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The anatomy of an energy crisis – a pictorial guide
Energy Australia boss says she fears bill shock for customers after heatwave
‘They are going to get a surprise and I am worried about them,’ says Catherine Tanna, joining push for transition to renewables
The boss of one of Australia’s largest energy suppliers says she is worried about customers’ power bills after the latest heatwave in the country’s south-east.
Energy Australia’s managing director, Catherine Tanna, has joined the push for a transition to newer forms of energy, saying bipartisanship is needed to draw up a national energy policy. The company operates sites including the Yallourn plant in the Latrobe valley, a brown-coal power station in Victoria that supplies nearly a quarter of the state’s electricity.
Continue reading...Even Earth's deepest ocean trenches contain high levels of pollution
We need a comprehensive housing approach to deal with heatwaves
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156523/width496/image-20170213-23350-ekjhlu.jpg)
Heatwaves across much of the country this summer have revealed a serious problem with our national housing stock.
Stressed electricity networks that can’t guarantee supply have led to politicians advising people not to go home, but to go to the movies instead. The risk is that houses aren’t built to mitigate the health risks of this kind of heat.
We are using air conditioning as a band-aid instead of identifying the cause and seriousness of the condition. Australia’s continued lack of planning to solve the problem is a risky strategy.
But imagine a future where we can reliably depend on our dwellings to help us “keep our cool”. A future where we don’t have to rely on free air conditioning at the local shopping centre, and where heatwaves don’t overstress our hospitals, electricity networks, or bank accounts.
A staged and comprehensive approach can create such a future – one that would improve our individual, family and national resilience.
Smarter design and constructionRather than being seduced by the property market’s surface bling, we need to pay more attention to the quality of the building envelope – the roof, walls, windows and floor. We can manage unwanted heat inside our homes in two key ways.
The first is to stop the heat getting in. Many aspects of a home’s design (orientation, eaves, external shading and landscaping) and construction materials (roof colour and coating, insulation, glass and window type) can help control how hot it gets inside. Guides on these design features are available at the government’s Your Home website.
The second key is having strategies to manage unwanted heat. Again, this can be done through good design (with clerestory windows, solar chimneys, roof vents, and so on) and by using the right materials. Opening and closing your house in response to the outside temperature is also important.
For example, some houses combine aspects of traditional Queenslander architecture – deep eaves, shady verandas, casement windows and louvres – with modern materials like high-performance insulation and tinted low e-glass; dense internal materials such as rammed earth; and night-time ventilation. These homes rarely surpass 30℃, despite their southeast Queensland location.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156511/width754/image-20170213-23347-eoul7c.jpg)
Sometimes mechanical assistance may be required, but rather than thinking that you need to air-condition the whole house, strategies such as “cooling the occupant” or creating a “safe retreat” – similar to that of a bushfire or cyclone shelter – are worth considering.
Better ratingsIt is difficult to know the best design and construction, built to protect against extreme heat, when you see it. The star rating of Australian homes is one attempt to communicate this. It is an indication of how a specific house design and its materials determine internal temperature.
While a good start, the rating system is based on past average weather patterns. What would be better is using current or even future weather data. And knowing the expected temperature of each room in the house would help to find cost-effective solutions for improving the performance of new and existing homes.
Perhaps there is even a need for a “stress test” – giving the house a “heat index” colour code similar to the weather bureau’s forecasts for heatwaves.
On top of this we need to know that the dwelling in question has actually been built to the standards indicated by the design. Transparent and consistent inspection practices need to be implemented, but are practically non-existent across Australia today.
Leadership from government and industrySome of the blame for the situation can be put on ideological differences about the role of government. For instance, building regulation is seen as “red tape” rather than consumer protection. The division of powers between governments also complicates the situation.
Despite these challenges, a few barriers should be addressed as a matter of urgency.
The community needs to understand that the current building requirements, which vary by state and by dwelling type, are inadequate. They certainly do not represent a house with safe indoor temperatures throughout the year.
Greater transparency is needed. In particular, “concessions” that allow the minimum standard to be further reduced should be removed from the star rating because these have no impact on internal temperatures.
Information about the performance standard of each dwelling needs to made available to everyone in every property transaction. We need to know more about the buildings we live in – preferably before we buy or rent.
The last step is to acknowledge that housing, health and energy issues are all strongly linked. In extreme weather these are also linked to disaster management and emergency services.
Can we fix it?Governments have already embarked on several projects, including restructuring our health system, transitioning our electricity market, updating our National Construction Code, and refining our disaster management and emergency response strategy.
But the reforms must be holistic. Policies, regulation and infrastructure planning and expenditure in any one of these sectors can lead to unintended consequences in the others. A “one system” approach would create significant economic, social and environmental opportunities for everyone.
So, can we create a better future? If our politicians, and the associated industries, have the skills, foresight and courage to put your home – our homes – into these discussions, yes we can!
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Wendy Miller has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage and the South Australia Department of State Development.
Banned chemicals persist in deep ocean
Act now before entire species are lost to global warming, say scientists
Climate change is threatening about 700 endangered species and policymakers must act urgently to lessen impact
The impact of climate change on threatened and endangered wildlife has been dramatically underreported, with scientists calling on policymakers to act urgently to slow its effects before entire species are lost for good.
New analysis has found that nearly half (47%) of the mammals and nearly a quarter (24.4%) of the birds on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species are negatively impacted by climate change – a total of about 700 species. Previous assessments had said only 7% of listed mammals and 4% of birds were impacted.
Continue reading...'Extraordinary' levels of toxic pollution found in 10km deep Mariana trench
Presence of manmade chemicals in most remote place on planet shows nowhere is safe from human impact, say scientists
Scientists have discovered “extraordinary” levels of toxic pollution in the most remote and inaccessible place on the planet – the 10km-deep Mariana trench in the Pacific ocean.
Small crustaceans that live in the pitch-black waters of the trench, captured by a robotic submarine, were contaminated with 50 times more toxic chemicals than crabs that survive in heavily polluted rivers in China.
Continue reading...'What can I do to help elephants?'
Climate change, poaching, competition for food and water … elephants have never faced such threats. Here are more than 50 ways to give them a helping hand. Can you add to the list?
There is so much being done to help stop elephants being wiped out in the wild. We’ve identified more than 50 campaigns and organisations around the world, from well-known charities like the World Wide Fund for Nature to grassroots groups like Elephanatics in Canada and Laos-based ElefantAsia. If you think we’ve missed anyone or anything, let us know at elephant.conservation@theguardian.com. We’ll update the list with your suggestions.
Continue reading...This is why conservative media outlets like the Daily Mail are 'unreliable' | Dana Nuccitelli
Journalists try to get facts right. Tabloid propagandists try to advance an agenda
Wikipedia editors recently voted to ban the Daily Mail tabloid as a source for their website after deeming it “generally unreliable.” To put the severity of this decision in context, Wikipedia still allows references to Russia Today and Fox News, both of which display a clear bias toward the ruling parties of their respective countries.
It thus may seem like a remarkable decision for Wikipedia to ban the Daily Mail, but fake news stories by David Rose in two consecutive editions of the Mail on Sunday – which echoed throughout the international conservative media – provide perfect examples of why the decision was justified and wise.
Continue reading...How bad is Delhi's air? We strapped a monitor to a rickshaw to find out
Suresh Kumar Sharma is an auto-rickshaw driver in Delhi, a city with some of the world’s dirtiest air – and where many locals don’t know how unhealthy it is. We monitored the dangerous PM2.5 particles surrounding Suresh’s rickshaw for 12 hours, then had his lungs tested: ‘I was shocked’
Continue reading...Helvellyn forecast: cloudy, with wet rock and retreating walkers
Glenridding, Lake District Warned off by the fell top assessor, ill-prepared ramblers hurry out of the mist away from England’s third-highest mountain
I’m early for my appointment in the Helvellyn youth hostel car park, and the only sign of life is a raven croaking prukk-prukk as it dives from Edmund’s Castle crag, its black wings turning a sheeny purple. I pull down my beanie hat and zip up my jacket collar.
Rather than the crisp panorama to be expected on so chilly a day, banners of cloud wreathe me. Treading the path from Red Tarn, I cannot see the mountain above, though I know it’s shaped like an armchair, flanked by Striding Edge as one arm rest and Swirral Edge the other; the lumbar support being Helvellyn’s 950 metres. Cupped in between is Red Tarn, formed by ice age moraine damming water.
Lithium-ion battery storage may be banned inside Australian homes
Conservatives attack chief scientist for failing to toe fossil fuel line
Know your NEM: Still cooking as grid consumption soars
Record solar, wind “save” NSW consumers as coal, gas went missing
Malcolm Turnbull has battery storage installed in Point Piper home
Hamilton quits CCA over Coalition’s “unconscionable” push to coal
Pollinate Energy, an Australian social enterprise, wins support from Tata Trusts
The anatomy of an energy crisis - a pictorial guide, Part 1
Who could forget the energy “crises” that affected electricity supply across south-eastern Australia last year.
Firstly the Tasmanian crisis, following the Basslink outage in December 2015. With hydro storage dams at record lows following a drought on the back of aggressive storage withdrawals during the carbon tax years, Tasmania enforced drastic measures to ensure supply. Thankfully, flooding winter rains, together with the eventual restoration of Basslink in June helped resuscitate the apple isle’s energy supply. Tasmania’s hydro storages now stand at around 40% of full capacity, more than double at the same time last year.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156441/width754/image-20170211-23354-ci30zi.png)
July saw the first of the sequence of crises in South Australia that followed from, and were in many eyes, attributable to the closure of its last coal-fired power plant at Port Augusta in May of 2016.
With gas prices at record highs, and South Australia effectively isolated from Victoria due to upgrades on the main interconnector into Victoria, spot prices sky rocketed, culminating on a cold, windless winter day on July 7th. Energy consumers that had not contracted supply were at the whims of traders. Prices averaged over $1400/MWhour for the day and around $520/MWhour for the week, almost 800% above the average for that time of year.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156442/width754/image-20170211-23347-17gepyr.png)
All that was superseded by the events of September, when extreme winds played havoc with the South Australian transmission system, toppling transmission lines in the mid north. Poorly understood default control settings automatically disconnected wind farms, leading to the interconnector tripping and a state-wide blacked out. Unanticipated problems in restarting the system exacerbated the pain.
Finally, failure of a transmission line in south-west Victoria on December 1 lead to a power loss at the aluminium smelter in Portland. The damage to “frozen” pot lines has jeopardised the smelter’s ongoing viability. As the state’s largest energy consumer and the one of the biggest regional employers, the political fallout is intense.
After the NEM’s “annus horibilus”With 2016 very much the National Electricity Market’s (NEM) “annus horibilus”, pundits awaited the summer of 2017 with bated breath. The combination of high gas prices, frighteningly intense summer heat, a fragile and ageing energy supply system, and increasing concerns about market rules, the scene was set for “interesting times”. Whatever was to transpire it was always going to be inflamed by political point-scoring - the one commodity that seems rarely in short supply.
And so it would prove to be, even in the northern states of Queensland and New South Wales that had hither-too largely escaped the wrath of Electryone.
The summer of 2017 has seen extraordinary rises beset the spot market across the country, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland. Further blackouts in South Australia, and market interventions to avert them in New South Wales, have done little to assuage concern that our electrical power system is no longer fit for purpose. Queensland 2017 prices have been some is 400% above the historical average for this time of year.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156446/width754/image-20170212-23354-epkck6.png)
With the summer far from finished, our politicians remain hard at it, pointing fingers and apportioning blame, doing almost anything and everything but that which is in most short supply - namely, embracing bipartisanship. A glimmer of hope is to be found in comments from Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, who has been charged to lead a review of the security of our National Electricity Market.
What is our NEM?To provide some guide to what is happening to the NEM, and why, I have compiled a few pictures that illustrate elements its basic anatomy. This is designed as background. In following posts in this series I will focus on the details of recent events that have so heightened the political heat.
The NEM comprises five interconnected regional jurisdictions - one for each state along the eastern seaboard and South Australia. For each region, the market operator AEMO runs a 5-minute interval, energy-only, dispatch ‘pool’, or spot market. The objective is to balance supply with demand in a way that minimises cost, based on the bids submitted by generators. It is a complicated process. Settlement prices are aggregated at half hourly intervals, and determined as the average of bid prices of the last offer needed to meet the demand for the dispatch interval.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156479/width754/image-20170212-23324-xgwefd.png)
With the focus of the dispatch ‘pool’ being least cost electricity supply, AEMO also operates several ancillary markets to ensure the requirements for safe grid operation are met. This includes the provision of reserve supply and frequency control normally sourced from synchronous generators such as large coal plants.
AEMO also has regulatory powers to intervene in the market by demanding generation be made available in cases when the total bid capacity is insufficient. When demand exceeds total capacity, or if the available capacity cannot be made available in a timely fashion, AEMO can authorise load-shedding, effecting a re-balancing of demand to meet the available generation capacity.
Normally, large electricity consumers will contract power supply via the contract market, rather than directly through the spot market. This insures consumers against the potential for extreme price volatility allowed on the spot market, that can see prices range from between -$1000 and $14,000/MWhour. For comparison, the standard domestic retail tariff is about $250/MWhour or $0.25/kWhour.
The bid strategies of power plants reflect differences in their cost structures and performance characteristics. For example, fuel costs for brown coal generators are very low, but they are best operated at constant load. In contrast gas plants are generally much more rampable, but much higher cost. In Victoria, as a consequence gas is used almost exclusively to meet peaks in demand as illustrated in the three graphics below.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156483/width754/image-20170212-23324-1zbgke.png)
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156480/width754/image-20170212-23331-128bxve.png)
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156482/width754/image-20170212-23342-1u86pkr.png)
Typically a large base-load generator, such as a brown coal plant, will bid much of its capacity into the spot market at their short run cost, to ensure a slice of the action. In contrast peaking power plants will bid at price well above marginal cost, anticipating that they will required only very occasionally. Forward contracts of various kinds help insure revenue streams for base load generators against spot prices below their long-term cost of production, and for peaking plants being available when needed.
Renewables such as wind dispatch at the whims of the weather, and because of negligible short run marginal costs, bid their output at very low prices. As a price taker, wind generation tends to drive spot prices lower, impacting the viability of other generators. As shown below, and to be discussed in more detail in a following posts, the recent events in South Australian dispatch highlights the challenges in the market when wind power output correlates poorly with demand.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156484/width754/image-20170212-23342-466hsw.png)
Finally, rooftop PV is not dispatched onto the grid, but rather is “revealed” to the market as a demand in reduction.
Why are spot prices risingIn theory, the spot market is designed to encourage a competition that ensures prices provide generators with a revenue stream that is linked to their long run marginal cost of production. If prices do depart, competitive market principles should ensure system re-balancing either through investment in new generation or the withdrawal of old. Of course, competition needs to be provided by an adequate diversity in ownership.
And so shifts in the spot prices, signalled via the contract markets, are designed to reflect the balance of demand and supply. The years 2009-2014 were characterised by persistent reductions in demand across the NEM, in part due to growing penetration of solar PV. At the same time, the addition of new wind farms to meet Renewable Energy Target contributed to a growing oversupply in the market, reflected in very subdued spot prices. For example from 2010-2014, Victorian spot prices averaged about $35/MWhour, after factoring out the carbon tax. While that price is above the cost of production for existing Victorian brown coal generators, it would be well nigh impossible to obtain financing for any new large scale generation at prices less than about 2-3 times that.
Since 2014, demand has risen in Queensland due in part to the commissioning of new LNG gas processing facilities at Curtis Island. Reductions in generation capacity in Victoria and South Australia due to closure and/or mothballing of several fossil plants (Anglesea in Victoria and Northern and Pelican Point in South Australia), has significantly tightened the supply-demand balance. Consequently, spot prices are on the rise across the NEM.
Why do spot prices vary between regions?Spot prices averaged about $60/MWhour across last year, but vary somewhat by region, and by season, and by jurisdiction.
As shown in diagrams above the make-up of generation in each of the five regions varies considerably, leading to different cost structures. Similarly differences in demand profiles lead naturally to differences in generation fleet. Finally there are differences in market competition.
With limited interconnection capacity, along with differences in regional demand and generation portfolios, occasionally lead to large separation in spot market prices. In times of very high demand during summer heat waves and winder cold snaps, or in times when supply is constrained by infrastructure (power plant or transmission) outages or fuel supply/cost issues, spot prices can be extremely volatile.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156445/width754/image-20170212-23354-18uffn4.png)
Historically, South Australia has had the highest prices and Victoria the lowest. This reflects the higher much higher proportion of gas in the generation mix, its larger proportional daily/seasonal cycle between minimum and maximum demand and, arguably, competition issues. As illustrated below, peak demand in South Australia is over 250% higher than the median, compared to around 150% in Queensland. A greater relative proportion of peaking generation capacity means higher average spot prices. Competition is a particular issue in South Australia, since the closure of the Northern Power Station, as it is in Queensland.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/156478/width754/image-20170212-23331-63hlpa.png)
It is important to realise that while the physical characteristics of any power system are governed by the laws of physics, the market itself is a construct - just one of many ways of matching supply and demand. In particular as an energy-only ‘pool’ , there are questions about how well our NEM is suited to meeting the need of providing a cost effective, secure and environmentally acceptable energy supply. In particular, there is very little incentive for demand side management. Moreover, the power system does not operate in isolation, and needs to be considered with other policy settings in the gas and water markets as well as climate policy. In the following posts in this series I intend to address some of these issues with examples drawn from our recent experience on the NEM.
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Mike Sandiford receives funding from ARC and ANLEC.
UK unprepared for exiting Europe's green legislation, says Lucas
Green MP says 1,100 pieces of environmental law need to be moved on to UK statute books before Britain leaves EU
Britain is hugely unprepared for the potential impact of Brexit on environmental protection, with more than 1,100 pieces of EU green legislation needing to be moved into UK law for safeguards to be maintained, according to a report by the Green MP Caroline Lucas.
Lucas, who spent 11 years as an MEP before being elected to parliament, said environmental protections faced “a cocktail of threats from Brexit”.
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