February 07, 2010
AUSTRALIA has the scorching sun, the scientific skill and private investors poised to swing behind a solar industry boom that could deliver a climate-safe power sector and billions in export earnings. But missing from that equation is the political will, industry experts say. Scientists say the world needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions from electricity and transport virtually to zero in 40 years if it wants a decent chance of keeping damage from climate change manageable. Australia had a major solution in sight long ago. The sun. Australian researchers, including a world-leading team in Queensland, created a golden age in the '60s and '70s for Australian solar innovation.The Australia-NZ Solar Energy Society was the oldest branch of the International Solar Energy Society. Year after year it filed its solar energy progress in Australia-NZ report. A 1974 summary of global solar research pointed to the University of Queensland's mechanical engineering department, where a large team led by Dr Norman Sheridan worked on projects including a study for large-scale solar electricity generation. Australia was on the cusp of harnessing the sun. But it stalled on take-off and huge talent was lost just as the world now reaches for zero-emissions energy.
What killed Australia's early solar promise and can the sunburnt country fulfil its potential now? Australia Solar Energy Society chairman John Grimes says government decisions to keep Australia locked into coal-fired power killed its early potential to build a leading solar industry. "Our golden opportunity was in the '70s. We led all solar fields but we squandered it. It's heartbreaking really." He says the Rudd Government's actions indicate it now aims to keep Australia locked into using coal and gas for the vast bulk of electricity and to protect its coal and gas exports at the expense of new clean energy.
Australia will remain the sleeping goliath of solar energy, he says, unless the Government wakes up. Australia may earn small income from licensing technology to offshore companies, but it won't build local solar technology companies that can rival the US, German and Chinese firms now making billion-dollar profits, much of it on the back of Australian innovation. "Since the 1970s solar in Australia has been through wave after wave of a boom and bust approach. A government would tend toward giving support, then a government would pull funding. "Other governments, such as Germany, took a strategic decision to move into solar. It created 148,000 jobs in a sector now one of the world's largest solar equipment manufacturers. It also gets 14 per cent of its electricity from solar and Germany's solar resource is a fraction of Australia's.
"Spain's Government took a decision three years ago to really back solar energy and its coherent policy approach means it now has the largest solar energy generation capacity in the world," Grimes says. Spain has in the planning pipeline 15.5 GWs of baseload power from solar thermal projects – more than enough to power NSW. There are no signs the Rudd Government will do the same. Grimes says federal Energy Minister Martin Ferguson is clearly no fan of solar and is focused on supporting coal by prioritising unproven "clean coal" technology. The Government has put $1.5 billion in a Solar Flagships Program to jump-start four solar projects. It allocated several billion to clean coal projects.
The clean coal funding is in final stages of being allocated, but the Government has only started the first stage of the process for the solar program. "We're not seeing strong policy settings for solar energy here. And I'm not optimistic of getting the right policy settings even in a next term of the current Government," he says. A funding candidate is potentially Queensland's first commercial-scale solar thermal plant. Queensland state-owned utility CS Energy and US solar company Ausra six months ago applied for federal funding for a portion of a $200 million solar thermal generator as a 23mW bolt-on to the 750mW Kogan Creek coal-fired power plant near Chinchilla.
Ausra says the project is shovel-ready and could supply zero-emission solar energy within 12 months of a funding decision. Ausra is the classic example of Australian solar brain drain. Founder David Mills relocated the company to the US in order to commercialise Australian solar technology. The damage from poor policy support was clear last year when Solar Systems collapsed, taking with it plans for a $420 million solar plant in Victoria, after failing to secure funds when an investor withdrew. Clean energy proponents say until the Government adopts policies – such as a strong, national feed-in tariff for large-scale solar generators – investors are being asked to carry all the commercial risk without the commercial benefits.
Australia's renewable energy target is expected to lead to $20 billion being invested in clean energy capacity by 2020 but Grimes says the policy effectively sends that money to wind energy, to the detriment of solar, geothermal, wave and tidal power. Matthew Wright, of clean-energy lobby group Beyond Zero Emissions, says policy support from the Obama administration has led to applications in the US to build a combined 97 GWs of solar thermal projects. "Australia has one of the best solar resources in the world. We have some of the best researchers too. Yet the Rudd Government remains in thrall to the coal lobby, investing in dead-end fantasies like clean coal while other countries develop their solar thermal expertise and manufacturing.
"Spain's Government is supporting solar thermal power with a serious feed-in tariff for large-scale plants. We should do the same. "Our Solar Flagships Program is shaping up to be a failure, with guidelines skewed to favour daytime-only solar plants rather than the newer standard of (24-hour) solar plants now being built in Europe and the US," Wright said. solar energy can be up to four times as expensive as coal-fired power but some governments, such as the US, are working to slash costs. Dr Sheridan, the founding father of Queensland solar research, died in 2008. In 2003 in Toowoomba he told a conference that solar was sidelined so long as the social and environmental costs of burning coal, gas and oil were left uncosted. But awareness of these costs is now growing.
Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner last year launched an Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering report that estimated sun and geothermal energy costs were competitive against coal, gas and nuclear if the social and environmental costs of mining and burning fossil fuels – on human health, land and water quality and the climate – were accounted for. ATSE said such costs have been estimated at $31 per tonne of carbon emissions. Based on 2008 emissions, Australia has a carbon pollution damage bill of $17 billion a year.
Harvard researchers last year said the cost of producing power from the sun and other renewable sources would be the same as from carbon-capture coal plants. That didn't include costs from transporting and permanently storing CO2 underground. The full costs of carbon capture and storage are so far unknown, Australia's ATSE said. Dr Sheridan estimated Australia's primary energy demand could be met by an area 70km by 70km covered in solar heat collectors. He said poor attitudes toward solar were encapsulated by a retired electricity commissioner's comment that, "I wouldn't waste much energy in worrying about (solar). To get a significant contribution would cost the world." Stalling now on clean energy will indeed cost us a habitable world.
0 comments:
Post a Comment