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Burning coal for gas in UK seabeds would flame pollution, says report
Friends of the Earth condemns Coal Authority for granting licences for underground coal gasification at 19 UK sites
Plans to set fire to coal under the seabed at up to 19 sites around the UK would cause significant climate pollution, groundwater contamination and toxic waste, according to a report by environmentalists.
The UK government’s Coal Authority has granted licences for underground coal gasification (UCG) covering more than 1,500 sq km of seabed off north-east and north-west England, Wales and east central Scotland.
Continue reading...Why fossil fuel industry needs South Australia “experiment” to fail
Wildflower heaven in the west of Ireland
Iveragh Peninsula, County Kerry Roadsides are a riot of primary yellow, pinks and purples
This verdant isle is indeed a green gem, but for the visitor from eastern England the abundance of richly coloured flowers is the stand-out botanical feature of the west coast of Ireland.
Roadsides are a riot of primary yellow – bird’s foot trefoil, St John’s wort, ragwort and cat’s ear; pinks and purples – including common, bell and cross-leaved heather and whole hedges of fuchsia; whitish umbels of angelica, and big white and pink striped, flared trumpets of the roseata subspecies of large bindweed.
Continue reading...Wine without waste: De Bortoli aims to be Australia's first zero-waste winery
Solar energy, no sodium and organic fertiliser: how one of Australia’s biggest wineries is reducing waste while saving money and energy
One of Australia’s biggest family-owned wineries wants to become the country’s first zero-waste wine producer, and has invested more than $15m to achieve this goal.
De Bortoli Wines, which has wineries at four sites in two states, has already cut the amount of waste it disposes to landfill from 300 tonnes a year to 48 tonnes as part of a long-term sustainable business plan adopted in 2004.
Continue reading...Know your NEM: Volumes decline and price pressure eases
ZEN Energy wins $1m battery storage tender for SA govt buildings
Behind Vattenfall’s sell-off of German Lignite assets, a subsidy play by the buyers
New $100m solar fund to target large-scale, “blue chip” solar assets
Queensland 30MW solar farm green-lighted by council
Google’s DeepMind AI reduces data centre cooling bill by 40%
RN scientist in residence talks innovation and climate change
South Australia's electricity price woes are more due to gas than wind
Under a cloud: South Australia's wind farms have been blamed for price spikes, but without them the volatility would be even worse. Tim Phillips Photos/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SAThe past few weeks have seen extraordinarily high wholesale electricity prices in South Australia, averaging (as of 23 July) A$321 per megawatt hour, compared with A$80 per MWh for July 2015.
The prices have attracted an even more extraordinary deluge of news coverage – much of it asserting, with little or no evidence, that the high prices have been caused by an excessive reliance on wind generation.
This graph shows the wholesale prices in the National Electricity Market (NEM) since the beginning of July.
Looking at the graph, several things are apparent:
until the middle of May, SA prices were in line with those in other mainland NEM states, and almost never the highest
price spikes also happened in other states, most notably in Queensland, which doesn’t have wind power
prices in all four NEM states began to increase gradually from the middle of May.
In SA there is no long-term relationship between wholesale prices and the share of electricity supplied by wind, as shown below (comprehensive data on wind generation only date back to 2007). If anything, wind generation tends to drive down the wholesale price.
What does dictate electricity prices?In the NEM, just as in any complex market, prices are determined by a combination of many different factors. The factors that may have affected SA’s prices this month include:
the level of demand for electricity
the amount of wind generation
gas prices (for power generation)
the capacity of available non-wind generation
the capacity of the interconnectors linking SA and Victorian networks
the level of competition between generators and their resulting price-setting behaviour.
Let’s briefly consider each in turn.
Demand
Winter heating requirements mean than July in SA is almost always one of the top two months for overall electricity demand (though not for peak monthly demand, which happens during summer heatwaves). However, average daily demand so far this month is slightly lower than the same time last year, while average wholesale prices are nearly four times higher. So something else must be pushing up the price.
Wind power
July is normally a windy month in SA. But it seems likely that this month’s total wind generation, while roughly the same as last July, will be much lower than in July 2014. The average price so far this month is about A$320, compared with about A$70 in May this year (when it was windier) and A$50 in July 2014.
Wholesale gas prices
Wholesale gas prices increased rapidly during May and June. It is generally agreed that this is due to increased demand for gas for the three export LNG plants in Queensland, which are now running at two thirds of full capacity.
Gas prices affect wholesale electricity prices mainly though their effect on the operating cost of open-cycle gas turbine (OCGT) generators. These smaller, fast-start generators are ideal for meeting demand spikes, but they are relatively expensive to run. As we have already seen, wholesale prices climbed in all NEM states during May and June, and there is little doubt that higher gas prices were the main driver.
Non-wind generation
For most of its 18-year existence, the NEM has had a large excess of generation capacity relative to demand. This ensured tough competition between rival generators, which drove prices down. But now, in SA, this competition is weakening.
Early last year, Adelaide’s 478-megawatt gas-fired Pelican Point power station was taken offline, despite being one of the most efficient and lowest-emission thermal power stations in Australia. Its owner, Engie, said it was unable to trade profitably based on expected prices of gas and electricity. (In mid-July it was brought partially back online at the state government’s request, and has been operating at about one-third capacity for much of the time since then.) Then in May this year, the ageing 530MW coal-fired Northern power station was permanently shut down.
SA’s remaining thermal generating capacity consists of modern and old gas-fired plants, including several of the OCGT plants described above. Combined, their total is less than the annual summer and winter maximum demand in the state. So if periods of high demand coincide with periods of low wind generation, owners of these power stations can charge more because these days there is less competition.
Interconnector capacity
The Heywood interconnector, the main grid connection between SA and Victoria, has a maximum capacity of 460MW and at times of low wind generation it effectively functions as a direct replacement for Northern, by supplying electricity from the Latrobe Valley. It is being upgraded to 650MW and, as part of this work, it was effectively taken offline for about a week, beginning on July 5 – the period that has seen the highest prices.
Compare the period July 5-14, 2016, with July last year when demand was almost identical. The reductions in coal and interconnector supply are plainly evident, as are the increases in expensive gas generation from Torrens Island (Austrlia’s oldest operating thermal power station) and the OCGT plants.
Market competitiveness
Periods of low wind have thus left SA depending on a mixture of gas generators, many of them old and inefficient, whose already high costs have been driven still higher by the rapid rise in gas prices.
This has given the three businesses that own these power stations – AGL, Engie and Origin – increased market power. The rapid price spikes during the period July 5-15, and for several days thereafter, suggest that this market power was being exercised.
So what’s the real cause?As we have seen, if you want a satisfactory explanation, you have to start with the very high wholesale gas prices right across the country. These have made SA’s gas-fired electricity options much more expensive, in turn raising the floor price for all of its power in times of low wind generation.
In addition to this higher floor price, the tightening of supply and lack of competition have allowed generators to drive prices to even higher levels in the form of short-lived spikes, which have raised the monthly average price still further.
The closure of Northern power station has significantly reduced competition in the SA wholesale electricity market. Additional competition, which normally comes from the transmission links with Victoria, was almost absent for an extended period during the month, because of upgrading work on the Heywood interconnector.
Competition from wind generators protects consumers from high wholesale prices for much of the time. But when the wind is not blowing, consumers are exposed to the full effects of an uncompetitive market. That is what has happened to customers in SA this month.
It is absurd to say that SA electricity prices would be lower if there were less wind generation. On the contrary, consumers would be exposed to high prices in an uncompetitive market for more of the time, and thus face higher average prices, not lower ones.
What has happened to SA electricity prices during this month is a stark demonstration of the need for a fundamental rethink of the the design of the National Electricity Market, which was designed at a time when Australia had very little gas generation and no wind. Demands to limit the growth of wind (and also solar) generation are in effect demands to renege on national emissions reduction commitments, for the sake of preserving a set of outdated and dysfunctional institutions.
Hugh Saddler is a member of the Board of the Climate Insitute
SunEdison Australia sold to major US manufacturing giant
Failed gas unit caused biggest spike in electricity price, regulator says
The Arctic skua, an aerial highway robber: Country diary 100 years ago
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 28 July 1916
The ragwort is out on the sandhills, masses of handsome flowers above dense, dark green leaves, except where a colony of black and orange cinnabar caterpillars is defoliating the strong plants. Brighter even than the ragwort is the yellow-wort, each flower facing the sun above its stem-pierced leaves. Acres are plentifully sprinkled with yellow-worts, pink centauries, marsh helleborines with nodding mauve or purple white-lipped flowers, and grass of Parnassus with elegant white flowers delicately veined with grey. On the level stretches are considerable areas of solid pink, paler but more dainty than that of the centaury, for the small, short-stalked flowers of the bog pimpernel grow so close together as to hide their creeping leaves.
Over this floral wilderness a few terns still call harshly, for belated pairs, their earlier efforts having failed, yet hope to hatch their two or three mottled eggs. When, one day this week, we left the sandhills, we found scores of adult birds resting on the sands, and others offering small shining fish to the young they had tempted towards the sea; over the water beyond were many more beating up and down, hovering and diving. Suddenly, from the dunes behind, came a wild, angry clamour, and an Arctic skua, big and brown beside the dainty terns, came skimming towards the beach. Two or three irate terns followed it, and the resting birds on the shore got up in a flurried cloud. Heedless of this noisy multitude and their mobbing cries it singled out one with food in its coral bill and, twisting and dodging from side to side, chased it until the quarry was dropped. Had we been near enough we might have seen the skua stoop try catch the dropped fish before it reached the water, for that is the constant habit of this fierce aerial highway robber.
Continue reading...Grey triggerfish – new to British waters, and to the fishmonger's slab
A fish familiar to Mediterranean fishermen can now be caught around Britain, from the south-west to the Hebrides
A favourite haunt of a newcomer to British shores, the grey triggerfish Balistes capriscus, is the seaside pier. For the holiday angler it could be quite a shock landing such an unfamiliar fish, and it will need caution. Triggerfish have small mouths but eight sharp teeth and strong jaws, useful for crushing the shells of mussels and other prey.
The increase in sea temperatures of around 1C in the last 30 years, caused by climate change, has attracted this and other newcomers more familiar to fishermen in Mediterranean countries. Unlike the octopus, which still seems confined to the southern half of Britain and Ireland, the grey triggerfish is moving north quite fast.
Continue reading...Campaigners seek to reintroduce Eurasian lynx to parts of Britain
Charity begins local consultation on plan to introduce 10 Eurasian lynxes back into wild in north of England and southern Scotland
Lynx could soon be reintroduced to the north of England and southern Scotland as the charity campaigning for the return of the wild mammal, which was last seen across Britain around 700AD, launches its final stage of a consultation.
The project to introduce 10 Eurasian lynxes back into the wild, which has also considered sites in Aberdeenshire, will this week begin discussions with farmers and tourist operators around Kielder Forest in Northumberland.
Continue reading...Tigers maul two women at Beijing wildlife park
‘World can’t afford to silence us’: black church leaders address climate change
One of the largest and oldest black churches in the US warns that black people are disproportionally harmed by global warming and fossil fuel pollution
African American religious leaders have added their weight to calls for action on climate change, with one of the largest and oldest black churches in the US warning that black people are disproportionally harmed by global warming and fossil fuel pollution.
The African Methodist Episcopal church has passed its first resolution in its 200-year history devoted to climate change, calling for a swift transition to renewable energy.
Continue reading...AEMO chief executive Matt Zema dies
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