Fit for a powerful role

Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday 7/11/2007 Page: 15

Renewable energy should not be dismissed as "intermittent" or a poor cousin to the so-called baseload power generated by fossil fuelss and uranium, say environmental groups and some energy experts. While conceding renewable energy can supply some electricity, the Prime Minister, John Howard, and existing energy suppliers have repeatedly argued that only coal-fired or nuclear energy can provide reliable round-the-clock electricity.

But critics say that is a myth that enables incumbent energy generators to retain their grip on the electricity market and one that distracts from the need to generate, distribute and use electricity more efficiently. "We could have 100 per cent of our electricity coming from renewable energy in coming decades if we really wanted to, assuming solar and geothermal sources play a significant role," says Mark Diesendorf from the University of New South Wales.

The debate about how much renewable energy could flow into Australia's electricity grid was renewed last week when the Federal Opposition announced that it would aim for 20 per cent by 2020. Labor set no restrictions on the types of energy that would be involved. The Federal Government has a 15 per cent target, which includes so-called clean-coal technology. However, in the early years, most of that electricity is expected to come from wind turbines.

Some contribution would also come from bioenergy - burning waste crops - a technology already being used around the world. In the longer term, solar power - such as the solar thermal technology being developed in California by the Australian expatriate David Mills -would come into play. Baseload alternatives to coal power could be provided by efficient energy use, bioenergy, wind energy, solar thermal electricity with thermal storage, geothermal and gas, Diesendorf says.

He says large-scale wind energy from geographically distributed sites was not intermittent, although it may require additional low-cost, peak-load back-up from gas turbines. "Opponents of renewable energy, from the coal and nuclear industries and from `not in my backyard groups, are disseminating the fallacy that renewable energy cannot provide baseload power to substitute for coal-fired electricity," he says.

"Even government ministers and some journalists are propagating this conventional wisdom, although it is false. The political implications are that, if the fallacy becomes widely believed to be true, renewable energy would always have to remain a niche market, rather than achieve its true potential of becoming a set of mainstream energy-supply technologies." One of the ironies of the baseload argument, says the NSW Greens MP John Kaye, is that in the 1970s NSW had an excess of 24-hour power because of the lack of demand for electricity at night.

Power stations have plenty of unused capacity late at night but must keep the plants generating power because they take days to shut down. To soak up the excess electricity that was generated, householders were offered off-peak hot water, where water in tanks was heated overnight. Kaye claims NSW could side step the construction of a new coal-fired power station by banning the installation of electric off-peak hot water systems in homes.

An analysis of the state's power needs done by the Greens was supported by an assessment made by the National Electricity Market Management Co, which said the forecast need for 327 megawatts of extra generation capacity by the summer of 2010-11 could be supplied by reducing demand. "The Iemma Government is being panicked into electricity industry privatisation and a new, expensive and polluting baseload power station by the supposed threat of blackouts," Kaye says. "There is no capacity gap that cannot be met by increasing energy efficiency."