I note that Australia’s total wind power capacity as of 2006 was apparently about 817 megawatts. Taking into account a roughly 33% capacity factor that gives about 272 megawatts of effective constant generating capacity, that over the course of a year gives almost 2,400GW/h, which is about 61% of the 3,889,200MW/h figure which you say was the amount actually generated, not ordered and largely not supplied.

So I suppose it’s possible that we actually did generate that much, though I’m not sure where the other 39% comes from.

Australia’s total electricity consumption remains in the 200,000 gigawatt-hours per year range, though, and it’s only rising. So even if we really are making 3900GW/h per year from new renewable sources at the moment, that still adds up to less than two per cent of our total power budget. Maybe 10%, including the old hydroelectric scheme. Allowing people to sign up for green power for a low flat rate therefore remains ridiculous; those offers have been so widespread through 2007 that demand surely must by now greatly exceed supply.

You might be glad to know that your post caused a certain amount of consternation at work when I raised it with colleagues. Electricity companies claiming that you’re paying for renewable energy, when you’re actually paying more for the same non-renewable energy as everybody else, would be a Very Bad Thing, from our point of view.

I called somebody who knows more about the electricity industry, and he assured me that, while the report can easily be read to produce the conclusions you reached (and my office reached when we read it), the numbers are backwards.

During 2006, there was significantly more renewable energy available to this scheme than there was demand for it. Hence the funny economics of being able to pay a flat rate no matter how much you used. He mentioned that many consumers were put on plans which allocated 20% of the electricity they used to renewables for little or no cost, and that, compared to your average household energy budget, even the flat rate for 100% green energy is going to add 20-25% to the total cost, which was not something consumers were interested in.

The whole 5-star honesty, everybody wins phenomenon and the slow rate of growth in renewable energy over the last 10 years are things I can’t comment on, but, at least during 2006, the GreenPower program appears not to have been an enormous sham, and the Greens might not have been misleading their followers.

Where things get will interesting, for a given value of interesting, is when the Mandatory Renewable Energy Targets (MRET) scheme starts to bite, the corporate customers buy up all the available renewable energy and the price of consumer renewable (and most other types of) energy goes up in response. But that’s a discussion for another day and, happily for me, not my department :)

David

PS I’d like to think I’m as cynical as the next netizen when some random claims the authority to say that Everything Is Actually All Right. I’m not doing this on behalf of my employer, and I think the sort of conversation that has happened in the comments is valuable. This is mainly for Dan’s benefit, because he asked.

The big problem with tree sequestration is that trees don’t grow and then conveniently turn into indestructible petrified forests that lock up the carbon forever. You have to make sure the trees don’t catch fire (which, for Third World plantations, means you have to post guards to stop people cutting trees down for firewood…), and that they don’t die and rot. Either of these things returns the CO2 to the atmosphere, leaving you having paid your money to just briefly delay the carbon emissions.

There are a few chemical engineering solutions to this problem.

Of course, converting forest biomass to either char or lignite via these processes adds a little to the cost, but as thermodynamics is working in our favour for both pyrolysis and hydrothermal carbonisation, the only real obstacles to deploying such technologies are the same as those confronting large scale renewable rollouts: inadequate commercial incentives.

The hope is that before it’s too late, the commercial incentives will be made attractive enough, say through a national emissions cap and trade system. Obviously, the harsher the cap, the more likely we are to see this happen.

It seems that with the new government, the department of Prime Minister and Cabinet that reported on the design of such a scheme this year has taken most of the documents it had down from it’s site on that policy. Here’s hoping the ALP can improve on what the coaliation started…

Of course, forests may not be the best source of biomass when it comes to hijacking some of the planent’s remarkable net primary production for atmospheric (re?)engineering purposes. Plants that use the more photosynthetically efficient C4 metabolism may do a much better job than trees. There are also some looking at using algae, say fertilised by human effluent, for the task.

…and hopefully, we won’t be clearing more endangered forest ecosystems and our food prices don’t go the way our electricity bills soon will.

So if any of our “green” power was actually being “imported” (economically rather than literally speaking), that would be at the cost of it now being “unavailable” to be purchased by the residents of some other country.

(Though, if an international trading system were put in place, it would surprise me not at all if the same power was sold multiple times to customers in different countries…)

This ia a flawed assumption

see here for a decription of how this can work
http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=1&c=1&t=112661&p=20#msg-2636310

Could the flat rate charged be a reflection of the fact that electricity suppliers have no hope in hell at actually generating 100% of your needs from new renewable sources? They could add a surcharge per kWh – for renewable energy, but as you have illustrated, you wouldn’t actually get renewable energy for every kWh you consume. So rather they charge you a flat rate – they have xMW of renewable capacity and y consumers signed up for green power, the y consumers chew up way more than xMW so they split the cost of generating xMW amongst the y green power consumers equally… To the small tune of around $AU4.40 a week (hey they don’t have that much renewable generation capacity to spread around). If this theory held true, the flat rate would change with the number of people signed up for the program and with alterations to the generation capacity of renewable energy.

The crux for the problem, still remains. The average Joe thinks he has purchased 100% green power… They are of course are not receiving 100% green power, but rather a tiny slither (depending of course, on your power consumption… If you are way below the average, you will have a higher percentage of green power than someone running 3 8800GTSs and a split-system airconditioner to keep them cool). However, I would hazard a guess that they are still getting around $4.40 worth of renewable energy a month.

Now slightly off topic: The government should step out and augment all our existing coal power plants with solar thermal technology. This technology would be used to preheat the water before coal is used to superheat the steam. Well at least they are working on it – they are building a prototype Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector at the Liddell power station (http://solarheatpower.veritel.com.au/MILLS_CLFR_ANZSES_FINAL.pdf). Generation costs at $AU0.07 per kWh, which sound pretty cheap, but personally I am waiting out for EROEI(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI) numbers to see if it is actually worthwhile. But to me this seems like a sensible way to hit an interim target, assuming the EROEI numbers for a CLFR come in half respectable.

But long term renewable energy supplies with a positive EROEI? I think we need a new millennium snowy hydro scale scheme. A tidal system near Derby to take advantage of their 11 metre tides… A man made horizontal falls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_Falls) would do the trick. The vast body of energy required to build the tidal system would be digging the system – which in theory wouldn’t wear out / rust like other systems (but it would take a long time to repay). The turbines and generators would still wear out, but the output from the turbines would quickly repay the energy invested in their construction. The problems with this concept of course are transmission costs – it would cost a fortune to build and transport the electricity to the south east, and the incredible construction costs of the project itself…. Only a commonwealth government could afford such a project.

I gave it up when I found out I own a forest. Sounds like that one isn’t green enough either.

Next thing you know somebody will be telling me that my biodiesel comes from plantation canola and is destroying rainforests. I just can’t get it right.

Ha ha.

Cheers,
Simon.

I’m not so pessimistic about the scheme. The GreenPower scheme will be scrapped when it becomes apparent that input != output. I can personally vouch that the guys running the show just wanted something which appeared green and didn’t look nuclear. I just hope that the Federal Govt attracts some more serious minds to the problem.