2 million hectares of Queensland forest destroyed

 From The Guardian

More than 2m hectares (4.94m acres) of bushland in Queensland that included large swathes of possible koala habitat has been cleared over a five-year period, new analysis shows.

The research, commissioned by Greenpeace and conducted by the University of Queensland academic Martin Taylor, found almost all land clearing that occurred in the state between 2016 and 2021 was in areas where threatened species habitat was “likely to occur”.

Almost two-thirds of the cleared area, or 1.3m hectares, was marked by the Queensland government as “category x”, meaning it was exempt from state vegetation laws that regulate land clearing. Some 500,000 hectares of that land was koala habitat, the report said.

Taylor, an adjunct professor at the University of Queensland and former WWF-Australia conservation scientist, conducted the analysis by comparing state government land clearing data to federally mapped areas of environmental significance.

The majority of recorded land clearing occurred in regrowth forest that was more than 15 years old, which Taylor said made it capable of providing rich habitat for native animals.

“Industry voices like to say this is just controlling knee-high regrowth, so it’s just vegetation management,” he said. “[But] a 15-year-old eucalypt forest can be at least 10 to 15 metres high – they are forests.”

Taylor said that while laws in Queensland allow for regrowth forests to be reclassified as remnant once they mature, the requirements to do so are unclear.

“A lot of regrowth 15 years and older could have already become what they define as remnant, making it more difficult to clear,” he said.

Gemma Plesman, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said the report documented deforestation on a “frightening” scale. She said the state’s annual statewide land cover and tree study (Slats) shows land clearing was driven by beef production.

According to the beef industry, more than 10m cattle graze on Queensland pastures, making it the biggest beef producing state in the country.

“Fast food chains and retailers should be aware that the beef they are selling could come from properties that have bulldozed koala habitat with no government oversight,” Plesman said.

Plesman said environmental law reforms being developed by the federal government needed to address concerns around deforestation in Queensland to be effective.

“This shocking data should be a wake-up call,” she said. “They must address what has made Australia a global hotspot for deforestation.”

The Wilderness Society Queensland campaign manager, Hannah Schuch, said deforestation in Queensland was driving biodiversity loss.

“It’s having an impact on iconic native species like the koala, the greater glider, the red goshawk, it’s tearing down their homes and pushing them towards extinction,” she said.

“We know that erosion and sediment runoff from deforestation is another threat to the already at-risk Great Barrier Reef,” she said.

A spokesperson for the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said the government was in the consultation process to develop new national environment laws. However, three organisations familiar with the draft laws say they would continue to allow widespread deforestation.

Michael Guerin, the chief executive of Queensland farming body AgForce, questioned the accuracy of the Slats data which was used in Taylor’s analysis. He said deforestation rates were overstated. [Of course he did]

He suggested there should be an on-the-ground survey to confirm deforestation rates. [which is much more expensive and not necessarily more accurate. In fact aerial surveys often miss small areas of clearing, meaning the real total could be higher.]

“Let’s come out and ground truth it,” Guerin said. “Let’s get out on the landscape and spend the money and time so we’re confident about what’s happening. The industry and community is up for that.” [yeah, right]

Australia's "decline" in emissions is solely due to LULUCF (Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry)    There have already been questions and accusations that the data are dodgy.  One claim is that partially cleared land is not picked up by the satellites; only fully cleared land is.  This latest analysis simply adds to the evidence.  

Oh, and I beg you: stop eating beef.  

Masks work

 From The Guardian

Dr Jeannette Young (Chief Health Officer and Governor-Designate of Queensland) says masks work:

"Masks are so important, I can’t stress this enough. They are really, really important for the Delta variant. Last year at the start of the pandemic, there was a lot of concern about fomites (surfaces holding the virus) and how some people would manage masks and how they use them.

We now know it’s actually that physical barrier that as you breathe out, it traps the virus and if you’re on the other side, you then have a double protection of the person who is engaging with you, he might have the virus and you are breathing in.

They work, they are really, really good so please, I know they are awful, I hate them and I am sure I got home at night with a dry throat because I’ve been talking all day through them and I’m sure that’s the case with the teachers and I do sympathise, I really do, but it’s important. And for teachers, please avail yourselves of the vaccine that’s been made available to you because we now know with the Delta variant, kids are at risk of getting it and spreading it so kids are likely to spread it to teachers."

96% renewables possible

 From a Twitter thread by David Osmond, a wind engineer at Windlab

A common riposte by fossil-fuel spruikers to claims that we can get  to 100% renewables is that it is impossible.  David Osmond has done a simulation using actual data for wind, sunshine and demand in Australia's NEM (National Electricity Market) over a 3-year period which shows that we can get to 96% (including existing hydro) without difficulty.  The precise numbers will differ for each genertion region, but in principle, this analysis implies that similar percentages can be reached in any continent-wide grid.  ("Island" grids, i.e., grids not connected to other geographies, will require more storage)

Summary of my 96% renewable NEM simulation, as presented at ANU's 100% renewable workshop.  My data is based primarily on actual wind & solar generation data, using 3 yrs of data at 30 minute resolution.  It uses 24GW/81GWh of short-term storage plus Snowy2.0. 

Actual wind and solar generation has been scaled up to 38 GW of wind, 16 GW of utility PV and 35 GW of rooftop PV.  Also assumed a completed NSW-SA interconnector, Stage 1 of the Marinus cable to TAS, and the medium upgrade of the NSW-QLD interconnector. 

The remaining 4% came from "other".  In the short to medium term, "other" is likely to mean gas or demand management.  But in the longer term it could transition to biofuels/biogas, long-term storage such as Tasmania's battery of the nation, or a hydrogen based source.

During days of poor wind and/or solar resource, existing hydro and/or Snowy2.0 is run hard, which makes up much of the shortfall.  "Other" is used to fill the remaining shortfall. 

For the 24GW/81 GWh of short-term storage, it's worth noting that we already have ~1.4GW/25GWh from the existing pumped hydro projects at Tumut3, Shoalhaven & Wivenhoe.  The remainder could come from 3 million residential batteries and a small fraction of an EV car fleet. [On my (NPT's) calculation this is about 4 hours of storage]

QLD is a particularly important state, due [to] the relatively good performance of its wind on calm wintery days in the southern states. Its solar also performs relatively well on those days too.

Finally, note the negative correlation between Mt Emerald wind and solar/wind in every other state, at both 30-minute & daily timescales.  Nth QLD is particularly important to a mostly renewable NEM!

The full presentation is available at ANU's 2020 100% renewable workshop webpage.

One more tweet for @simonahac  & @gnievchenko

 A graph of the curtailed generation.  If we were able to send the curtailed generation to a hydrogen electrolyser, then the 2nd graph shows the capacity factor of that electrolyser, and how much of the curtailed power it could use.

Winds of change in Queensland

Qld wind farm. Source: AEMO

From the AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator, the grid operator for the NEM, the National Electricity Market, which covers all the mainland eastern states of Australia):

Wind power is a significant part of Australia’s transforming power system and energy industry. AEMO’s recent Renewable Integration Study forecasted that (at certain times) as much as 75 per cent of energy could be provided by wind and solar resources by 2025.

In total, the NEM has 17 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar generation capacity, with several regions among the world’s highest levels of wind and solar.  By 2025, AEMO’s Draft 2020 ISP forecasts in its ‘central’ scenario that this can increase to 27GW of wind and solar, including both utility and distributed solar PV.

In that central scenario, 15GW of wind power capacity is forecasted which equates to roughly 4,000 wind turbines or a square grid of 64 x 64 turbines (approximately 2,900 square km). Wind farms take up very little space in their required footprint, as they generally tend to coexist with agriculture and natural surroundings.

In Queensland, wind power complements the excellent solar resources in the state as wind often picks up in the afternoon as the sun sets (given the temperature differential between land and sea). Wind power also helps mitigate against what’s known as ‘the duck curve’ - people are putting thousands of megawatts of solar PV on their roofs which is dropping demand in the middle of the day in what, historically, was the peak period. This is called the duck curve, as a duck’s belly curves downwards.

The potential of large scale wind generation in the state has been advancing through wind farm projects such as Mt Emerald Wind Farm (180 megawatts) and Coopers Gap (453 megawatts), and Queensland now has more than 2,400 megawatts of large‑scale renewable energy capacity operating.

The latest large-scale wind farm proposed for the Wide Bay Burnett region (approximately an hour’s drive north of the state capital, Brisbane) is continuing to advance with the introduction of the Forest Wind Development Bill 2020 into Parliament late last month.

In their media release, State Development Minister Kate Jones said the introduction of the Bill marked the successful completion of the detailed assessment stage of the Forest Wind project.

“Forest Wind has the potential to be one of the largest grid-connected wind farms in the Southern Hemisphere and could help propel us towards our target of 50 per cent renewables by 2030,” she said. “This project could be an absolute game changer for Queensland. With the potential to generate up to 1,200 megawatts of electricity, it has the potential to supply one in four homes in our state.

According to the state government of Queensland, the Forest Wind Development Bill 2020 will outline a pathway for Forest Wind Holdings to obtain tenure to access, occupy, develop and manage the land for the purpose of the project, and limit the construction and operation of the wind farm to the Toolara, Tuan and Neerdie state forests.

Wow! 75% renewables by 2025!  I know, I know, only "at certain times".   But the trend is sharply rising. 

Big declines in Ozzie renewables costs

In the US, contracts signed between utilities/cities and providers of renewable electricity are usually made public, so we can see the steady declines in costs.  In Australia, we are dependent on snippets released only every so often.   In late 2017,  AGL (a big Ozzie electricity and gas utility) announced that its new wind farm near Broken Hill (in far western NSW) would deliver electricity at A$65/MWh, and that the cost of new solar was around A$70/MWh.  This year (2020), Acciona and the Queensland state government who are building Australia's largest wind farm seem to have a contracted cost of A$44/MWh, at least according to the state energy minister, who also said that solar was down to A$50/MWh.  This compares with the cost of new coal of A$130/MWh.

What that means is that in the 2 and a half years since October 2017, wind costs have fallen 37%, and solar 28%.  This is all the more remarkable since the Australian dollar has fallen 20% over that period, which would have increased prices.

At the same time, the cost of battery storage (in US$) has fallen 60% since 2017.

In this piece I discuss how much less coal we can burn and still have a stable grid, using old-fashioned techniques such as ramping up coal burning at night and using peaking gas to balance the grid, without having to rely on li-ion battery storage.  Given how much cheaper new wind and solar are compared to new coal, and even to existing coal (with marginal/operating costs around A50-A$60/MWh) grid operators are going to favour renewables over coal most of the time.  Add the large and ongoing falls in the cost of grid-scale batteries, and it's perfectly obvious, to everybody except the dotty Right, that coal is finished.

Since the markets for wind turbines, solar panels and inverters, and batteries are global, these trends will be duplicated everywhere.  Interest rates are different in different countries, demand profiles differ, the cost of getting permits differs, but the overall trends are the same.  How much further will wind, solar and battery costs have fallen in another two and a half years?  Any coal power stations started now won't be finished for 5 years.  And by then, they will be hopelessly uneconomic.  Rational governments will be preparing for the end of coal, not pretending that it still has a future.

AS far as I can work out, the nearest town to the new Acciona wind farm is Karara.
This is a photo of their state school. (Source: Wikipedia)

Rooftop solar pushing out coal

From IEEFA:

One of the most common questions among people concerned about climate change and cleaning up the energy grid, is what small contribution they can make. Will adding rooftop solar make any difference at all?

The answer is most certainly yes. The latest quarterly report from the Australian Energy Market Operator contains little doubt – the increase in rooftop solar, and in large-scale solar plants, is pushing coal out of the daytime market.

According to the Quarterly Energy Dynamics report for the December quarter, the changes in generation sources for the main grid were quite marked.

The biggest increase – and remember this is not average output, but the average increase in output – came from rooftop solar, which in 2019 posted a record installation rate of 2.13GW (for sub 100kW systems). Rooftop solar at its midday peak posted an average increase of more than 1.5GW over the quarter, showing the real impact on the generation mix.

The coal generators most affected by the increase in solar output – both rooftop and large-scale – were Eraring in NSW, where output declined by an average 231MW, and Gladstone and Stanwell in Queensland, where the average middle of the day output declined by 246MW. Other coal generators might also have been affected, but their output was interrupted by so many outages – both planned and unplanned – it was hard to tell.

In Queensland, the increased output of rooftop and large-scale solar has resulted in a changing pattern of charging by the state’s biggest pumped hydro facility at Wivenhoe, which is now under new ownership by the government owned CleanCo. Under its previous owner, CleanCo pumped mainly at night, supporting coal generation, but with CleanCo it is now doing most of its pumping during the day, soaking up the excess of cheap solar – the so-called solar duck curve – and helping prevent prices going negative.

Massive 1,200 MW wind farm for Queensland

From IEEFA:

Queensland is set to be host to one of the southern hemisphere’s largest wind farms after the Queensland government facilitated a deal that will see the 1,200MW Forest Wind project built in the state’s south-east.

Plans for the Forest Wind project would see the construction of 1,200MW of wind turbines in Queensland’s Wide Bay region in the state’s south-east, as part of a $2 billion investment that will significantly boost the state’s renewable energy generation.

The project is the result of facilitated negotiations by the Queensland government, that culminated in the creation of a joint venture between Noosaville based project developers CleanSight and investors Siemens Financial services.

The project will be developed on lands that currently consist of state forests, with the Queensland government confident the wind farm will be able to operate in harmony with the pine timber plantations. By utilising the space within the pine plantations, the project will effectively establish a 3 kilometre buffer zone between the project and the closest residential areas.

The project will now undergo the usual planning approval process, but the proponents believe construction could commence by the fourth quarter of 2020, with the first electricity being generated sometime in 2023.

There is a substantial pipeline of new renewable energy projects proposed for Queensland, estimated to be more than 18,000MW of proposed generation. If the Forest Wind project is completed, it would dwarf Queensland’s largest wind farm, the AGL’s Coopers Gap project which is under construction, which will have a maximum capacity of 453MW when completed.

Wind plus solar hybrid update

I talked about Windlab's hybrid wind/solar/storage Kennedy "energy park" here.  Cleantechnica has an update:

A world first renewable energy project has taken its first steps in Australia, with big-name companies Vestas, Tesla, and Windlab backed by Australia’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation partnering on a $160 million, 60 MW hybrid wind, solar, and energy storage project.

A flurry of announcements were published Thursday confirming the development of a 60 MW (megawatt) hybrid wind, solar, and energy storage by Australia’s international wind energy company Windlab. The AUD$160 million Kennedy Energy Park set to be built in central north Queensland as a joint venture between Windlab and Eurus Energy Holdings Corporation of Japan.

Kennedy Energy Park will be the first wind, solar, and storage hybrid generator connected to Australia’s national electricity network via a single connection point. It also serves as an industry-leading project demonstrating the complementary nature of the three technologies and proving their ability to work together. Vestas — who will provide the wind turbines for the project — describes the project as a “world first” of its kind.

The Kennedy Energy Park will consist of 43.2 MW worth of wind, made up of twelve Vestas V136, 3.6MW turbines; 15 MW worth of AC, single-axis tracking solar; and a 4 MWh Li Ion battery storage provided by Tesla.

Upon completion, Kennedy will be able to generate approximately 210,000 MWh of electricity per annum, which is the equivalent of enough electricity to supply over 35,000 average Australian homes.

[Read more here]

I estimated that they might need 3 hours of storage, but in fact they will have only about 10 minutes' worth.  Although the battery storage is enough to stabilise short-term fluctuations in output, it's not enough to provide the "load shifting" needed for the evening peak in demand.   I presume that the cost of battery storage remains a limiting factor.  To provide true baseload, they will need more storage, to wit, 72 MWh.  However, the new Kidston pumped hydro storage in N Queensland (a couple of hundred k's west of Kennedy) will have 2000 MWh of storage (more on that in a later post)

(As an aside, the last paragraph in the quote above suggests a daily household use of electricity of 16.4 kWh, a tad higher than my previous estimate of 15.9 kWh.  The shorter-range Tesla Model 3 will have a 50 kWh battery pack or 3 days' worth of power for the average Ozzie house.  The Tesla home battery, the Powerwall, has 13.5 kWh of storage, or enough to cover 19 hours of demand.  I suspect that most of the battery storage in Australia will initially be behind the meter)

Why wind has got so cheap.

Some more snippets from the Windlab Prospectus.

The first modern wind turbine built, in Denmark in 1978, had a capacity factor of just 7%.

Just to show how big wind turbines are.  This is one blade of the rotor.  Pic looks as if it was taken in Queensland.  Note solar panels on the roof of the small business on the right.

Soft denialists note: the wholesale price of electricity is determined by the most expensive bidder/generation source, and that is NOT renewables.  It is gas.  Gas in Oz is much more expensive than in the USA.  Gas is vulnerable to falling costs of storage.  When the costs of dispatchable electricity (from batteries or molten salt storage from CSP) fall below the costs of gas peaking plants, they will be favoured over gas in the bidding "stack".

This might appear to be of interest to Australia only.  But the technological shifts are global.  The cost declines in wind are global.  The gradual undercutting of coal is a global phenomenon.  What is different in different parts of the world is the applicable rate of interest/discount rate/cost of finance and the cost of connections to the grid.

Baseload from wind and solar

Those who are still wedded to coal (with an occasional foray into nuclear) keep on insisting that we need baseload electricity, and that wind and solar are too "variable" to allow us to rely on them.

This chart, which references the new Kennedy wind plus solar plus storage project by Windlab in Queensland's far north, shows how closely you can produce near baseload output from a combination of these two different renewables.

Source: Windlab Prospectus

The pine green shows measured daily output averaged over one year from wind, the dark blue from solar, and the top of the green shows the combined averaged daily output from wind and solar.  The black line shows averaged daily demand in Queensland.  The times of day when supply from wind plus solar is "above" the black line (they are on different scales) more power is being produced than is needed, while when the top of the pine green line is "below", it's the reverse.  So storage is needed; the batteries charging up overnight and discharging from midday to about 10 p.m., with the maximum "gap" at about 6 p.m. when everybody gets home and turns on the aircon and the kettle, before wind speeds have picked up.

Well, say the baseload promoters, you don't need storage with baseload, because it's always there.  Have another look at the chart.  The red line on the chart represents hypothetical baseload output from, say, a coal-fired power station.   There would be too much electricity produced between 10 p.m. and six a.m., and too little between 1 p.m. and 10 p.m.  You would still need storage. Or you would need peaking gas plants from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m., and you would have to wastefully vent steam from your coal power station to prevent the grid overloading between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., because you can't quickly dial down (or up) the heat output of a coal power station to meet variations in demand.  Both very expensive.  In fact batteries would be really useful to a grid with 100% baseload electricity generation too.  The only difference between a 100% baseload and a 100% renewable grid is that you you would need roughly twice as much storage capacity.

The three key objectives to consider are cost, reliability and carbon emissions.  A 100% renewable grid with a mixture of wind and solar produces no carbon, and will (with enough storage capacity) be completely reliable.   All good, but will it be cheaper?

That depends on the cost of storage and how much you need.  The new Tesla Powerpack utility-scale battery costs US$109/MWh (back of the envelope calcs, using the costings revealed by Elon Musk for the South Australia battery bank)  Reading off the chart, you'd need storage equal to half of demand for 3 hours and 20% of demand for 5 hours, or a total storage of 2 and a half hours of daily demand.  Let's say 3 hours, to be safe.  Wind and solar are half the cost of coal, even ignoring coal's CO2 emissions and lethal pollution.  Wind is A$55/MWh, solar (at that latitude) A$65/MWh. Assuming capacity factors of 40% for wind and 25% for solar, about 80% of the output will be wind, 20% solar, so roughly A$57 for the electricity output.  Cost of storage in A$ is $145/MWh (US$109 /0.75)  You'll need 3 hours total storage to cover 24 hours demand, so that's $145/24*3, or  A$18/MWh.  Total cost = A$57 + A$18, or $75/MWh⧫.  New coal is A$110/MWh before a carbon tax, and that ignores the storage needs of baseload ($9/MWh?) or the cost of gas peaking power plants, and venting steam at night (X$/MWh??)  So, A$75 vs A$120, or a 40% discount for renewables over coal, with zero carbon emissions and complete reliability.

A combination of wind plus solar with storage can provide baseload, more cheaply and much more cleanly than coal can.  There is no case for baseload coal.  Existing coal power stations will keep going until they wear out, but there will be no need for new ones to be built.





⧫ Incidentally, the same price that the new CSP plant in South Australia will be selling its output to the SA government.  But the CSP plant will provide 8 hours of storage.  CSP still a lot cheaper than batteries.

The Peaking Duck Curve

Ergon Energy, the state-owned  Queensland "gentailer" is responsible for supplying power to most of Queensland outside the densely populated south eastern corner.  This chart shows net residential electricity demand, i.e., net after electricity produced by rooftop solar.  Each year, the midday dip has got bigger, and the evening ramp up larger.  In 2015, net demand went negative for 90 minutes at midday.

(Source)

I liked this chart because it gives you a very rough idea of how many hours of storage is needed.  Looking at it from the net demand side, you'd need storage from about 16:00 to about 1:30. The peak after midnight is prolly from water heaters, which were programmed to turn on after midnight in the days when all power was produced by baseload generators.  Those timers should be shifted to midday.  So that suggests (in the absence of wind) that we need 8 or 9 hours of storage.  Looking at it from the supply side, we'd need enough storage to store electricity from  6:30 to 16:00, which is 11 to 12 hours.

The new Tesla Powerwall will store 14 kWh.  Average annual electricity use by households in Queensland is 5793 kWh, or 16 kWh a day.  That means that one Powerwall battery should almost cover net demand from 16:00 to 6:00.    I keep on meaning to do a proper estimate of the Powerwall's LCOE, but a rough and ready guess would be AU 13.6 cents/kWh (=A$10,500 including GST and installation, divided by 14 kWh*365 days*15 years)   Now my electricity retailer, here in Victoria,  charges AU 28.5 cents per kWh., including GST.  I imagine costs in Queensland aren't that different.  Which means that it makes sense if you already have solar panels to install a Powerwall battery "behind the meter".  And as behind the meter storage becomes more common, the "peaking duck curve" will flatten.