I’ve been meaning to post about the Australian Energy Market Operator’s report on the feasibility of a 100 per cent renewable electricity supply system for Australia (H/T commenter Ben). In the meantime, Brian Bahnisch at LP has done a detailed summary, so I’ll refer you there and make a few points of my own.
First, this study should kill off, once and for all, claims made here and in many other places (notably, at Brave New Climate) that the intermittency of renewable electricity is an insuperable problem.[1] The AEMO is the body that manages the electricity market on a minute-to-minute basis, so it has the expertise to assess this claim, unlike the many amateurs who have tried their hands. And, since it might have to do the job, it has no reason to understate the difficulties of a renewables-based system.
Second, the estimate cost of $111 to $133 per megawatt-hour represents an increase of $60-80/MwH on current wholesale prices, or 6-8c/Kwh on retail prices. That’s much less than the increase we’ve seen thanks to the mishandling of electricity market reform. If we wound back those costs, we could actually end up with both 100 per cent renewables and cheaper electricity.
Third, although the study envisages a role for electric vehicles, it doesn’t present a full-scale program for decarbonization. But once you have a scalable, fully renewable electricity supply, everything else is comparatively easy.
Finally, if we take Tony Abbott at his word in wanting direct action to deal with climate change, this report provides him with a blueprint. If we want to, we can eliminate the great majority of domestic CO2 emissions simply by mandating renewable technology and electric vehicles. The cost would be substantial in dollar terms ($250 billion for the electricity component). But, over a couple of decades, it would be a barely detectable deduction from growth in national income.
Update As it turns out, there’s a response at Brave New Climate from Martin Nicholson. Nicholson reports on a study of his own, in which nuclear is included in the mix. On Nicholson’s estimates, this substantially reduces capital costs, a point of which he makes a big deal. But obviously, renewables have much lower operating costs and Nicholson estimates the levelised cost for his system at $124/MWh to $126/MWh. As he says:
As this is in the middle of the AEMO range, wholesale prices are likely to be similar with or without nuclear
Given that very few current-generation nuclear plants have been built, cost estimates for nuclear are speculative. The obvious inference for Australia is that we should push along with renewables, and take a “wait and see” position on nuclear, observing developments in the UK, US, France and China. If they can deliver nuclear safely and at low cost, we can add it to the mix (say, after 2030).
Sadly, I think most of the BNC readership are locked into a position that nuclear must be the answer, which requires them to believe that renewables won’t work. Even a comprehensive demonstration that renewables can deliver a 100 per cent solution at a cost comparable with optimistic estimates for nuclear isn’t going to shift them.end update
fn1. This is part of a rhetorical manoeuvre aimed at pushing the conclusion that nuclear is the only feasible zero-carbon option. Once it’s admitted that 100 per cent renewable electricity is feasible, nuclear advocates need to present a case based on comparative costs. In the Australian context, it will be very hard to make that case, given the need to set up a complete nuclear infrastructure from scratch.
John Quiggin 
It is 12:37 in the early afternoon here in Adelaide and for the whole day so far South Australia’s electricity has pretty much entirely come from wind and solar. Getting about a third of our total electricity use from renewables has lowered our wholesale electricity prices and SA is the only state to have had a cut in retail electricity prices. I mention this because so few people are aware that Australia has a state that spends a fair bit of time with its grid powered only by renewables and that this has saved consumers money.
@Ronald Brak
Thanks for that Ronald 🙂
Nuclear proponents will also have to counter the immediacy of renewables to deliver (besides new hydro). Renewables are here now: rapidly deployed, delivering, approaching the cost of coal (if not matching), with pricing to drop. Importantly renewables (wind and solar) are distributed sources that act to spread investment through communities and have community support. Nuclear thus becomes a solution to address a non-existent problem…
@Ronald Brak
So where do you think SA’s retail electricity prices stand compared to other states? I’ve started to analyse this and it’s difficult to compare like with like but the overall picture seems clear to me. Perhaps it can be simplified by finding an exception. Can you find another capital city that has retail power prices at base summer rates more expensive than Adelaide?
Follow up question; with energy costs as they are what new industries is Adelaide likely to attract after the car subsidies run out and the air warfare destroyers are built?
@Hermit
Interesting question re SA and I quite like the “Monthly Merchandise Trade Balance by State” chart at: http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/05/trade-back-in-black-on-iron-ore-spike/
Wonder if SA will just continue to hum along without a car industry (remembering one previously exited the state) and other heavy industry – a surplus is a surplus. Maybe now’s the time to setup solar towers with concomitant storage; the sun’s bright over here! The worrying aspect of renewables is that Australia is flush with renewable infrastructure but not enough signalling re decarbonising and thus wholesale buyers of new renewable sources cf. geothermal by Geodynamics in Innamincka.
If the 100% renewable figure was anywhere near possible you would expect to see, at least, some examples (somewhere) of where this has been done on a small scale (eg a city).
Outside of areas with abundant hydro and geothermal (or examples featuring a large bio-energy source), I am unaware of any example (anywhere in the world). Can someone point me to any, at all?
Why does the theory not fit the practice?
“Nuclear thus becomes a solution to address a non-existent problem…”. Exactly.
And those who manage, in one way or another, to implement solutions to non-existent problems create problems.
gee,i wish we had some kind of way to let people know about this stuff—y’know,like news broadcasters?
free press?
substantive reporting without leaving out the best bits?
anybody?
I realise anecdotes are no substitute for serious analysis but they stick in peoples minds. A couple that seem relevant are the status of geothermal power in Australia and Germany’s coal revival. Geothermal figures prominently in the AEMO all renewables scenarios yet this week a pilot plant in the outback is making its first electricity, a very modest amount compared to expectations a decade ago and after a large amount of public funding. I suggest AEMO has too much optimism in some unproven technologies.
Germany is now over 20% non-hydro renewables I believe. The country has very high electricity prices and essentially no GDP growth. However they are building several GW of new coal fired power stations to to replace nukes. Google German coal revival. That suggests there may be logs on the road less than a third of the way towards 100% renewables.
@Hermit not often I agree with Hermit — but agree with this, the all renewable scenario needs high quality energy sources (emergy) such as geothermal and hydro to make it work (on paper).
Without technology breakthroughs in energy storage systems (including hydrogen storage) it is unlikely to work (off paper).
Again, one can ask, outside of areas with abundant hydro and geothermal (or featuring a large bio-energy source), is there any city (anywhere in the world) that credibly fits the 100% renewable tag?
The bit that bothers me greatly is the word ‘easy’.
Electricity generation now seems a standing energy solution, agreed – which is what this article is really about – but total decarbonisation of energy generation is another matter on several counts. Some comments for critiquing:
– Globally coal constitutes only about 30% of total primary energy production. (A useful reference here is the updated version of U.S. Energy Information Administration. Annual Energy Review 2009. In: U.S. Energy Information Administration OoEMaEU, ed. Washington, DC 20585: U.S. Department of Energy, 2010.) So the scale up issue is a serious one which needs a lot of analysis.
– Much of the replacement is for transport fuel where electricity at present only has a small role and many technologies are unproven. I guess changeover to electric semitrailers will be possible but its not likely to be easy.
– Building is heavily dependent on CO2 generating concrete production and there is no serious replacement material yet.
The bottom line is coal removal is the first ‘easy’ bit. But getting rid of the other 50% of carbon generation will require an infrastructure revolution going way beyond electric cars. There are solutions in books by the likes of Lovins and Leggett and while they offer hope they are still more a wish list.
Should we worry about the other 50%? – leaving aside how dirty production of petroleum from tar sands and oil shales are (necessary to delay peak oil?) the drive is still to expand the global economy in the cause of ‘Green Growth’ (an oxymoron) so that the benefits of decarbonising standing electricity can easily be lost and we are back to square one – except by that time we will have reached 450 ppm CO2 and 500 ppm CO2 equivalent.
@Newtownian
* Electric trains provide a good alternative to semi-trailers. The balance between the two has shifted back and forth over time, but replacing heavy trucks with trains is one of the easy ones
* Cars and and light trucks can be replaced with existing EVs – they may not have been adopted on a large scale yet, but the technology is proven and the cost is modest relative to GDP.
* Not yet proven, but there’s a lot of work on CO2-absorbing versions of concrete
* What’s with wanting to delay Peak Oil? Apart from the fact that we passed Peak Oil decades ago in terms of consumption per person, it’s obvious that we want to accelerate the arrival of Peak Oil, and certainly stop shale and oil sands
@Hermit
I’m pretty sure I’ve corrected you twice before on this notion of a ‘German coal revival” or “coal generation build out to replace nuclear” nonsense.
All coal fired power stations currently being built in Germany were planned or being built before the decision to close down all Nuclear following Fukishima.
Six coal fired power stations planned have actually been stepped away from in response to the success of renewables.
Some of the new coal burners are state of the art, highly efficient plants with quick start up designed to back up renewables and will replace older plants.
No additional coal plants will be needed.
In regards to geothermal funding, it has been a pittance. More public money has been wasted on FAILED Carbon Capture and Storage than has been invested in geothermal efforts and the conditions placed on geothermal companies for access to public funds were far too extreme for most to access.
Iain, given that solar was prohibitively expensive until five years ago, its hardly surprising nowhere has yet built a system on solar and wind alone. Add in that most of the places with the wealth to lead on this either have little Sun (eg Scandinavia) or are oil states with an incentive not to promote renewables the only places where it might have been done were Australia, south-west USA or Hawaii. Hardly surprising none have done it, and hardly indicative that it can’t be in places with plenty of Sun and wind . It will be tough for places that lack much of one or the other, but that certainly doesn’t mean Australia can’t.
@iain
There are a few island power systems with very high penetrations of renewables. Two that spring to mind are El Hierro in the Canary Islands and Tokelau.
@may
Yes, wouldn’t it be nice to have a functioning media not monopolised by climate-change-denying neo-cons?
For example, how many people in Australia who rely on Murdoch/Fairfax/ABC/SBS for “news” know that a fully solar powered plane is flying across the US at the moment – and that it can fly night and day?
On the weekend it flew from San Franscisco to Phoenix. I thought that might be interesting for the people our “media” pretend to be informing.
The point isn’t to suggest solar planes are a good idea. It is to show what can be done with existing renewable technology and to get people to think.
When it’s in the air you can watch its progress live. It’s called “Solar Impulse”.
Over at Watts Up With That, I have suggested that burning fossil fuels in ever greater quantities is a bad idea and that we might want to reduce our usage.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/02/help-launch-climate-skeptic-film-project-50-to-1/
jc notes in one response among many:
Where does that leave the poor South Australians?
Speaking as someone who, unusually for a Green, doesn’t have a fundamental objection to resort to nuclear power and regards it as a technically feasible component of an industrial-scale low carbon intensity energy system …
it’s obviously great news if renewables really can do the job that people wanting advanced industrial societies want them to do — i.e produce acceptably reliable and low cost power with low intensity, indefinitely, and most importantly, on a timeline consistent with avoiding the worst case scenarios in those IPCC reports.
It is clear that decarbonisation is urgent and if for any reason, reliance on prospective benefit from nuclear power measurably delays decarbonisation, then the price is IMO, too high. There’s no use in doing brilliantly on decarbonisation with nuclear power, — 25 years from now after we are locked into disaster. If there is even a realistic chance of us doing that, renewables + demand management + efficiency must be given first chance at solving the problem in front of us.
I continue to believe that humanity must place a serious price on fossil fuels at the earliest opportunity — and that Australia should be making the running on this.
@iain
I forgot to mention Güssing in Austria is an example of an energy self-sufficient town/city. Quoting from this page, “The town of Güssing now annually produces more energy (heat, fuels, and electric power) from renewable resources than actually can be consumed in the town.”
Iain,
That is a desperate last gasp effort to throw cold water on the renewable future reality, isn’t it.
As a preview of the impossible becoming real. A two seater aircraft that can take off and fly all day while the sun is shining without any fuel other than sunlight.
http://blog.cafefoundation.org/?p=7718
This is the effort of one man and his wife.
What else is possible?
You won’t believe it.
Very interesting post, PrQ. It will be interesting to see just how much more can be done over the next decade or so to bring down the costs of renewables and in particular solar.
In any event, I think we’ll see change happen “too little, too late” and we’ll end up relying on techno fixes to clean up the mess. Up until approx 8-10 years ago many on the right were interested in the big techno fixes but we don’t hear much about that now, presumably because much of the right has moved into the delusionist camp.
I know it is about as fashionable as Safari suits, but I’m not giving up on retrofitted CCS. Note this:
wwwDOTsasklifestyles.com/article/20130502/ESTLIFESTYLES0101/130509982/-1/estlifestyles/unit-1-at-boundary-dam-officially-retired
According to CO2CRC :
wwwDOTco2crc.com.au/dls/co2futures/CO2FUTURES_issue_41.pdf
This mob have a zero carbon stationary energy plan which details its feasibility;
http://bze.org.au/zero-carbon-australia-2020
In conjunction with AEMO’s report, this proves the physical, technical, financial and commercial feasibility of the plans to de-carbonise stationary energy generation.
Many economic hurdles and a great deal of work would remain to de-carbonise the rest of the economy. We would gain great energy efficiency benefits from moving to a full electric economy. The private internal combustion engine automobile will have to become a thing of the past. Trains, mass transit, bicycles, walking and electric vehicles will all be part of the solution. There will be far less vehicles on the road and those that remain will be electric; near silent and pollution free. The aesthetics of urban living could receive a huge boost.
A lot of work is being done on energy saving passive solar design. I have lost the link unfortunately, but one set of designs for giving every unit in a multi-storey complex “solar access” comes up looking a lot like an Escher drawing and it is very interesting and pleasing architectually.
To be consistent, we should stop exporting thermal coal and even natural gas. The thermal coal should stay in the ground. Our natural gas should be used to replace petroleum imports and our internal combustion engine fleet (1) converted to gas and then (2) retired as other solutions take over. Natural gas already developed can also supplement electricty generation. No new coal mines or gas wells or coal gasification or fracking sould be developed at all.
We cannot control what the rest of the world do. However, we can progressively stop using and exporting fossil fuels.
The bottom line is that all of this might not be enough now. Globally, we may well have passed several irreversible tipping points already. The balance of evidence is that we have. The most dangerous positive feedback underway is the release of methane from the tundra. If the deep sea heats up even a little more, the release of methane clathrates from the seabed will cause a mass extinction of the order of the Permian-Triassic extinction.
“The Permian–Triassic (P–Tr) extinction event, informally known as the Great Dying, was an extinction event that occurred 252.28 Ma (million years) ago, forming the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geologic periods, as well as the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. It is the Earth’s most severe known extinction event, with up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct. It is the only known mass extinction of insects. Some 57% of all families and 83% of all genera became extinct. Because so much biodiversity was lost, the recovery of life on Earth took significantly longer than after any other extinction event, possibly up to 10 million years.” – Wikipedia.
Despite and indeed because of this depressing possibility, we have to make every effort to decarbonise our economy rapidly and cap quantitative (not qualitiative) growth of the world economy as soon as possoble.
That’s the position I think we should take with renewables. If somebody can make them cheap enough to be viable without subsidies (eg MRET) then we can embrace them. In the mean time we should hold off. The obvious corollary is that MRET is a folly. It is either propping up technology that is not yet economical or else it is unnecessary.
TerjeP,
And then there is the small matter of saving the climate.
Obviously not a big issue with you if it costs a dollar more.
How do you manage to seperate those two issues in your head?? “Musn’t pay a dollar more for electricity even though it means I lose everything from catastrophic weather events”.
I just don’t get it!
Are you a problem gambler?
Assuming that for some years we will need a large amount of dispatchable generation there are other issues at stake. We should ask how long will we be stuck with the big stinkers like Hazelwood and if gas can displace much coal. Unfortunately it doesn’t look good. Carbon tax at $23 or $24 now with cheap Euro offsets is not enough. The east Australian wholesale gas grid ranging from Bass Strait to Chinchilla coal seam gas will soon be exposed to world prices when Gladstone starts exporting LNG next year. Hazelwood put up their hand to be bought out under under ‘contracts for closure’ last year. They were knocked back and now as gas looks increasingly pricey they are sticking around, carbon tax or not.
I don’t believe the answer is to progressively increase the RET from 20% to 100%. I think the answer is a brutally tough CO2 pricing mechanism (no giveaways or special deals) with all technologies allowed. Nuclear has a 5-10 year implementation lag during which time CCS or renewable energy storage could get better. Conceivably Australia could exceed 20% renewables (absent RET) during that nuke free decade.
OK, Hermit,
So you’re a problem gambler too, obviously, ……and partial to a little Bling too.
If its new, flashy, and can glow in the dark you just gotta have it?
Re update.
“On Nicholson’s estimates, this substantially reduces capital costs, a point of which he makes a big deal.”
Professor Nicholson (math, engineering) is obviously highly qualified in matters of quantification. However, I am truely surprised to read about his paper apparently asserting ‘substantially reduced capital costs’ because standard project evaluation in Finance includes disposal costs as project costs and therefore affect ‘capital costs’.
On this blog-site the issue of disposal costs of nuclear power plants has been discussed several times. These costs depend, among other factors, on storage technology of waste. To the best of my knowledge, there is no satisfactory storage technology of waste at present and the costs are potentially so huge that treating then as ‘infinite’ in a project evaluation is ostensibly at least as valid as assigning ‘zero’ or a value agreed with those governments who are prepared to shift the effective costs onto ‘taxpayers’.
I went to the BNC site in the hope of asking Professor Nicholson a few questions on the treatment of disposal costs. A person by the name of “Barry” advised to write to another web-site and there was the notice: “Comments closed”.
BilB – if your concern is with the climatic impact of CO2 emissions then the most appropriate response is a carbon tax. We can debate the size of the tax but it seems to me to be the right structure if you want to lower emissions. MRET is just a subsidy by people picking winners. It may make much more financial sense to favour gas now and renewables later. Or switch brown coal to black. MRET simply distorts the decision making process rather than leaving it as an open question with a natural process for discovery.
Absolutely agree with you BilB, what the ‘problem gambler’ sceptics are missing in the AGW debate, are the relevant aspects of contingency planning or risk management. Concepts and practices therein are well understood and conventionally adhered to in the business and professional world.
So, if the MRET is ‘picking winners’, what are fossil fuel subsidies doing?
” Nuclear has a 5-10 year implementation lag”
Would you care to spell out a timetable to justify this claim? Assume that there’s bipartisan agreement, starting right now, that we should go nuclear. Then give some estimated timescales for:
(a) Drafting and passage of legislation to establish a regulatory authority, set up a liability regime, make plans for waste disposal etc
(b) Establishment and recruitment of expert staff
(c) Site selection for possible plants
(d) Process for eliciting bids to construct plants
(e) Environmental impact statements etc
(f) Construction of pilot/demonstration plant
(g) Large scale construction
(h) Beginning of operation on a scale large enough to affect CO2
As a starting point, you could look at the US, which began a major initiative, with bipartisan support and generous funding, to promote nuclear power in 2002, optimistically named the Nuclear 2010 program. On current indications, they’ll have four new plants online by around 2018, and they might start large scale construction some time in the 2020s if all goes much better than it has so far.
The US could skip steps (a)-(c) since the NRC was in place, and all the proposals were colocated with existing plants. They also had substantial expertise on hand for the remaining steps, whereas we have zero (The country’s only nuclear energy education facility, the former School of Nuclear Engineering at the UNSW, was closed in 1986).
That suggests to me that a target date of 2040 for Australia would be highly ambitious. But, if you think it can be done in 5-10 years, I’ll be interested to see your reasoning.
People are still missing the point that the “laters” have all been used up. The only option is now, Now, NOW.
Fortunately Solar PV has the advantage of distributed investment as we are seeing with the strong uptake of Rooftop Solar. This will really pick up as business ramps its uptake of Rooftop Solar installation.
There is probably sufficient information now to calculate the time frame for 60% of electricity demand being met from the distributed network.
“The world’s nations must scrap fossil fuel subsidies and put a price on emitting carbon dioxide if the planet is to avoid dangerous climate change, according to the president of the World Bank.
…
“We need a global response equal to the scale of the climate problem. Bold action that will make the biggest difference,” Jim Yong Kim told about 30 of the world’s energy and environment ministers gathered in Berlin for informal talks on a new global climate deal to take effect in 2020.
…
“They (fossil fuel subsidies) are regressive, negatively impact the environment and act as a barrier to progress on clean technology,” he said.”
Source: Reuters – Mon, 6 May 2013 03:30 PM
That’s an idiotically unfair characterisation of how comments are treated on BNC and it’s associated blog.
the wave energy people i’ve talked about here in the west have just announced commencement of a pressure driven desal plant that is in addition to the grid connected electricity they are doing for the navy.
i don’t know if the fresh water is for the navy as well.
@wilful
Why?
@wilful
No need to raise the temperature with terms like “idiotically unfair”. However, I don’t see anything sinister in the fact that BNC redirects comments to a discussion board. It’s less convenient than the more usual practice of linking them with the post, but doubtless the blog manager has reasons for doing it this way.
@TerjeP
You make it sound as though the current system was built without government assistance.
@John Quiggin
For a ‘monolithic’ Gen 3 plant design approved by the US NRC we would have to use the Chinese or as the UAE is doing the South Koreans. I think we can rule out Indian, Russian and Chinese ‘budget’ reactors. US built small modular reactors may go on sale by 2022 and can be installed in 2 years. However we’d need a dozen or more modules to do a big coal plant equivalent like the planned Bayswater 2. Some claim speedy construction will offset higher average power costs for small reactors.
Slow bureaucracy has been blamed for delays in Finland yet now the Brits plan to build to the same French design, the EPR. While the learning curve argument has been used for solar thermal I think big reactors will become more prefabricated. Notice how desktop computers start to resemble laptops. I think Australia should break the ice with an SMR to power a mining project then think about big reactors later. Bureaucrats and legislators should start to wrap their thinking around this now. Funny how it only takes a week to approve an offshore island as a detention camp so they can do it if they try.
@Hermit
SMRs are an appealing possibility but, as you say, unlikely to be available for a decade or so Realistically, even if we did a lot of advance preparation, it would take 5-10 years after that before we could see even an initial deployment.
So, if we are serious about climate change, there’s no alternative to renewables and higher electricity prices, at least for the next 15 years or so. The good news is that, as the AEMO report shows the cost is very modest in relation to national income. The bad news is that, as other commenters have said, we and other countries are likely to let the planet go over the edge while we play politics as usual.
@John Quiggin
“the cost is very modest”
Well, maybe. AEMO says that it hasn’t taken account of what look to be some quite big costs, like acquiring 5000 square kilometres of land to put all the infrastructure in place. If the acquisition cost is (let’s guess) $1000 per square kilometre than that’s an additional $50 billion of cost.
Then there’s a bunch of other costs that AEMO identifies but doesn’t quantify, like the additional cost of staging all-renewables: “It would not be entirely built using costs which assume the full learning technology curves, but at the costs applicable at the time.”
I think a reasonable rule of thumb would be to double the estimated costs. You can still argue it is worth doing with double the costs.
But presumably the reason AEMO did this study in the first place was as a result of a deal between the Government and the Greens, which was an artefact of the hung house of Reps. (It’s hard to imagine the Energy Minister at the time it was commissioned, Martin Ferguson, being interested.) Come September 14 though neither of the main parties will have to deal with the Greens. And I just don’t see Tony Abbott taking this forward of his own volition even if it is direct action.
We might well get 100% renewables one day (with or without nuclear thrown in) but it’s unlikely to be in the lifetime of anyone reading this blog, including any precocious children.
@Uncle Milton
That should be $10000 per square kilometre.
@Uncle Milton
Against that, they don’t look at energy efficiency, both exogenous and in response to higher prices. But, yes, even double the cost would be so modest as to be undetectable relative to the ordinary fluctuations in GDP and the much greater fluctuations in individual household incomes.
@John Quiggin
Are you certain that a rise in the price of energy to double the current costs would not have significant knock-on costs all through the economy? If that is what you are saying. I agree we absolutely need to move to full renewable energy, I just think the economic and adjustment pain will be very significant. Claiming it will be nearly painless might be misleading people. If that is what you are claiming.
@Uncle Milton
I’m reasonably confident I will live to see Germany and/or Denmark running with 100% renewables.
@Ikonoclast
Only a doubling of the wholesale rate though. The retail component would be unchanged.
@Ben, the reason why I specified without a large bioenergy source – was with Gussing specifically in mind. This was to avoid people doing a quick google and confusing this as a “sustainable” example. Not sure I would classify Tokelau as a good example either, definitely no net emergy return with their extensive use of batteries.
Happy to be proven wrong, by other examples.
A clear case would be the Geraldton region in Australia. Often billed as the best renewable energy centre in the world – with world class solar, geothermal, wind and tidal resources. If you can’t make this 100% renewable in the next 10-20 years, then I think the whole of Australia is really a pipe dream in the mid to long term.
At the end of the day, the studies are currently rely on some fantasy extrapolation of technology, or energy efficiency with no rebound. Without big breakthroughs in energy storage systems (and hydrogen production and storage), these papers are theory, not practice.
Better to focus on energy descent policies, in the meantime (a far more realistic policy setting).
@Ikonoclast “thermal coal should stay in the ground”. I can see a lot of problems with that; the valuation if many or most resource entities includes what is in the ground. If it was to stay in the ground valuations would tumble dragging banks and others with them. That would be quite a shock to the system.
Uncle Milton, the last time I checked 5,000 * 10,000 came to $50 million, not $50 billion, making it barely a rounding error in the estimates.
I can’t imagine that much more than 5000 square kilometres will be needed. The price will vary hugely of course – some of it will be more like $10,000 per hectare, while in in the desert it would probably be less than $10,000 per square kilometre.
However, even if we take the figure as $10,000 per hectare (not quite prime agricultural land, but certainly not clapped out grazing country) you are still only looking at $5 billion, so I can’t see this as a major obstacle.
“a rise in the price of energy to double the current costs ”
We already had that over the past 10 years. Since more than half the cost is in distribution and retail, a doubling of wholesale costs means a 25 per cent increase in final cost, over 20 years or so. I think the economy can handle that.
(I see Sam already pointed this out)