Wind likely to be best option for power needs

Age
Thursday 21/6/2007 Page: 8

ABOUT 150 extra wind turbines will be built across Victoria with the aim of making a new desalination plant and pipeline across the Great Dividing Range carbon neutral. The State Government yesterday revealed more details of its promise to augment water supplies for Melbourne, Geelong and the Goulburn Valley without increasing Victoria's greenhouse gas emissions.

Water Minister John Thwaites said the Government would pay about $15 million a year extra for enough power from new renewable energy facilities to balance the 100 megawatts of electricity needed to run the desalination plant and pipeline each year. Without this renewable energy offset, the plant and pipeline would produce more than a million tonnes of extra greenhouse emissions a year. Although the Government is yet to announce the source of the renewable energy, a Melbourne Water study on the desalination plant shows wind as the best option.

Energy experts, including the head of the Energy Supply Association of Australia, Brad Page, said it was reasonable to expect about 300 megawatts of new wind capacity- or more than 150 wind turbines - would balance the added power demands on the electricity grid. The wind turbines would not directly power the desalination plant, but would feed extra electricity into the grid throughout the year, offsetting greenhouse-gas-generating power sources such as gas and coal.

University of New South Wales energy researcher lain MacGill said paying for extra renewable energy was preferable to planting trees as carbon offsets, because it was easier to guarantee its effectiveness in reducing greenhouse emissions. "Obviously it's better than nothing," Dr MacGill said. Anti-wind campaigner Tim Le Roy said he did not believe the extra wind capacity would deliver the promised savings in greenhouse gas emissions.