Australia reaches 50% renewables

 

In Q4 2025, the percentage of renewables in Australia's main electricity market, the NEM, reached 50%, or to be precise, 49.9%.  This is the best quarter of the year for renewables' share because wind and sun are strong, but since it is spring, demand for electricity for air conditioning is low.   The average percentage of electricity demand provided by renewables for the whole year was just 42.9%, up from 5.8% in 2008.  The percentage of renewables in the NEM is rising by ~3.5% per annum, which means that we're still 16 years before it provides 100% of demand throughout the year.

All the same, it's a landmark.  In 2008, almost all the renewables provided came from hydro, and the growth of wind power was slow, because in those early days, it was more expensive than coal, especially existing coal power stations.  Governments, both state and national, provided high feed-in tariffs for rooftop solar, which in Q4 2025 provided an astonishing 17.6% of total electricity demand, even though subsidies for rooftop solar have now been withdrawn.  The rapid growth in rooftop solar led to everybody in the system becoming familiar with it, with the result that soft costs (permitting, etc.) are low.  A very successful policy.  Rooftop solar in Australia is much cheaper than in the USA because of this factor.  Obviously, the panels cost the same, it's the soft costs which are so high.

The Right has opposed renewables all the way, and even now that renewables are cheaper than even existing coal power stations, still is hostile.  For example, Queensland (run by a right-wing party) has banned new wind and solar farms, despite their cost advantage.  And at national level, the so-called Liberal Party and the Murdoch press continue to say that high electricity costs are because of renewables--they're not, they're because of gas.  And they continue to spruik nuclear, which in Australia is entirely unnecessary, and also insanely expensive, more expensive than new coal.

It seemed such a long way to go, back in 2008, and progress was so slow.  And yet, we are half-way there!  I hope that as solar, wind and batteries continue to drop in price, the transformation of Australia's electricity grid will accelerate, but here in Australia, as elsewhere, vested interests are doing their damnedest to stop it.  But the public knows that installing solar will save them money, and rooftop solar installations continue.  Outside Queensland, Labor-controlled states have fairly aggressive renewables targets, driving continued growth in wind and utility-scale solar.  

Despite the opposition, we'll get to 100%, sooner than we got to 50%.

[If you want to play around with the data, you can do so here]

Solar panels would require < 0.01% of Oz's land

The soft denialists ("Yes, global warming is real, but it would be too hard to do anything to stop it, so let's just go on using coal")  state that solar panels would have to cover the whole country to provide us with enough electricity.  This is rubbish.  (For example, rooftop solar in South Australia provides 20% of the State's electricity.  Just panels on rooftops.)

From Dr Ian Mackay, using data from the Clean Energy Council:

🌞 Total land required to replace coal fired energy 🌞 Example assumes all solar:120,000 hectares 🌞 That’s less than 0.016 percent of Australia’s total land currently used for agriculture [i.e., less than 0.01% of Oz's total land area] 🌞 Australian agriculture currently accounts for 58% of our land use 🌞And agrisolar = panels + grass/sheep etc

Politicians favouring fossil fuels are idiots

 From Professor Ray Wills:

Only excuse for politicians who

• continue subsidies on costly fossil fuels
• think nuclear power is cheap
• claim clean energy is expensive
• want to end decarbonisation?

Idiots

Only idiots ignore the data

My model projections from 2018, and updated 2025:

Prof Wills wasn't 100% correct in his forecasts back in 2018 (nearly 8 years ago).  On the other hand, he was among the least wrong.  The IEA (International Energy Agency), for example, consistently, year after year, underestimated the growth in renewables, and overestimated the growth in demand for fossil fuels.  I myself thought that emissions from coal peaked in 2018, and instead there was a surge in electricity generation from coal in China.  You can read about my latest forecast that emissions have peaked, here.

2018 forecasts

Wills sees oil peaking in 2027, and coal and gas peaking now.

2025 forecasts

Note that the two charts below show primary energy consumption, which is much more than, say, electricity production, because three-quarters of the fuel burnt to generate electricity or to power an ICEV is wasted as heat.

2018 forecasts

2025 forecasts

You'll notice that Wills doesn't think nuclear will grow:

Most important reason nuclear isn't viable in one graph

Apart from long build, it's expensive electricity, [and] if it's really hot, you need to turn them off

Not to mention that all the lethal by-products. 

Global solar output overtook nuclear output 2025

Global wind output will pass nuclear output early 2028

Now here's where some peeps lose it and call me a loony:

[In] my model projection, renewable[s] will pass fossil fuel primary energy consumption in 2035 

Does that mean that we will have halved emissions by then?  No, because there is still growth in demand.  But each year that the share of renewables rises means that demand growth will be increasingly supplied by renewables.  

Golf courses take up more land than solar farms

Coal apologists are always going on and on about how solar panels will cover the whole world if we go solar and don't keep on using coal.  It is utter rubbish, of course.  And here's a nice chart showing how absurd it is.  By the way, 13% of all electricity in Australia comes from rooftop solar.  Yes.

 From Dr Paul Dorfman

The Ozzie Right's nuclear plans are nonsense

Sizewell C in the middle of the image with the existing Sizewell B in the top right.
Source: Wikipedia

From IEEFA

 

The UK’s Financial Times has recently reported that the 3,260 megawatt Sizewell C project – expected to be the UK’s next nuclear power plant – is now likely to cost around GBP40 billion, or $80 billion in Australian dollars, to construct. That equates to $24,540 per kilowatt of capacity.

Sizewell C’s latest cost blow-out offers further confirmation that the opposition Liberal-National Coalition’s costing for its proposal to build nuclear power plants in Australia is far too low at $10,000 per kilowatt, and completely unrealistic. It supports IEEFA’s findings on the cost of construction for other nuclear power plants, detailed in our September 2024 report Nuclear in Australia would increase household power bills. The Sizewell C reactor’s newly estimated capital cost is about 2.5 times the capital cost used in the Frontier Economics modelling that has underpinned the Coalition’s plans.

At present the UK Government is yet to commit to construction of Sizewell C and an official costing for the project is yet to be released. But the latest information in Financial Times, which has reportedly come from government and industry sources close to the project, reinforces the findings from our prior report: that for nuclear power to be viable in Australia, large increases in power prices would be required.

If the reported $80 billion cost only covers the plant’s construction and doesn’t account for the substantial debt interest costs likely to be accumulated over the targeted nine-year construction period, then Sizewell C would need the wholesale power price to rise to average out at around $300 per megawatt-hour to be commercially viable. Even if this debt interest cost is accounted for in the $80 billion cited by the Financial Times, then it would still need the wholesale power price to rise to around $230 per megawatt-hour.

By comparison, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), over the 2023-24 financial year electricity retailers across Australia’s National Electricity Market needed to pay $132 per megawatt-hour on average for wholesale energy to service their household customers.

Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor has asserted on repeated occasions that any government investment in nuclear power plants would be made on the requirement that they were “commercially viable”, with no subsidies provided that would hit the Government’s budget. So, for a nuclear plant with similar costs to those reported for Sizewell C to be commercially viable in Australia, wholesale energy prices would need to rise by $98 to $168 per megawatt-hour, relative to 2023-24 levels, to enable cost recovery. This equates to a 74% to 127% rise in wholesale prices, which would be charged on to household electricity consumers.

Such wholesale prices would mean that average household power bills across the states in the National Electricity Market would increase by between $510 and $874 per year prior to application of GST. Once GST is added then the increase will be between $561 and $961 – assuming electricity retailers don’t add a margin on top. This is based on ACCC data, which indicates average household annual consumption is 5.2 megawatt-hours.

Over the last year, utility-scale solar cots $52/MWh, and wind $79/MWh.  These Sizewell C costings imply that nuclear will cost at least 4.5 times as much as utility-scale solar, 8 times as much as rooftop solar, and  3 times as much as wind.  So why is the LNP fixated on nuclear as a "cure" for whatever is supposed to ail the Australian electricity market, when it's so expensive?   Well, it'll take 15 years, at least, for any nuclear power station to be built.  And in the meantime we'll have to go on using coal and gas.  In fact, the LNP proposes to stop all new renewables construction if it wins the upcoming election.

What about the "unreliability" and "variability" of renewables?  Wind and solar are so cheap we could have double the capacity we need, and throw away the surplus, and it would still be much cheaper than nuclear.  And that's ignoring battery farms and the huge storage capacity of EVs when the car/light truck fleet has transitioned to fully electric.

Gab, gab, gab --- but do nothing

 Updating this chart by O=C=O  (updated for 2023 data)

Gab, gab, gab.  All talk but no action.  Solemn promises to do something, followed by doing nothing.  Greenwashing, which persuades an increasingly anxious public that something is being done, when in fact it isn't.  Fake carbon offset schemes.  Lies, obfuscations, distractions.  While climate dissent is criminalised.   Meanwhile, right wing parties, in the US and Australia, want to stop deployment of renewables altogether.

And to make ourselves feel better, we gab, gab, gab.  And when I say 'we', I mean almost all of us.  For example, at no extra cost to ourselves, we could give up meat, cutting our emissions by 25%.  But we do not.

Climate crisis: Average world incomes to fall by one fifth

Soft denialists keep on telling us that it will be too expensive to cut emissions.   The cost of not acting will be far greater.

From The Guardian

The climate crisis will mean that average incomes will fall by almost a fifth within the next 26 years compared with what they would have been if there was no such crisis, according to a study that predicts the costs of damage will be six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C.

Rising temperatures, heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense extreme weather are projected to cause $38tn (£30tn) of destruction each year by mid-century, according to the research, which is the most comprehensive analysis of its type ever undertaken, and whose findings are published in the journal Nature.

The hefty toll – which is far higher than previous estimates – is already locked into the world economy over the coming decades as a result of the enormous emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere through the burning of gas, oil, coal and trees.

This will inflict crippling losses on almost every country, with a disproportionately severe impact on those least responsible for climate disruption, further worsening inequality.

The paper says the permanent average loss of income worldwide will be 19% by 2049, in comparison to a baseline without the impacts of climate breakdown. In the United States and Europe the reduction will be about 11%, while in Africa and south Asia it will be 22%, with some individual countries much higher than this.

“It’s devastating,” said Leonie Wenz, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the authors of the study. “I am used to my work not having a nice societal outcome, but I was surprised by how big the damages were. The inequality dimension was really shocking.”

The study also looked at the second half of this century, where human actions now can still make a big difference. If business as usual continues, the authors projected average income losses of more than 60% by 2100. But if emissions fall to net zero by mid century, income declines will stabilise by mid century at about 20%.

The economic hit predicted by the paper is more than twice as high as any previous analysis.

Behind that difference is a more sophisticated methodology. While most previous studies considered only damages related to rising temperatures at a national level, the new paper also incorporated rainfall and extreme weather impacts using 40 years of data from 1,600 subnational regions. This is important because weather is a local rather than national phenomenon. The study also considered how impacts tend to persist over months and years, rather than being only a short-term hit.

The new paper says countries such as Germany (-11%), France (-13%), the US (-11%) and UK (-7%) will lose out even by mid century. Worst affected will be countries in already hot regions including Botswana (-25%), Mali (-25%), Iraq (-30%), Qatar (-31%), Pakistan (-26%) and Brazil (-21%).

Maximilian Kotz, an author of the study, said: “Strong income reductions are projected for the majority of regions, including North America and Europe, with south Asia and Africa being most strongly affected. These are caused by the impact of climate change on various aspects that are relevant for economic growth such as agricultural yields, labour productivity or infrastructure.”

Although the newly painted scenario is far worse than anything that came before, the authors acknowledge it is still conservative and incomplete. There are many major climate impacts that have not yet been incorporated into the analysis, including heatwaves, sea level rise, tropical cyclones, tipping points, and damage to natural ecosystems and human health. The authors said these factors would be added to future models.

“We are providing a more comprehensive picture but this is not the final picture,” Wenz said. “It is likely a lower bound.”

The authors said the study showed the need for stronger adaptation strategies, particularly in poorer, worst-affected countries, to cope with the changes up to 2050 that are already locked into the climate system.

It also found that reducing emissions was far cheaper than doing nothing and accepting more severe impacts. By 2050, it calculated mitigation costs – for example, from phasing out fossils and replacing them with renewable energy – to be $6tn dollars, which is less than a sixth of the median damage costs for that year of $38tn.

Anders Levermann, the head of complexity science at the Potsdam Institute, said: “It is on us to decide: structural change towards a renewable energy system is needed for our security and will save us money. Staying on the path we are currently on will lead to catastrophic consequences. The temperature of the planet can only be stabilised if we stop burning oil, gas and coal.”

Source: NOAA
Temperatures continue to rise inexorably

 

Massive methane leaks from rubbish dumps

From The Guardian

There have been more than 1,000 huge leaks of the potent greenhouse gas methane from landfill waste dumps since 2019, the Guardian can reveal.

Analysis of global satellite data from around the world shows the populous nations of south Asia are a hotspot for these super-emitter events, as well as Argentina and Spain, developed countries where proper waste management should prevent leaks.

Landfills emit methane when organic waste such as food scraps, wood, card, paper and garden waste decompose in the absence of oxygen. Methane, also called natural gas, traps 86 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over 20 years, making it a critical target for climate action. Scientists have said emissions from unmanaged landfills could double by 2050 as urban populations grow, blowing the chance of avoiding climate catastrophe.

A total of 1,256 methane super-emitter events occurred between January 2019 and June 2023, according to the new data. Pakistan, India and Bangladesh lead the list of nations with the most large leaks, followed by Argentina, Uzbekistan and Spain.

Landfill emissions can be reduced by creating less organic waste in the first place, diverting it away from landfill, or at least capturing some of the methane that is being released from the landfills. Action to stem methane leaks slows global heating faster than almost any other measure and is often low-cost, with some measures even paying for themselves when the captured gas is sold as fuel.

Methane emissions have accelerated since 2007 and cause a third of the global heating driving the climate crisis today. The acceleration has alarmed scientists, who fear it is the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating and could trigger catastrophic climate tipping points. The rapid rise appears to be due to global heating driving more methane production in wetlands – a potential vicious circle that makes cuts of human-caused methane emissions even more urgent.

Decomposing waste is responsible for about 20% of human-caused methane emissions. Fossil fuel operations cause 40% of emissions, and the Guardian revealed there were more than 1,000 super-emitter events from oil, gas and coal sites in 2022 alone, many of which could be easily fixed. Cattle and paddy fields cause the other 40% of emissions.

Prof Euan Nisbet, a methane expert at Royal Holloway University of London, said: “Big landfills make a great deal of methane but it doesn’t cost much to bulldoze soil over a stinking, burning landfill. It’s not rocket science.”

Microbes in the soil convert methane into CO2. “Then it’s lost 97% of its greenhouse impact,” Nisbet said.

Carlos Silva Filho, president of the International Solid Waste Association, said the global methane pledge made by 150 countries to cut 30% of methane emissions by 2030 could not be achieved without tackling emissions from the waste industry. “Cutting methane is the only solution to meet the global 1.5C temperature target,” he said. “If we really focus on reducing methane emissions from the waste sector, it is a gamechanger.” About 40% of the world’s waste still goes to unmanaged dumps.

Antoine Halff, a co-founder of the company Kayrros, which provided the satellite image analysis to the Guardian, said: “Waste is a big source [of methane] and in countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh it’s not only a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions but it’s also a lost opportunity to tap a fuel resource that could help meet the country’s energy needs.”

The satellite that Kayrros uses orbits the planet 14 times a day and provides global coverage, giving the location of a leak to within about six miles. Higher-resolution satellites that orbit less frequently can pinpoint the waste facilities responsible.

[Read more here]

 

It's so infuriating.  The techniques we have to reduce emissions are cheap and effective.  They just require competence and determination to make them happen.  Wind & solar are now the cheapest source of bulk electricity almost everywhere.   I know that the transition will take time --- after all, we are making the greatest energy transition in the fastest time, ever.  Yet it still seems too slow to me.   If we subsidised EVs more heavily, they would quickly reach 100% of new cars sales, and a few years after that, close to 100% of the total car fleet.   We can massively reduce methane emissions, relatively cheaply.  Yet we don't. 

It seems simple: the costs of the climate catastrophe are already exceeding the costs of going green. Yet still we dither and phaff.  It's all doable, it's all technically feasible, and it's all relatively cheap.  The obstacles are not technological or economic.  They're administrative and political.  And that is shocking and disgraceful.

The boom in Chinese solar

 From a toot by Boris Muellers

It looks more and more likely that China's emissions will peak this year.  And if the world's largest emitter can do it, what excuse do we have for not doing it?  As Moellers says:

"Wir Deutsche werden nicht alleine die Welt retten können!!! Solange China in Sachen Klimaschutz nichts macht, müssen wir auch nichts machen!!! ... OH!"

My free translation:  "We Germans will not be able to save the world by ourselves!   As long as China does nothing to protect the climate, we should also do nothing!  Oh, wait ....." 

And of course, that applies to all of us, not just Germany.  What will the next excuse of the soft denialists be?

Global warming warning --- 85 years ago

 [From a toot by Ed Hawkins]

85 years ago.

In April 1938, Guy Callendar published his seminal paper showing that Earth’s land areas had warmed over the previous 50 years.

He also suggested that man-made CO₂ emissions had caused around half of the observed warming.

85 years ago.

https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/

The theory that increasing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere would cause warming was developed earlier by Fourier, Foote, Tyndall, Arrhenius & others.

Their work enabled Callendar to join the pieces together and demonstrate a human-caused increase in both CO2 & global land temperatures and, importantly, link these together.

The work of Plass, Keeling, Revelle, Manabe & others would subsequently solidify these ideas.

Climate science has a long history we should use to communicate more.

 

Well he wasn't the first:  a woman called Eunice Foote proved in 1856 that CO2 trapped more heat than air, and maintained it longer.   Then there was Fourier, a French polymath genius.  And Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist.  Science has been clear about global warming for 170 years.

And still we do too little to avert catastrophe.  Politicians, owned by fossil fuel companies.  Other companies pretending to care, but just greenwashing.  Right-wing idiots, too stupid to realise they've been had.  And hoi polloi, hoping that somebody else will solve the problem.

Global heating accelerating

 From a toot by Peter Gleick

Global warming is not just happening, it's accelerating rapidly.
That means the impacts and consequences are accelerating as well.

So, up from ~0.2 per decade to ~0.3 per decade.  Note that the 2023 datum is only so far this year (Jan-Sept).    The rest of this year is likely to push this year's average up even further, because of El Niño, taking us beyond 1.5 degrees above the 1850-1900 average.  Already.  Long before 2040.

And still we permit emissions to rise.  Still we make excuses for inaction.  Still we allow oil and gas companies to buy politicians.  

Why Rowan Atkinson is wrong

Rowan Atkinson

Rowan Atkinson did a piece in The Guardian which was filled with errors. Simon Evans of Carbon Brief responds.

In a widely shared comment piece for the Guardian, comedian Rowan Atkinson said he felt “duped” by the green claims about electric vehicles (EVs).

In support of his contention, however, Atkinson repeats a series of repeatedly debunked talking points, often used by those seeking to delay action on the climate crisis.

Moreover, he suggests alternatives to EVs that are not yet widely available, would be less beneficial to the climate and are guaranteed to be more costly.

Atkinson’s biggest mistake is his failure to recognise that electric vehicles already offer significant global environmental benefits, compared with combustion-engine cars.

While EVs won’t solve all of the problems associated with car use – from traffic congestion through to our increasingly sedentary lifestyles – they are an essential part of tackling the climate emergency.

In its latest report, for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said, with “high confidence”, that EVs have lower greenhouse gas emissions than conventional cars. The IPCC said that electric vehicles not only “offer the greatest low-carbon potential for land-based transport”, but their use would save money. (Despite elevated electricity prices, EVs are still much cheaper to run than petrol cars in the UK.)

Indeed, without a widespread shift to EVs, there is no plausible route to meeting the UK’s legally binding target of net zero greenhouse emissions by 2050 – and the same is true globally.

Contrary to Atkinson’s article, EVs cut emissions in the “bigger picture” taking into account vehicles’ full life cycles, from the extraction of oil or mining of lithium for batteries through to actually driving the cars.

As Carbon Brief noted some years ago, EVs already cut planet-warming emissions by two-thirds on a life cycle basis relative to combustion engine cars in the UK – and the benefits are growing.

Atkinson cites Volvo figures showing emissions from producing EVs to be 70% higher. This is misdirection. While many details of the Volvo study have been thoroughly debunked, the more important issue is that the emissions from producing batteries, while significant, are quickly outweighed by the CO2 emissions from fuelling petrol and diesel cars.

Atkinson is also wrong to say that the UK government’s plan to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 “seems to be based on conclusions drawn from only one part of a car’s operating life: what comes out of the exhaust pipe”.

For starters, the government’s cost-benefit analysis of its policy plans for cars talks in detail about life cycle emissions. Specifically, it mentions government-commissioned research that proves EVs offer a large and growing emissions benefit on a life cycle basis.

Echoing Carbon Brief’s findings, the analysis says: “BEVs [battery electric vehicles] are expected to reduce GHG emissions by 65% compared to a petrol car today, and this rises to 76% by 2030.”

That same analysis gives one answer to Atkinson’s touting of hydrogen as an “interesting alternative fuel” to replace petrol and diesel. The research shows that hydrogen vehicles would only cut emissions by 39% today, relative to petrol engines, potentially rising to 56% by 2030.

Another answer is that there are still only 72,000 hydrogen-fuelled fuel-cell vehicles on the planet, accounting for a tiny fraction of the roughly 1.5bn cars on the road globally. In comparison, about 14m EVs are due to be sold this year alone, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Even Toyota, the carmarker most closely associated with pushing hydrogen vehicles and cited in Atkinson’s article, has recently started to follow the rest of the market in shifting towards EVs.

Atkinson goes on to suggest hydrogen for trucks, inaccurately claiming electrification is a “non-starter” due to the weight of batteries. Yet manufacturers sold 60,000 electric trucks last year and now have 220 heavy-duty vehicle models on the market, according to the IEA. European electric truck sales grew fourfold in the first quarter of this year alone, according to Volvo.

As Auke Hoekstra at the Eindhoven University of Technology has argued, electric trucks will not have a major weight disadvantage over diesels. More importantly, says Hoekstra, they will be much cheaper to own and run.

The main problem with hydrogen vehicles is the same as for the “synthetic fuel” that Atkinson is also keen to promote. Specifically, both of these alternatives are incredibly inefficient, requiring many times more energy to drive the same distance.

Figures from NGO Transport and Environment show EVs can be driven two to five times further on the same energy as would be needed if using hydrogen or synthetic fuels. This thermodynamic disadvantage inevitably makes these alternatives much more costly to run than EVs.

A few of Atkinson’s other claims are worth mentioning.

• He says EV batteries only last “about 10 years”. Yet “most modern lithium-ion units are likely to last the lifetime of the car”, according to Autocar. Tesla’s batteries are “designed to outlast the vehicle”.
• He complains that new cars are only kept for three years before being sold. Yet he does not reference the secondhand market, and the fact that British people are keeping their cars for longer than ever.
• He claims that it is better to keep running old petrol cars than to replace them with EVs. Yet a new EV would start benefiting the climate in less than four years, relative to an old combustion engine.
• He claims that lithium-ion batteries contain rare earth elements. They do not.

In concluding, Atkinson says people should “hold fire” on EVs. This is linked to the false premise that EVs “will be of real, global environmental benefit one day, but that day has yet to dawn”.

The alternatives he promotes are not yet widely available, are less beneficial for the environment – and are thermodynamically guaranteed to be much more costly.

In contrast, and contrary to Atkinson’s central claim, EVs already offer significant emissions savings – and their widespread use is central to meeting UK and global climate goals.

Simon Evans is the deputy editor and senior policy editor at Carbon Brief

Higher crop yields --- with solar panels

From The Guardian

Solar panels are not a new way of providing cheap power across much of the African continent, where there is rarely a shortage of sunshine. But growing crops underneath the panels is, and the process has had such promising trials in Kenya that it will be deployed this week in open-field farms.

Known as agrivoltaics, the technique harvests solar energy twice: where panels have traditionally been used to harness the sun’s rays to generate energy, they are also utilised to provide shade for growing crops, helping to retain moisture in the soil and boosting growth.

An initial year-long research collaboration between the University of Sheffield, World Agroforestry and the Kajiado-based Latia Agripreneurship Institute has shown promising results in the semi-arid Kajiado county, a 90-minute drive from the Kenyan capital of Nairobi and this week the full project will be officially launched.

For example, cabbages grown under the 180, 345-watt solar panels have been a third bigger, and healthier, than those grown in control plots with the same amount of fertiliser and water.

Other crops such as aubergine and lettuce have shown similar results. Maize grown under the panels was taller and healthier, according to Judy Wairimu, an agronomist at the institute.

“We wanted to see how crops would perform if grown under these panels,” said Wairimu. But there is another pragmatic reason behind the technology: doubling up the output of the same patch of earth to generate power and cultivate food can go a long way towards helping people with limited land resources, she said.

According to Dr Richard Randle-Boggis, a researcher at the University of Sheffield’s Harvesting the Sun Twice project, the trial initiative will determine the potential of agrivoltaic systems in east Africa.

“We needed to build a test system to see if this technology will be suitable for the region,” Randle-Boggis said, reiterating that, unlike conventional solar mini-grid systems, agrivoltaics have the additional benefits of improving food and water security, while strengthening people’s resilience against the climate crisis, as well as providing low-carbon electricity.

The solar panels do not just reduce water loss from plants and the soil – their shade mitigates some of the stress experienced by plants due to high day temperatures and UV damage, Randle-Boggis said.

Agrivoltaics can have a notable impact on household income in remote locations such as Kajiado. “Women here can spend up to 300 Kenyan shillings (£2) on a bodaboda (motorcycle taxi) fare to the market just to buy vegetables worth 100 Kenyan shillings,” said Anne Macharia, head of training at Latia Agripreneurship Institute.

The solar panels can be placed three metres from the ground, providing ample room for a farmer to work below, or higher in bigger systems to allow access for agricultural machinary.

Randle-Boggis acknowledged the technology has limitations, but says that in “areas of Kenya which are not currently suitable for horticulture, it may be possible to grow other crops under the improved environmental conditions under the panels”.

In other countries including France, the US and Germany, the technology has been employed successfully.

I talked about sheep doing better under solar panels, here. And about parking lots can be covered with solar, here.  Soft denialists complain that there won't be enough land for all the solar panels needed to provide our electricity.  This is nonsense, but in any event, the land can be dual use: over grazing, crops, parking lots and on the roofs of buildings.

A research collaboration between the University of Sheffield and the Latia Agripreneurship Institute in the semi-arid Kajiado county had promising results. Photograph: Christine Lamanna/Icraf

Death by degrees

From The New Daily

Far from implementing the vision of COP26 in Glasgow, as intended, COP27 in Egypt signed the death warrant for 1.5 degrees.

That number was the ambition of COP21 in Paris: Keeping warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial age global mean temperatures, and preferably 1.5 degrees.

Over the seven years since then, the world’s politicians and business leaders have been quietly slinking away from that while saying the opposite. It’s suicide by politics.


That has been exposed in Egypt with a deal on cash bribes to poor countries, but little else.

Keeping warming to 1.5 degrees now looks impossible, and according to David Karoly, one of Australia’s leading climate scientists, there’s an 80 per cent chance of 2 degrees, while 3 degrees is 50/50.

What’s more, says Karoly, given that the sea is cooler than the land, a global mean temperature rise of 2 degrees means at least 3 degrees on the land, where we all live. And 3 degrees global mean equals an unliveable 4 degrees on land.

Last year the Australian Academy of Science published a report co-authored by David Karoly, titled: Risks to Australia of a 3-degree Warmer World.

It makes confronting reading, especially considering this is now a 50 per cent likelihood.

So the question is: At what percentage likelihood of disaster, agreed by most scientists, should a government seriously prepare for it? Wait till it’s 100 per cent? How about 80 per cent? If you knew there was a 50 per cent chance of a cyclone hitting your house, would you at least board up the windows?

Australia’s exports of fossil fuels represent about 17 per cent of GDP and the tax revenue from the companies doing it would come close to paying for the defence budget, or the Commonwealth public service.

Over the next 20-30 years, this revenue will disappear as the world heats up and switches to renewables at the same time, with increasing urgency.


What is the plan to deal with the consequences of 2-3 degrees of warming, as laid out by the Academy of Science, along with the loss of one-sixth of the national GDP and a big chunk of government revenue?

The answer, apparently, is that Australia will be a “renewable energy superpower”, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been saying for a few years.

It is a meaningless slogan.

The only realistic prospect for renewable energy exports is hydrogen, and in that product Australia has nothing like the scale or competitive advantages it has in coal and LNG.

“Green hydrogen” is produced by applying renewable energy to water through electrolysis that separates the oxygen and hydrogen. It requires an enormous investment – a desalination plant, electrolyser and a machine to combine the hydrogen with nitrogen to produce ammonia for export, plus another machine at the other end to split the ammonia into hydrogen and nitrogen again.

We have no greater access to water and nitrogen than anybody else, and while we have a lot of sunshine, that’s unlikely to offset the disadvantage of distance from the main markets.

The “green steel” industry that some are pushing for the Pilbara, using hydrogen to replace coking coal in furnaces, would cost between $700 billion and $1 trillion, according to a mining CEO who has done the numbers.

Australia urgently needs to start planning to replace 15-20 per cent of GDP over the next two decades, and it won’t be achieved by the repetition of a political slogan.

It will only be done through hard, sustained policy grind, detailed planning, careful focusing of taxpayers’ money and benchmarking Australia against its competitors, and then doing better than them in costs and tax.

Fundamentally, politicians can’t afford to think too far ahead. Australia’s ridiculous two- to three-year terms are shorter than most, but even four- to five-year terms are too short for the gap between political cost and the political benefit in dealing seriously with global warming, as opposed to appearing to.

But even leaving aside the reduction in GDP and tax revenue, the long-term cost of inaction is chilling, as set out by the Academy of Science last year.

Here are a few quotes from that report:

• “Under 1.5 degrees of global warming, heatwaves would occur three times a year with each event lasting on average 7.5 days. With global warming of 2 degrees, heatwaves would occur at least four times a year, on average lasting 10 days. At 3 degrees of global warming, heatwaves would happen as often as seven times a year, with events lasting 16 days on average.”
• “The average lifetime of a cyclone is likely to extend by 12-24 hours as global mean surface temperature increases from 2 degrees to 3 degrees of global warming.”
• “Fire risk (driven by record heat, dryness, and fuel, see case study, p.34) will increase by 30 per cent or more in south-eastern Australia.”
• “The majority (approximately 70–90 per cent) of the world’s tropical coral reefs are projected to disappear at even low levels of warming of 1.5 degrees.”
• “A 3 degrees global temperature increase would reduce yields of key crops by between 5 and 50 per cent, depending on crop and location”.

So, scientists are being quite specific about what we’re facing … with a 50-80 per cent probability.

It’s time to consider removing decisions about climate change from the short-term political cycle. Perhaps increase the funding of the Climate Change Authority and give it the power to make independent decisions like the Reserve Bank, or at least public recommendations.

An independent statutory body, perhaps the CCA, needs to be responsible for preparing Australia for extreme weather and more disasters, including the problem of flood insurance, or the lack of it, which is with us now.

As for developing a plan to replace Australia’s fossil fuel exports, that lies with Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic because money will be needed, as well as long-term planning.

To direct the spending, they should set up a process, perhaps a royal commission, to establish priorities and, yes, pick some winners.

After COP27, there is no longer any doubt about what’s coming.

Source: NOAA