Feed aggregator

Gelt Woods, Cumbria The modern river has sunk down into a narrow channel, carving the rock into strange shapes like rolling muscles or slumped candle wax

The sides of the river Gelt glow with beech leaves, flat ovals of burnt orange sticking to wet ledges. We take the footpath into the woods at Low Geltbridge, crossing the little Powterneth beck where it joins the main course. Vines of honeysuckle drape the trees, their scarlet berries vivid in the flat light. Acorns pummel our shoulders and lie splattered across the path. On hearing voices, a dipper skims downstream.

As the trees lose their cover it becomes clearer how the Gelt twists its way along the bottom of this U-shaped gorge. The very first river here ran as meltwater under ice, carrying with it boulders and debris as it funnelled its way down to the Solway, scouring out the bedrock known as the Triassic St Bees sandstone. During the last ice age there was a massive confluence in this area, with Scottish glaciers moving south, those forming the Tyne Gap lumbering west and those creating the Eden valley pushing north.

Continue reading...

Despite Beijing having ratified the Paris climate change agreement, Patricia Adams says China is still 'chugging along the smoky path to prosperity'.

Shane Rattenbury to replace Simon Corbell as ACT climate minister, marking second time a Greens member appointed in any Australian ministry.

NSW parliamentary secretary Adam Marshall says solar households in NSW should have the ability to trade electricity that they generate from their rooftops.

The mid-west American state of Iowa is rapidly gaining on South Australia, with 36% wind energy, headed to 40% by 2020.

Infigen Energy attributes 56% lift in revenue to strong winds and higher merchant electricity prices in SA and NSW, and higher LGC prices.

Car industry decline may explain falling volumes. Meanwhile, renewable advocates should prepare for price backlash on renewable closures; and what's behind a change of view on regulatory decisions?

At double the capacity and almost half the cost/kWh, Tesla's Powerwall 2 illustrates the break-neck speed at which battery storage is evolving.

Global study reveals huge number of children breathing toxic fumes more than six times over safe limits, while billions are affected by air pollution that exceeds guidelines

Three hundred million of the world’s children live in areas with extreme air pollution, where toxic fumes are more than six times international guidelines, according to new research by Unicef.

The study, using satellite data, is the fist to make a global estimate of exposure and indicates that almost 90% of the world’s children - two billion - live in places where outdoor air pollution exceeds World Health Organisation (WHO) limits.

Continue reading...

If Hazelwood departs the market, as one of the cheapest generators in the NEM, it seems logical that electricity prices will increase. So what can we expect to happen?

The world is moving in fits and starts but with gathering momentum toward a more diversified, low-carbon energy mix.

Victoria's famous river red gum wetlands get a good soaking; Bec Bovell is Cygnet's mushroom lady; we go behind the scenes at the Weengallon ladies day; and Stan Heausler calls last drinks at the Grove Hill Hotel.

The IEA has once again been accused of ignoring the reality of solar PV's cost reduction and pace of installation in its latest report.

Tesla throws down gauntlet to incumbent utilities by bringing down battery storage costs by nearly half, and taking built-in solar PV to the mainstream. Elon Musk talks of solar, storage and EVs being "beautiful, affordable, integrated" - three things that current utilities are not.

Scientists can give us facts and figures about climate change. And they carry a 'burden of knowledge' for the rest of us. Hear the people behind the statistics reveal how they feel.

The ban on diesel cars in Athens and Thessaloniki has been lifted and the price of heating oil has tripled. Hard-pressed Greeks have turned to burning logs – and other things

Greece’s financial recession is leaving its footprint on the environment. This follows twenty years of huge improvements in Greece’s air pollution. While most European countries struggle with the consequences of failure to control exhaust pollution from diesel vehicles, Greece benefitted from long-standing bans on diesel cars in the two biggest cities, Athens and Thessaloniki.

This allowed the country to reap the full benefits of technologies to control petrol exhaust, without these being offset by the poor performance of diesel cars. As a consequence nitrogen dioxide from traffic approximately halved alongside Greek roads between 1996 and 2006, in contrast to the lack of improvement elsewhere in Europe.

Continue reading...

Salmon farming is a big, and growing, business in Australia, with plans to turn it in to a billion dollar industry within 15 years.

Exclusive: Analysis of government review shows destructive fishing practices would rise and very few fishers would benefit

Proposals to allow increased fishing in Australian waters would generate minuscule economic benefits to only a handful of licence holders, according to a new analysis.

The Ocean Science Council of Australia, an independent group of researchers, has criticised a government review that recommended significant cuts to marine reserves. The group says the review would expand the use of destructive fishing practices.

Continue reading...

So Heathrow’s good for business (Report, 26 October)? Heathrow Airport Holdings is owned by FGP TopCo, an international consortium led by Ferrovial, a Spanish Company based in Madrid, in partnership with Qatar Holdings, Caisse de Depot du Quebec, the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, and the China Investment Corporation, among others. Heathrow Holdings has previously admitted it makes more from being a shopping mall than from the flying business and now the taxpayer is likely to be told to stump up £5bn-£10bn for added road and rail infrastructure, according to former transport minister Stephen Hammond.

And that’s before the crucial debate on pollution and health. Heathrow has never taken responsibility for the dangerous pollution caused by the stacking of aircraft waiting to land and anxious to shed surplus fuel over hapless residents below. Heathrow must come clean; this whole affair is a dirty business.
Anna Ford
London

Continue reading...

The ongoing uncertainty over the future of the Hazelwood power station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley has raised the prospect that the ageing generator will be shut down in the near future.

The power station has a nameplate capacity of 1.6 gigawatts, which represents 22% of the coal-fired generation capacity in Victoria, and 6% of the total coal-fired capacity in Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales combined (South Australia no longer has an operating coal-fired power station).

Coal-fired power stations provide the bulk of the “baseload” electricity requirements in the National Electricity Market (NEM). Baseload refers to generation that meets the minimum demand, and from an economic point of view this is best delivered by generation that produces constant, reliable output. Brown coal provides the cheapest baseload power – or at least, it does if we’re prepared to ignore factors such as the long-term costs of climate change.

So if Hazelwood departs the market, as one of the cheapest generators in the NEM, it seems logical that electricity prices will increase. The extent of that increase will depend on what takes up the slack. So what can we expect to happen?

On the decline

Until 2007, average electricity demand in the NEM had increased every year since the grid was first built. But after that demand started to fall. The reasons are varied, including increasing takeup of rooftop solar panels, improved efficiency of lighting and appliances, and reductions in industrial demand.

Looking at July (when baseload electricity demand is typically at its highest), the average demand has fallen from 25.4GW in July 2007 to 22.9GW in July 2016, a reduction of 2.5GW.

But there has also been significant retirement of coal-fired generation capacity in Australia since 2010, driven partly by the retirement of old power plants, and partly by the costs associated with the carbon price, which ran from 2012 to 2014.

The retirees include Morwell and Anglesea in Victoria (0.2GW), Playford B and Northern in South Australia (0.8GW), and most significantly Redbank, Wallerawang and Munmorah in New South Wales (2.5 GW). This adds up to a total of 3.5GW of coal-fired capacity shut down this decade.

This means that more capacity has been retired than the baseload demand has decreased. So in theory, the retirement of another baseload power station at Hazelwood would result in even more tightening of the balance between supply and demand.

But if we look at the current average capacity factors of the remaining coal-fired power stations we can see that many of the larger ones, in NSW in particular, are running at very modest capacities. For example, Liddell has been running at 43% of its total capacity for the past 12 months, and Eraring at 59%. Across the NEM the average is 65%.

Now, of course some of this generation is used when the demand increases during particularly hot or cold weather, but most of this “peaking” demand is supplied by hydro and gas. So while baseload is not the only way to meet demand in the energy system, there nevertheless seems to be plenty of baseload available.

Why are coal-fired stations running at such low levels? One reason is that while demand has been falling, there has also been an extra 4GW of wind power capacity added to the grid. Meanwhile, several new plants were commissioned in the years leading up to the peak in demand, with the expectation that demand would continue to rise. These plants include Callide C, Millmerran and Kogan Creek, which add up to 2.7GW.

If Hazelwood shuts down, it would be reasonable to expect that the remaining coal-fired generators in the grid will take up the slack. The generators in Victoria are running at relatively high capacity factors, so we might expect that NSW generators will increase their output. The interconnector between Victoria and NSW currently sends Victorian electricity into NSW, but it can reverse that flow if required.

One reason why Victorian power stations are running at higher capacities is because they are cheaper to run. ACIL Tasman figures from 2010 show short-run marginal cost (the cost to run a power station in addition to fixed costs) in Victoria is around A$2-5 per megawatt hour, compared with A$12-17 per MWh in NSW.

Predicting what will happen to electricity prices in the future is harder than picking the winner of the Melbourne Cup, so making an exact price forecast is tricky. But if the hole left by Hazelwood’s retirement is filled by the excess capacity in NSW, then all things being equal the impacts on the overall costs of running the system would be modest.

Still, the NEM is very complex. Generators (especially in Victoria) are privately owned and will adjust their market strategies to take advantage of the tightening of supply. Meanwhile, the growing market share of renewables, the potential for electricity demand to begin rising once again, and the possibility of further coal closures, all mean that the full impact of the retreat of coal-fired power is yet to be seen.

Roger Dargaville has received funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency