Australians fear Coalition is not taking climate change seriously, poll shows

Sixty-five per cent of those surveyed agree that ‘reducing the investment in windfarms and householder solar power is the opposite of what is needed’.

Photograph: Yva Momatiuk and John Eastcott/Corbis

Australians are deeply worried the Abbott government is underestimating the importance of climate change, new polling shows, as cabinet debates crucial long-term targets for greenhouse gas reductions.

The annual polling by the Climate Institute thinktank reveals Australians overwhelmingly support wind and solar energy – as the Coalition seeks to limit support for both – and see it as inevitable that coal-fired power stations will have to be phased out and replaced.

But at the same time, almost half those surveyed (47%) think Labor’s carbon policies will “just increase electricity prices and not do much about pollution”. Labor has not announced a costed or detailed policy but has said it will reintroduce an emissions trading scheme and aim for 50% renewable energy by 2030.

Federal cabinet will on Monday decide on the post-2020 emissions reduction target Australia will take to the UN Paris talks in December and the decision will then be presented to the Coalition party room.

Related: Coalition MPs await ‘robust debate’ on Australia’s post-2020 climate target

The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, who leads the climate negotiations, and the environment minister, Greg Hunt, have been arguing that Australia needs to adopt an emission reduction target broadly in line with those already tabled by the US and Canada – a reduction of between 25% and 28% of 2005 levels by 2030 – but others in cabinet have expressed concern that the government won’t get any political credit from taking on an ambitious goal.

And once the government commits to a target it will be under pressure to explain the policy it intends to use to meet it, with business groups, thinktanks and market analysts all arguing the Direct Action policy would need substantial modification before it was up to the task. Business groups have been lobbying fiercely for the government to drop its opposition to the purchase of carbon credits from overseas.

Labor has not promised bipartisan support to a “lowball” target but has also not yet outlined a costed policy to reach a long-term climate goal.

Findings from the Climate Institute research include:

• Australians are concerned that the seriousness of climate change is underestimated by the government (59% agree, 32% strongly agreeing, 16% disagree).

• 63% think the Abbott government should take climate change more seriously, up six points from 2014.

• 71% of Australians agree “it is inevitable that Australia’s current coal-fired generation will need to be replaced” (13% neutral, 5% disagree, 11% don’t know).

• 72% agree governments need to implement a plan to ensure the orderly closure of old coal plants and their replacement with clean energy (7% disagree and 14% neutral).

• 65% agree that “reducing the investment in windfarms and householder solar power is the opposite of what is needed” (39% strongly agree,11% disagree).

• Solar is the most preferred energy source: when presented with eight sources, 84% of respondents place solar energy within their top three preferred options. This is up 2 points from 2014. Wind energy is the second most preferred option, with 69% supporting it in their preferred energy mix. Coal and nuclear are least preferred with only a 13% backing each as a top three choice.

The polling, and the decision on Australia’s post-2020 emissions reduction target, come after the Abbott government wound back the renewable energy target, instructed the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (which it had unsuccessfully tried to shut) to stop investing in solar and wind, and announced it would appoint a “wind commissioner” to handle complaints about noise from wind turbines and new scientific committee to investigate, again, their alleged impacts on human health.

Related: Obama unveils sweeping cuts to power plant emissions: ‘We have to get going’

“This week’s decision on Australia’s initial post-2020 climate commitment comes as nearly two-thirds of Australian believe that the Abbott government should take climate change more seriously, a surge of 6% from last year,” said John Connor, the chief executive of the Climate Institute.

“Our research also shows the carbon tax spectre still has some sting but perhaps less than would be expected. A third (36%) agree they won’t vote for the ALP because they will bring back the carbon tax, with a quarter (24%) neutral and 28% disagreeing.

“The government and the opposition have an opportunity to join mainstream Australian attitudes with climate commitments and policies which can limit carbon pollution, encourage renewable energy and clean up our energy system.”

The US has said it will reduce greenhouse emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels in 2025 and aim for an 80% reduction by 2050. Canada says it will reduce its emissions by 30% on 2005 levels by 2030. The EU says it will reduce emissions by 40% by 2030 relative to 1990 levels.

The poll was a nationally representative online survey conducted by Galaxy Research 27-29 July 2015 among 1,016 Australians aged over 18. Its margin of error is +/- 3%.

Australians fear Coalition is not taking climate change seriously, poll shows

UK Green-Lights 2.4 GW Offshore Wind Project

“Today’s announcement shows the confidence the market has in the future of the sector, with developers committing to invest in the planning and consenting of projects that will help form the backbone of UK offshore wind development beyond 2020″, he said in a statement.

The UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has given planning consent to Forewind consortium for construction of the 2.4GW Teesside A and B offshore wind farms along England’s north-east coast.

The Rt Hon Amber Rudd MP, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, approved the application for Dogger Bank Teesside A&B, submitted to the Planning Inspectorate by Forewind in March 2014.

When constructed, Dogger Bank Teesside A&B will be one of UK’s largest power generators, equal to Dogger Bank Creyke Beck and second only to the 3.9GW Drax coal-fired station in North Yorkshire.

The project is being taken forward by Forewind – a consortium comprising SSE, RWE, Statkraft and Statoil. Combined with the positive seabed survey results and strong wind measurements, the consent confirms Dogger Bank’s suitability for large-scale offshore wind development.

Designed to meet electricity requirement of up to 1.8 million homes in the UK, the Teesside A and B wind farms represent the second phase of the larger Dogger Bank Zone development which involves construction four additional wind farms of 1.2GW each.

RenewableUK’s chief executive Maria McCaffery said: “This awe-inspiring offshore wind project has taken another significant step forward”. This is especially the case, considering recent figures from the global Monetary Fund which highlight the absurd discrepancy between subsidies being doled out to the fossil fuel energy industry in the UK (and globally), compared to the renewable energy industry, which is forever being forced to suffer cutbacks of Government aid.

Officials told The Northern Echo the farm is due to be built by August 2022, with its turbines expected to be taller than those used on EDF Energy Renewables’ Teesside Wind Farm, at Redcar, which is capable of powering about 40,000 homes.

Ministers recently confirmed the next round of price support contracts for clean energy projects will not go ahead in the autumn as planned and a review of renewable energy policy is underway in response to concerns the government is on track to exceed its clean energy subsidy budget for 2020 by around £1.5bn.

“However, the ambition of the industry needs to be matched by a vision from Government which is backed up by firm commitments on the levels of financial provision which will be available”.

Ms McCaffery said: “The industry is set to play its part – but it needs a fair wind from Westminster in order to do so”.

The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations said Dogger Bank was an important site for fishing. “The scale of the Dogger Bank projects offers a significant opportunity to continue to drive down costs, create high value jobs, and support the UK’s transition to a low carbon energy supply”.

Forewind and the Crown Estate will announce the two remaining phases of the Dogger Bank project have progressed to the next stage of development with the two parties signing a “project specific agreement” for the relevant area of seabed.

UK Green-Lights 2.4 GW Offshore Wind Project

Germany's Solar Energy Output Surpasses Nuclear Generation in July

PV Magazine: Germany Breaks Record Wind and PV Generation in July

According to Fraunhofer ISE’s data, the amount of PV and wind generated electricity fed into the grid hit a record high in July in Germany. The PV power generated also matched up to nuclear. Another first.

July 2015 became a record month for the combined efforts of PV and wind energy. Both renewable sources managed to churn out more electricity than ever before as the statistics show.

According to the Fraunhofer ISE, 11.7TWh of renewable electricity was produced in July and this number surpasses the previous highs in January and March this year.

Bloomberg: Why Power Suppliers Most Affected by EPA Plan Don’t Hate It

Opponents of President Barack Obama’s plan to cut power-plant emissions say utilities will be among the casualties. You wouldn’t know it to hear from the power providers themselves.

For a group that must dramatically alter the way it does business to comply with the proposal, utilities don’t sound very annoyed. In fact, the industry’s main trade group said the Obama administration “seems to have responded to some of our key concerns.” The new rules will even boost profits for some.

MIT Technology Review: Smart Windows Just Got Cooler

Window glass that can tint on demand is pretty slick, but a new advancement has made it even cooler — and that could help the technology finally go mainstream.

Smart glass has been around for decades, but it is quite pricey and has found only niche applications, such as the windows of a new Boeing jetliner. But a new kind of electrochromic window glass, which changes color in response to the addition or removal of electronic charge, is more versatile than the technology now on the market, and it could be cheaper, too.

Wall Street Journal: Tesla Executive Presses Auto Makers on Electrification

Tesla Motors Inc. came to a conference here with a tough message for other auto makers: stop building compliance cars.

An executive at the Silicon Valley electric-car maker on Tuesday bemoaned the inability of General Motors Co. and other manufacturers to have better success selling their own battery-powered vehicles.

Instead, most other auto makers are producing electric cars to meet minimum regulatory standards while continuing to build and sell less-efficient gas-engine vehicles in droves, said Diarmuid O’Connell, Tesla’s vice president of business development.

Fuel Freedom: What Caused EV Sales to Drop Off a Cliff in July?

The website Inside EVs, which keeps track of monthly sales for all-electrics and plug-in hybrids in the U.S. and globally, has published its July numbers, and they’re abysmal: Only 7,102 were sold during the month, compared with 11,242 in July 2014.

There are still six models for which numbers are not available — Ford’s Fusion Energi, C-Max Energi and Focus Electric; Porsche Cayenne S-E and Panamera S-E; and the Kia Soul EV — but even if those cars come in at the same level as this June, the overall sales tally will still be well under last year’s pace.

For the first six months of 2015, a total of 61,449 EVs have been sold domestically, compared with 123,049 during the same period last year. Meantime, the rest of the world continues to outsell the U.S., thanks in part to generous subsidies in many European countries.

Tags: editors news feed, energiewende, germany, nuclear

Germany"s Solar Energy Output Surpasses Nuclear Generation in July

Portable Spot Air Conditioners in Industrial Applications: Your questions answered.

Magallanes: Keeping the air filters clean on the portable air conditioners will improve efficiency and prevent the air conditioners from working too hard.

Portable Spot Air Conditioners in Industrial Applications: Your questions answered.

Windfarm 'wing nuts': Public health expert takes aim at activists

Video will begin in 5 seconds.

More video

Recommended

• 
  

  Prisoners riot near Melbourne

  
  


• 
  

  Tony Abbott ‘a pointless prime minister’

  
  


• 
  

  Penalty rates, direct action and entitlements

  
  


• 
  

  Citizenship, penalty rates and entitlements

  
  


• 
  

  MPs’ kids – who should pay travel bills?

  
  

Replay video

Political support for renewable energy call

Labor’s Andrew Leigh and Liberal Andrew Laming both support Cameron Clyne’s call for more renewable energy, but interpret his statement differently.

PT2M48S 620 349

One of Australia’s leading public health experts has delivered a scathing assessment of anti-windfarm activists, comparing them to people who believe in aliens, reincarnation and other “irrational…nonsense or faith-based beliefs”.

Simon Chapman, a professor of public health at the University of Sydney, whose research led to the development of cigarette plain packaging, had been asked to respond to a Senate inquiry into the health effects of wind farms.

Professor Simon Chapman defended his use of the term ‘wing nuts’ to describe anti-wind farm campaigners.

That inquiry, led by crossbench senators John Madigan, David Leyonhjelm and Bob Day, delivered its report on Monday, three days after its draft findings were published in News Corp. The committee recommended the government establish an independent scientific panel with powers to block new wind farm projects on public health grounds. 

It follows Prime Minister Tony Abbott describing wind farms as “visually awful” in June. Last month Fairfax revealed the government had directed the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation to stop investing in wind energy projects.

The Clean Energy Council said the leak to News Corp papers showed the inquiry was “a biased political stitch-up by a small group of senators opposed to the cheapest forms of renewable energy”.

Professor Simon Chapman Photo: supllied

In his response to the committee, Professor Chapman took the same view.

He released on Monday his written responses to 62 “questions on notice” from Senator Madigan, declaring at the outset: “all but one of your committee are openly hostile to wind turbines. I therefore thought it prudent to declare that I support renewable energy, as do 82 per cent of the Australian population who in 2014 wanted the Renewable Energy Target to stay in place”.

Often barely containing his irritation at the line of questioning, Professor Chapman defended his use of the term “wing nuts” to describe anti-wind farm campaigners, which he had publicly used twice since 2009.

Senators Bob Day, Nick Xenophon, David Leyonhjelm and John Madigan. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

“In both cases, in my opinion, the utter absurdity of the claims being made by those opposing wind farms makes the expression “wing nuts” very apposite”.

Asked whether he had visited the homes of people claiming to be adversely “effected” (sic) by wind farm noise, Professor Chapman replied crisply: “No, I have not visited any such homes. Here is why. There are many people who passionately believe in things that I do not believe in. For example, every week many thousands use lottery number selection systems in the firm belief that this will increase their chances of winning the lottery; 51 per cent of Britons believe in aliens; a majority of the population believe in the supernatural and life after death; and whole religions believe in reincarnation.

“Some people earnestly believe that aircraft chemtrails are chemical sprays used by governments to “control” populations, and that mobile phones and towers, and Wi-Fi are deadly.

“I do not need to talk personally to any of these people or visit their homes in order to corroborate the information that I can obtain from a variety of sources which tells me clearly that these beliefs are irrational, and in fact either nonsense or faith-based beliefs.”

Professor Chapman acknowledged that some people who live near wind farms are distressed by the turbines and believe they are being harmed by them.

But he described this as unfounded, saying nearly every review completed since 2003 had shown that noise and health complaints about wind farms are a “psychogenic phenomenon” — having a psychological rather than physical cause.

Pointing to a family that had complained about infrasound emanating from a nearby wind turbine even when it was switched off, Professor Chapman said it said much about “the now sometimes bizarre sub-culture of complaint that has arisen among the small network of wind farm opponents in Australia”.

“Infrasound generated by mere walking has been shown to be louder than the noise of wind turbines … I assume your committee is not concerned about walking noise health impacts?”

Senator Madigan has been contacted for comment.

Windfarm "wing nuts": Public health expert takes aim at activists

Innovus Power: A Generator That Plays Well With Renewable Energy

Marc Hoffman, CEO of startup Innovus Power, believes that the synchronous generator, the workhorse of the power grid for the past century, needs a makeover for the green-powered future.

Sure, power turbines that run at a fixed speed — 60 hertz, or cycles per second, in the U.S. — have served the grid well to date. But the rise of wind and solar power, which rises and falls with the weather, and uses inverters to turn direct current into grid-ready alternating current, presents them with a serious set of challenges.

These include low efficiency when they’re forced to ramp up and down to match fluctuations in renewable energy, with some strict limits on how low they can go before they need to be shut off entirely. Beyond that, fixed-speed generators have problems maintaining stable frequency under those circumstances, Hoffman said during a presentation at last month’s Grid Edge Live conference in San Diego.

For microgrids that run diesel generators to back up renewable energy, these problems can add up to rocketing fuel costs, excessive wear and tear, and the need to significantly oversize generators to cover relatively rare moments of fluctuating load, he said. For the grid at large, it could place strict limitations on how much renewable energy can be integrated before the need arises for excessive amounts of fossil fuel-fired power plants, or expensive batteries, to back it up.

Innovus Power’s variable speed genset could solve those problems in one neat package, Hoffman believes. Developed over a decade of work in the marine engine and off-grid power space, the 600-kilowatt units combine a high-efficiency engine from Rolls Royce-owned manufacturer MTU, a permanent magnet-based generator from Finnish company Axco, and a AC-DC-AC power converter from wind turbine maker Northern Power Systems.

“We start by taking a generator and allowing it to run proportional to the load,” Hoffman said during his Grid Edge Live presentation. The unit’s engine has more flexibility than a traditional fixed-speed generator, he said. Then, that flexibility is expanded by the power conversion system, which provides a clean and stable source of alternating current.

The result, Hoffman told me in an interview, is a system that should cost less and work better than diesel-backed generators or lots of battery storage for the microgrid market, which GTM Research has estimated will grow to a cumulative $3.5 billion market in the United States by decade’s end. In the longer run, it could also serve the needs of utilities seeking a flexible, yet scalable, solution to integrating an ever-growing share of renewables on their grids.

“You may look at our platform on the surface and say, it’s more complex at the micro level — and yes it is,” he said. “But by solving what we think are the most important, issues at the micro level, it then makes everything beyond it much simpler.”

Building a variable-speed generator where others have failed

Variable-speed generators have been out there for decades, but they’ve struggled with key technical and engineering challenges. “There are a lot of companies that have tried to do what we’re doing, and have failed,” said Hoffman.

But in the last decade or so, consistent advances in power electronics have allowed the kind of combination system that Innovus is building to start to approach commercial viability, he said.

Innovus’s technology comes from Glacier Bay, a maker of diesel-electric marine propulsion systems, which Hoffman led as CEO. About two dozen ships now run on Glacier Bay systems, but the company couldn’t make the business work due to the relatively small market opportunity.

Innovus has raised between $40 million and $50 million from three unnamed investors, Hoffman said. They include two individuals he knew from his years working at General Electric and aircraft engine maker Allied Signal, as well as a third angel investor.

The company’s executive team includes CTO Mark Preston, a veteran of Vestas, United Technologies, and Northern Power Systems. It also includes Mark Levy, the VP of sales and business development, who previously held similar positions at aerospace giant Northrop Grumman and inverter maker Advanced Energy.

Innovus is looking to maintain high fuel efficiency and the constant delivery of clean and stable power while running at varying speeds. That allows the Innovus generator to run at lower than 30 percent capacity, a range that can only be accomplished with a steep sacrifice of efficiency by fixed-speed gensets.

“I don’t want to give too much away, but that’s in the know-how, that’s a big part of the secret sauce,” said Hoffman.

Innovus’s 600-kilowatt units are built to be stacked up to the megawatt scale, and come with a master control system that senses load. “That’s part of our IP, being able to detect load changes in a way that’s far more advanced than the way a synchronous generator would operate,” he said.

That should allow the system to integrate multiple power sources, whether they’re inverter-based renewable energy or battery storage systems, or traditional spinning generators. With the benefit of the Northern Power Systems’ power converter, “the frequency coming out of it is perfectly stable, high-quality power — whether I have 10 of them or 10,000 of them, I have positive contribution to my grid.”

At the same time, “I am balancing out the unevenness of my renewables — and instead of transmitting these huge load changes from the clouds overhead, with all these big solar farms and everything else, I’m leveling everything out, and filling in the voids with a highly dispatchable system,” he said.

Testing against traditional, battery-based options

All of these claims need to be backed up by real-world deployments, of course. Right now, Innovus is close to completing its first orders with one Alaska utility and another Australian project developer.

The Alaska customer is TDX Power, which has build a 1-megawatt wind farm and backup diesel generator array for the Aleutian island town of Sand Point, which has a 700-kilowatt peak demand. That’s forced TDX to curtail its wind production to as low as 20 percent of capacity at times.

According to an analysis using modeling tools from microgrid consulting firm Homer Energy, Innovus should be able to allow that wind capacity to be used for both electricity and additional uses like heating (notated as “dump power” on the chart below), while saving about 450,000 liters of fuel per year — a significant cost reduction for an island that must import all its fuel. 

In Australia, off-grid project development company EMC is looking at using the Innovus system to back up truck stops, mining operations and other remote locations where grid electricity is either very costly or simply unavailable. Unlike remote islands, diesel costs in mainland Australia are low enough to make a renewables-plus-batteries microgrid uneconomical — but not so low that the advantages of a flexible generator wouldn’t pay off, said Jamie Ally, director at EMC.

“There’s a lot of work happening off the grid in Australia, most of it diesel-fired,” he said. Mining companies pay roughly 70 cents per liter of diesel fuel, but often have to oversize their fixed-speed generator fleets to meet rare peaks in demand, which leaves much of that fleet sitting idle most of the time. Bringing in solar and wind power could offset those costs, but not without a certain amount of energy storage in the form of expensive lithium-ion batteries.

“The Innovus genset is going to allow us to achieve a very high renewable penetration without a very large battery,” he said. According to his analysis, the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of a Western Australian microgrid system using an Innovus genset comes to 25 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to 29 cents per kilowatt-hour for one using fixed-speed generators.

Beyond that, Innovus has a “technology pathway that looks at coupling renewables into their system in the future,” he said. “Because they have a DC bus in their genset, you could connect PV arrays and batteries on the DC bus.” That, in turn, “would allow you to eliminate all those inverters, and just use the inverter that comes with the Innovus generator, because it’s the same size as the system anyway. That’s a pretty attractive technology pathway and R&D pathway.” 

Hoffman noted that this capability to link multiple DC generation sources into a single Innovus DC bus could lend an additional level of simplification to microgrid operators seeking the flexibility to grow with the times. The call isn’t just coming from off-grid realms, he added.

“We have one very large utility in Asia that’s now very interested in running some pilot systems,” said Ally. “What they’re concerned about is load defection — industrial and commercial customers seeing rising costs, and creating their own generation.” 

One might argue that combining batteries with green power is a more environmentally friendly alternative, since it doesn’t imply any burning of fossil fuels. But pure battery systems still have a hard time penciling out in all but the most expensive fossil fuel markets. 

Even if batteries get to the point where the round trip is more cost-effective than burning fossil fuel, “that’s great” for Innovus, Hoffman said. “We’d still say, dispatch it when it’s there. But it’s in storage’s best interest to have fossil fuel, or a fuel cell, or some dispatchable power source beyond your storage.” 

Tags: alaska, australia, batteries, diesel, energy storage, generator, innovus power, island, load defection, microgrid, off-grid, power electronics, renewable energy, solar, wind

Innovus Power: A Generator That Plays Well With Renewable Energy

Booting Up: Solar's day in sun nearing end

We’re staring down the barrel of a solar boom-and-bust … that almost nobody is talking about.

Generous federal credits for residential solar panels are about to expire at the end of next year, guaranteeing that 2016 will be a year of false hope, with people rushing to jam south-facing photovoltaics on roofs nationwide.

And then on Dec. 31, 2016, the federal tax credit will drop from 30 percent down to 10 percent for businesses and zero for homeowners. In the parlance of “Game of Thrones” fans, winter is coming — for solar.

We’ve heard a lot of lofty talk about energy on the presidential campaign trail, but very few details that would indicate an extension of the credit could be afoot.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over the weekend released an overview of a seemingly far-fledged pledge to boost solar power seven-fold by 2020.

But Clinton’s plan was vague. Incredibly, it lacked any reference to America’s most important solar policy, the aforementioned Solar Investment Tax Credit. This credit has driven a whopping 1,600 percent growth in residential solar installations since 2007. And it’s the growth engine that made solar energy second only to natural gas in terms of all new electricity-generating capacity in the U.S. last year.

Without it, the Solar Energy Industries Association predicts new installations will decline 57 percent in 2017, triggering an investor freakout.

The long-term uncertainty of the tax credit has deeper implications, potentially affecting investment in new construction.

“We will generate enough renewable energy to power every home in America within 10 years of my taking office,” Clinton said in a statement. “As President, I will build on the work of this Administration and make America a clean energy superpower and a global leader in the fight against climate change. That’s a promise.”

No one has asked Clinton how her plan is feasible without renewing the investment tax credit.

Rival candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders has focused his solar policy on expanding renewable energy access to low-income citizens. On the Republican side, Donald Trump has blasted solar technology as a bad investment. Fellow Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush has called for all energy tax credits to be phased out — including, to his credit, fossil fuels.

The reality is that solar efficiency has gone up and production prices have gone down. Combine that with state and federal credits, and the payback time for most residential solar investment — even here in New England — is four or five years.

Republicans would be smart to get on board with this common-sense tax credit and Congress would be even smarter to extend it — taking it off the table as a possible presidential campaign topic.

Booting Up: Solar"s day in sun nearing end