New Finkel report finds no need to panic about energy storage | Renew Economy

A new report into energy storage commissioned by chief scientist Alan Finkel highlights the enormous opportunities for storage in Australia, but underlines how little is actually needed over the short to medium term, even at relatively high levels of wind and solar.

The report, The role of Energy Storage in Australia’s Future Energy Supply Mix, funded by Finkel’s office and the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA), says the required investment in energy security and reliability over the next five-10 years will be minimal (see graph above), even if wind and solar deployment moves far beyond levels contemplated by the Energy Security Board.  More

China Is Over Coal, Bored With Oil as It Charts Green Future | Bloomberg

The world’s worst polluter is leading the clean energy revolution, according to the International Energy Agency.

China will account for a third of new wind and solar power installations and 40 percent of electric vehicle investments through 2040, the Paris-based agency said Tuesday in its World Energy Outlook. Meanwhile, the country’s coal use peaked four years ago and it will cede its role as the driver of global oil demand to India after 2025.  More

Natural gas has no climate benefit and may make things worse | Faster

In fact, a shocking new study concludes that just the methane emissions escaping from New Mexico’s gas and oil industry are “equivalent to the climate impact of approximately 12 coal-fired power plants.” If the goal is to avoid catastrophic levels of warming, a recent report by U.K. climate researchers finds “categorically no role” to play for new natural gas production.

Back in 2014, a comprehensive Stanford study published in Science concluded “A review of more than 200 earlier studies confirms that U.S. emissions of methane are considerably higher than official estimates. Leaks from the nation’s natural gas system are an important part of the problem.”  More

South Australia experiences dramatic fall in energy costs after gas deal | The Guardian

Exxon Quietly Researching Hundreds of Green Projects | Bloomberg

One of the world’s biggest oil companies is working on hundreds of low-carbon energy projects, from algae engineered to bloom into biofuels and cells that turn emissions into electricity.

The work by Exxon Mobil Corp. includes research on environmentally-friendly technologies in five to 10 key areas, according to Vice President of Research and Development Vijay Swarup. While any commercial breakthrough is at least a decade away, Exxon’s support for clean energy suggests the world’s most valuable publicly-traded oil company is looking toward the possibility of a future where fossil fuels are less dominant.

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Germany set to pay customers for electricity usage | The Independent

German power producers are poised to pay customers to use electricity this weekend. 

Wind generation is forecast to climb to a record on Sunday, creating more output than needed and driving electricity prices below zero, broker data compiled by Bloomberg show. It would be the first time this year that the average price for a whole day is negative, not just for specific hours.

Germany’s grid operators can struggle to keep the balance between how much energy people are using and how much is being produced when there are high amounts of wind generation. Negative prices mean that producers must either shut down power stations to reduce supply or pay consumers to take the electricity off the grid.

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Australia's coal & CSG delusion | RenewEconomy

Australia's politics only barrier to clean energy system, report finds | The Guardian

Construction halted on nuclear power reactors in South Carolina | NBC News

“The best case scenario shows this project would be several years late and 75 percent more than originally planned,” Santee Cooper President and CEO Lonnie Carter said in a statement. “We simply cannot ask our customers to pay for a project that has become uneconomical.”

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Business pleas for government to back Finkel Review | AFR

Australia's business leaders have pleaded for politicians to fall in behind a market-based energy policy built on the Finkel Review's clean energy target to underwrite investment certainty and scathingly dismissed proposals for government to fund a coal fired power station as an answer to high energy prices.

Two of the most powerful figures in Australia's energy sector - former Origin Energy boss Grant King and Energy Australia managing director Catherine Tanna - have said no one in politics has clean hands on past energy policy.

During the BCA's roundtable discussion with the Australian Financial Review, Ms Tanna said that "nobody has a licence to go around and say that the market is working for customers as intended", because energy prices were so high.

But with a push underway within the federal government to provide support for the coal industry, and for government direct investment in a coal-fired power station, the BCA board was asked where coal should fit in to energy policy.

"The first thing I would say about that is coal is a legacy technology," Ms Tanna said.

"I'm not saying that it can't be part of the future mix. I'm just saying that it's a solution that my grandfather would have built.

"I think it is very, very unlikely to find a market participant that will fund such a new investment."

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The Pears Report | ReNew Magazine

THE THREAT of electricity blackouts in southern Australia next summer and our bizarre ‘gas crisis’ seem to be dragging us out of the rock-throwing approach to energy policy making.

SA 100MW battery storage tender won by Tesla and Neoen | Renew Economy

The 100MW/129MWh battery bank will be built at Neoen’s huge Hornsdale wind complex near Jamestown, where the last stage of a 309MW project is currently being completed. 

Premier Jay Weatherill said the Hornsdale Power Reserve will become the state’s largest renewable generator, and while the lithium battery would be the biggest in the world.

“South Australian customers will be the first to benefit from this technology which will demonstrate that large-scale battery storage is both possible and now, commercially viable.”

The announcement was made jointly with Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk, who flew into Adelaide for the announcement.  Musk said the installation would be three times bigger than the next installation.

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AGL Energy's Andy Vesey says coal investment doesn't add up |AFR

AGL energy chief executive Andy Vesey and other power bosses said the economics of investing in new coal plants don't add up compared with wind and solar power.

Speaking a day after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the federal government could invest in new coal plants to shore up supply, Mr Vesey said he had examined the numbers and could not commit AGL's capital to coal plant.

He believed the energy security plan outlined by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel was "comprehensive" and should be backed, and joked that as soon as you think you're up to date with energy policy "a flash on your phone" changed everything again.

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AUSTRALIA’S ENERGY: How did we get into this mess? And what do we do to get out of it?

Australia appears to have converted a national advantage – cheap and plentiful energy – into a national energy crisis, for business and consumers. We ask – how did this happen? And is there a way out!

Join the John Cain Foundation for a lively discussion with two experts in energy policy and pricing.

Journalist and writer Tim Colebatch will facilitate a discussion between energy experts Tony Wood, Grattan Institute, and Alan Pears, RMIT University. A Q&A will follow presentations by the speakers.

Join us for drinks at 5pm prior to the presentations.

Wednesday 3rd May, 5.30 to 7.30 pm

Graduate House University of Melbourne
220 Leicester Street

To book

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About the speakers

Tony Wood - Tony has deep experience in the energy sector. Prior to joining Grattan Institute in 2011, he worked at Origin Energy for 11 years, and was an adviser to the first Garnaut climate change review. He was also program director of Clean Energy Projects at the Clinton Foundation. 

Tim Colebatch - Tim is a freelance journalist and writer, mostly writing on economic and political issues for the website Inside Story. He earlier spent four decades writing for The Age, the last half of them as economics editor and columnist. He is the biographer of former Victorian Premier Sir Rupert Hamer (Dick Hamer: the liberal Liberal), and recently won the Melbourne Press Club's Quills award as the best columnist of 2016.

Alan Pears AM - Alan Pears AM is a Senior Industry Fellow at RMIT University and consultant. Alan is a well-known researcher, commentator and educator on energy policy issues, in particular related to energy efficiency, clean energy policy, energy markets and climate policy. He has worked in this field for 40 years, with governments, businesses and community groups. Alan worked in Victorian energy agencies from 1980 to 1991, and has worked on energy and climate policy and program development across Australia since then.

How AEMO’s new boss will reform Australia’s energy vision | Renew Economy

Audrey Zibelman, the new chief executive of the Australian Energy Market Operator, has been in the job for little over a week, but is already making her mark, signalling the biggest shift in energy management philosophy in a generation.

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The gas industry's power play | The Saturday Paper

Long-term mismanagement of Australia’s gas industry has seen price gouging by cartels and the possible need for imports. Even if the government can put things to right, natural gas will never again be a cheap alternative fossil fuel. By Mike Seccombe.

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Clarke and Dawe: The energy market explained

Are you also confused about the Australian energy market? This may help clear up a few things ....

Submission to the Victorian Government Retail Electricity Review | Alan Pears AM

The Victorian Government has appointed an independent panel to conduct a review of electricity and gas retail markets in Victoria (the review). The panel comprises John Thwaites, Terence Mulder and Patricia Faulkner. The panel will prepare a final report to the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change that examines the operation of the Victorian electricity and gas retail markets and provides options that would improve outcomes for consumers.

The independent panel will be supported by a secretariat administered by the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP).

The review will consider the operation of the electricity and gas retail markets in Victoria in respect of supply to residential and small business consumers – defined for Victorian regulatory purposes as consumers with annual consumption less than 40MWh for electricity and 1,000GJ for gas. 

Submissions in response to the discussion paper are invited by Tuesday 28 February 2017. 

Please click here to read Alan Pears' AM submission to the review.

'Clean coal' too costly for CEFC mandate | AFR

Mandating the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to invest in "clean coal" would require a spectacular government backflip just nine weeks after it issued the lender with strict conditions on the profitability of new projects. 

Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann told the agency that its purpose was to help mobilise investment in "renewable energy, low emissions and energy efficiency projects and technologies", and instructed them to "apply commercial rigour when making investment decisions".

In particular, the direction said the CEFC must strive for an average return across the portfolio of 3 to 4 percentage points above the five year bond rate (2.3 per cent).

However, there are only three carbon capture and storage projects operating in the world and none are currently commercially viable. Super critical coal-fired power stations would also struggle to deliver commercial returns, while also  not meeting current guidelines to reduce emissions by 50 per cent.

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'Clean coal': billions of dollars and lots of carbon | Ben Potter

The Turnbull government wants to ease Clean Energy Finance Corporation guidelines to allow "clean coal" to qualify for "clean energy" funding but figures from a big Japanese supplier of clean coal plants suggest the guidelines would have to be gutted to get the plants over the line. Jonathan Carroll
A top executive at the largest Japanese supplier of high tech coal-fired power plants says they would likely cost more than thought in Australia and still emit relatively large quantities of carbon.

Akihiko Kazuno, head of global strategic planning for Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems, said the company's ultra-supercritical power stations – the most advanced currently being built commercially – typically cost between $US1.5 billion and $US3.5 billion per 1000 megawatts of capacity.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, Treasurer Scott Morrison and the Minerals Council of Australia – which is launching a "Coal: Making the future possible" advertising campaign – are pushing for "clean coal" plants to be built in Australia.

But industry says the plants are "unbankable" because of their high costs and carbon risk and resources entrepreneurs Gina Rinehart and Trevor St Baker have shunned the technology too.

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