."

The only serious energy alternatives, renewable or not, are Geothermal and Nuclear, both of which Federal polititians & businesses are NOT BRAVE enough to RISK

.... until they find a nice hedge that is.

Why Australians will NEVER see true Renewable energy:

Australia is about to change its brand name to PONZILAND INC

Here is the prospectus for new investors or immigrant citizens(Immisits).

http://www.dfat.gov.au/facts/global_economy.html\

All ponzi schemes have key lies in their prospectus. Here are ours:

*sophisticated financial, legal and management support services (that no-one can afford)

*cost-competitive location high-quality information and communications technology (not if telstra can help it)

*strategic location in the fast-growing Asia–Pacific region (the antipodes?)

*affinity with Asia, coupled with an American–European business environment(real Aussies believe Pauline Hanson)

*favourable time zone (if you own a private jet)

*economic and political stability (until Ponziland crashes)

*attractive, safe and friendly environment (like passersby being shot in the head from a Muslim-KFC Milperra gunfight)

*an Asian-oriented, culturally diverse and multilingual society. (only in ethnic enclaves mate!)

People at the top echelon have already booked flight future-option QF-666 to Iran as a hedge for when the PONZILAND scheme collapse.

Iran is the only country on the planet that is not part of the great 'Warl Street' ponzi scheme.

Iran's just a plain old dictatorship.

its worth reading page 11 and twelve of this expose of goldman/sssax..on the global carbon tax scam..the rest is describing how they exploited previous bubbles...

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/06/goldman-sachs-engineering-every-major.html

Sorry, this is just one more voice calling for delay on the transition to a low GHG economy. R&D for large scale energy storage has been badly neglected - not needed in the past or present, only in the future, therefore low priority. Compressed Air shows great potential, and the use of stored heat for Concentrating Solar does look capable of giving 24hr a day output (though not multi-day at this stage) and grid improvements can reduce storage needs. But no-one wants to invest in major grid upgrades, except as extensions of fossil fueled grid and of course so far there's no carbon price to provide economic incentives to change.

Like too many commentators - and decision makers - Martin doesn't appear to get the "serious" and "urgent" parts of what climate science is telling us; transition to clean energy only if it's cheap, regardless of how serious or urgent?

Come on, lets roll out renewable to the fullest capacity we can whilst upgrading the grid and fast-tracking baseload power like Geothermal. And even be looking at IFR nuclear, if it ever gets certified, for the future ( though I think Geothermal, CAES and thermal storage would be enough for baseload in Oz). And don't blame the Greens for not fast-tracking nuclear - if mainstream Australia and mainstream political parties supported it the Greens are irrelevent - and a lot of small 'g' greens could be enticed by the ability of IFR to run on long lived nuclear waste, not need uranium mines at all for many decades and isn't suited to weapons.

There are hundred of thousands of acres of Savannah Woodland in the over 35 inch rainfall belt, in northern Australia, where eucalypts grow. As any grazier will tell you if you knock down a eucalypt forest and do nothing for ten years in that sort of rainfall country, it simply regenerates thicker than ever. A baseload power station of about 30 megawatts, needs about 50,000 acres of eucalypt forest to support it, and by strip felling in ten year cycles would sustain power generation forever.

Practically every plot of 50,000 acres would have a suitable site on it to capture enough water to sustain the plant and the ash returned to the soil, would speed up regrowth. Such a biomass based system is used by the cane farmers in some mills in FNQ, where they generate electricity from bagasse, and sell it back to the grid.

A totally new plant using two boilers was what was required, and logs could be stockpiled for the wet season when access to the land is impossible. A feasibility study for such a plant was carried out by a Tafe Student in Cairns ands made interesting reading. The Cairns hinterland has numerous suitable areas. It also has its share of tree huggers, but their main concern is rainforests, which don’t yield as high an energy coefficient woodchip as eucalypts. There are lots of old mining dams, which could supply water without further dam building

One on here suggested wind generators on every house.
Not practical. They are too low down and the really big problem with
all wind generators is that output is proportional to the cube of the
wind speed. This means that there is negligible output until the wind
gets up near maximum design speed.

A friend of mine retired from the nuclear reactor industry tells me
that there are designs that can reuse and reuse the fuel with
processing between steps ending up with quite low radioactive waste.
He worked at places like Selafield and designed power reactors so
he knows his way around the industry. He was a senior scientist.

Those that oppose nuclear power are living in the past.

“This means that there is negligible output until the wind
gets up near maximum design speed.”

Bazz, sorry to disappoint you, there are many small wind generators producing good output in 2.5klm winds, particularly ceramic magnet generators. I made a vertical generator producing 100 watts at 5 klms and at feather speed, produces a kilowatt, it cost me less than $1000 and it's only 5 metres above ground, it's how you site them which counts.

We've been hearing they're close to a cure for cancer for the last 50 years, yet there's many more cancer sufferers and varieties now than 50 years ago and it's the same for all fossil fuel technologies, promises and deceptions without results, whilst Rome burns.

Of course in cities, wind on every house is impracticable, as is solar. Large cities are past their use by date and in the middle stages of collapse, just as we've seen throughout history when cities grow to the point of imploding by infrastructure collapse, elitist greed, system breakdowns, impoverishment, suppressive and negative vested interest approaches by bureaucrats and governments.

Those supporting nuclear power are living in the past, supporting anything which will maintain their single point control over society, our future and the collapse of the planets ecology. Single point energy production is primitive, expensive, unreliable, polluting in every way and detrimental to everyone, except elitist vested interests and the brain dead.

You might be right Stormbay, but in most locations you cannot get a clean
airflow because of adjoining buildings trees etc etc.
As for putting it up high enough you should see the pantomime of
problems I had with a couple of radio antennas.
As for removing some one hundred plus foot trees well the council
would either collapse in laughter or have a stroke.

My weather stations shows very low levels of wind speed almost all
the time. It seldom gets over five to eight knots.
The anemometer is at 11 metres height and fairly close to the house.
At present it is showing a dead calm. There will probably be no wind for
another hour or so.

STORAGE:
Why does all the energy have to be stored in one place? It’s simply wrong to suggest this is some sort of technical requirement. Hundreds of solar thermal plants using the new super-efficient Solar Graphite technology (invented here in Australia) might prove MORE reliable because power can be dispersed more locally across the nation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy#Heat_storage

http://www.lloydenergy.com/heatstorage.htm

These graphite blocks can be connected to a wind turbine as they are on King Island, and store excess wind energy as heat.
http://www.beyondzeroemissions.org/lloyd-energy-systems-graphite-block-storage

PRICE
There is no technical reason we cannot run a renewable grid 24 hours a day. The only issue to overcome is price. For some reason it is OK to give $10 billion in subsidies to oil, gas, and coal annually across Australia, yet it’s outrageous to consider upgrading a HVDC transmission line to our red-center for geothermal energy, or pay a subsidy for storage? D’uh! Consider all the storage options: hydrogen, chemical, compressed air, hot liquid salt (solar thermal), and even electric cars can sell power back to the grid, earning their owners a premium.

MINIMIZING STORAGE NEEDS
But the best factor is that all the renewables complement and back each other up anyway. I’d be really surprised if storage was ever required at high levels. We could hypothetically run Australia off our geothermal energy ALONE as reliable baseload power. Then there’s the fact that wind, spread over a large enough area, approaches baseload. Add Solar thermal, wave, micro-hydro, biomass, algae, and you’ve pretty much already GOT a baseload grid.

But we should have done this yesterday. Peak oil is here, peak gas next, peak coal by 2025 to 2040’s? It’s time to get off the fossil fuels now, not just for global warming but our energy and National security!

Stormbay,
Your claim that we can have wind generators on every house
just does not stand up.
We had a windy day here recently and wind gusts were up to 17 knots.
However my wx station showed that the average speed for the day was 4 knots.
At the moment and most days wind speed will vary between zero and
3 or 4 knots.
The location here is at 600ft asl with good exposure to east south and north.
West and SW is sheltered by large trees.
The anemometer is about 3 metres above house ridge level.
It is illegal to have anything more than 1 1/2 metres above ridge
level. I have already had an argument with the council about this
and only won because it had been there so long.

Eclipse Now;
You are right about geothermal energy, Geodynamics have had good
steam flow even though they have run into control problems.
I am sure the will overcome those problems.

Wind is a different however, you can get large highs that
cover the whole country and to do as you suggest we would have to have
every area equipped and able to support the whole country and even
then you could not guarantee service.

Storage, now there is a hope there but to store enough to run the
country for a day, well once it is developed we may not be able to
afford it.

Every building with lifts would have to be equipped with enough
storage to run the lifts until the building was emptied.
Every hospital would need enough storage be it diesel or battery etc
to keep it going, including its lifts.

It is not as simple as you have assumed by saying that renewables can
do the job.
Of course if geothermal can be cranked up quickly enough then we
are home and hosed.

OK but on wind, the larger the grid area, the closer wind *approaches* baseload. I'm NOT saying we should experimentally try putting all our eggs in one basket.

Have you seen this ABC news report on CETO 24 hour baseload wave power?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V27ZBODcv0c

Geothermal, solar thermal, wave power... pretty much baseload already. THEN add wind (for the super-high ERoEI) and you have some extra energy that, being fungible, might help in the manufacture of the other energy systems, "topping up" and compensating for lower ERoEI's in other energy fields. EG: IF solar PV only has a payback after 2 or 3 years, and wind has a payback of around 3 to 6 months, why can't wind help manufacture solar? The solar factory doesn't care. The machines just want electrons, they don't care if the electricity comes from a mix of biomass, wave, solar, or even coal for that matter. (YUK!)

We might make mistakes as we do this. America suffered a terrible blackout a few years back but civilisation didn't come to an end. It hurt the economy for sure. But the people that RANT against having "too high a wind spread" act as if civilisation itself will come tumbling down if there's a blackout or 2. I think we can do this given the 3 main baseloads we have in such ample supply above (CETO wave, geothermal, and solar thermal) but we'll learn as we go.

How much power does Iraq have each day? ;-) "Oh no, wind power is intermittent, we've GOT to be careful!" Or what.... we might have a blackout for a few hours until the system picks up again? But as I said, I think we can do this with each energy mix doing it's bit. Wind might only make up 30% or 40% of the final energy mix, I don't know. But we can do it.

People need to read a bit more about energy grids and what happens when a 2000 megawatt coal plant goes offline for servicing. How does civilisation survive? ;-) Ummm, surplus power from other areas. We can do this.