Comments on: Energy revolution proceeding despite Rudd’s dithering

By: zoomster

zoomster — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 11:44:13 +0000

Why the politicised headline?

It’s not Rudd’s dithering – if the Senate wasn’t being obstructionist, the Bill would have been passed long ago (and as it is, has passed through the Lower House).

Yes, Rudd amended his original package, but that was in an attempt to get something through, the opposite of dithering.

The facts are that he is facing a hostile Senate, which will not accept any package he puts to it (the Greens will want a bigger target, the Nats don’t believe cc exists, the Libs are being obstructionist).

If we want to politicise this, I could point to the Greens’ lack of support for – and sometimes active opposition to – wind farms.

By: EnergyPedant

EnergyPedant — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:12:55 +0000

Brian good point. However the reason the Portland plant was closed was that it wasn’t set up to make big enough blades. Wind turbine technology has fairly rapidly shifted from 1 MW units with 30-40 M blades, to 2-3 MW units with blades over 50M long. The bigger units are simply more efficient, more cost effective, etc….

The wind industry in Australia is booming. To meet the new expanded renewable target in Australia purely with wind (which looks likely at the moment unless geothermal or solar thermal takes a massive step forward), another 40000 or so GWh on renewable energy annual capacity is due by 2020. Assuming that the average turbine is 2MW (at $6M each) and the average capacity factor is 35% that means 6500 new turbines or 1.6 per day every day until 2020.

By: leighewbank

leighewbank — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:17:35 +0000

Nice post John.

I agree with you that renewable energy must be made cheaper than fossil fueled energy as soon as possible. Unfortunately the focus of climate change policy in Australia and abroad is on punishing polluters and making R.E relatively cheaper through imposing additional ‘market-based’ costs on fossil fueled energy production. This approach diverts attention from efforts to make R.E absolutely cheaper. It would be great if both climate change advocates and policy makers payed more attention to securing investment in clean energy R&D, technology demonstration projects, and building enabling infrastructure. Each of these play an important role in bringing down the cost of clean energy. I posted an article on this a couple of weeks ago: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8693

Cheers.

By: Brian Burston

Brian Burston — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:39:09 +0000

There used to be a Blade factory in Portland, but it was closed a few years ago due to lack of government support for the renewable energy industry.

By: EnergyPedant

EnergyPedant — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:01:34 +0000

A quick point to clarify. Emissions targets do not encourage renewables to be built, they encourages gas CCGT’s to be built. Renewables currently get built in response to the MRET target (note: there is surplus of RECs being hoarded to support the price at the moment). Reducing emissions and supporting renewables are two separate issues that many people confuse (there is some interaction but it is minimal at this stage). A market mechanism will only involve the importing of commercial ready technology in renewables. The alternative is to the have government pick winners based on lobbying, dodgy dealings and electoral math.

NSW government approving Silverton does not mean that it will happen. There are now 14 wind farms approved in NSW since 2005, how many have been built? I’m fairly sure the answer is zero at this stage. In terms of establishing a renewable’s industry (that creates value adding export jobs) in Australia, what fraction of the $$$ stay in Australia? All the turbines (high-tech) and almost all the blades are from Europe.