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Sun Bank, Teesdale Snow has a magical effect when the shadows emphasise features of this post-glacial landscape

If there was a league table for roadside laybys, ranked according to the grandeur of the landscape that they overlook, then this one, on the B6282 two miles east of Middleton-in-Teesdale, would be a strong contender.

It’s perched on the edge of a steep escarpment, high above the river Tees. With the valleyblanketed in snow, the bare branches of birch, alder and ash below stood out in minute detail, as if drawn on a blank canvas.

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Opponents of Pilliga state forest wells raise doubts about economic and environmental claims in fact sheet

Doubts have been raised about claims made in the environmental impact statement for Santos’ controversial plans to drill 850 coal seam gas wells in and around the Pilliga state forest.

The full statement has not been publicly released yet but questions are being raised about the economic and environmental claims in it, which are summarised in a “fact sheet” released by Santos.

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With the right mix, the grid can go fully renewable for the same cost and reliability as fossil fuels. Pixabay/Wikimedia Commons

In a speech to the National Press Club yesterday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declared that the key requirements for Australia’s electricity system are that it should be affordable, reliable, and able to help meet national emissions-reduction targets. He also stressed that efforts to pursue these goals should be “technology agnostic” – that is, the best solutions should be chosen on merit, regardless of whether they are based on fossil fuels, renewable energy or other technologies.

As it happens, modern wind, solar photovoltaics (PV) and off-river pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) can meet these requirements without heroic assumptions, at a cost that is competitive with fossil fuel power stations.

Turnbull and his government have also correctly identified energy storage as key to supporting high system reliability. Wind and solar are intermittent sources of generation, and while we are getting better at forecasting wind and sunshine on time scales from seconds to weeks, storage is nevertheless necessary to deliver the right balance between supply and demand for high penetration of wind and PV.

Storage becomes important once the variable renewable energy component of electricity production rises above 50%. Australia currently sources about 18% of its electricity from renewables – hydroelectricity in the Snowy Mountains and Tasmania, wind energy and the ever-growing number of rooftop PV installations.

Meanwhile, in South Australia renewable energy is already at around 50% - mostly wind and PV – and so this state now has a potential economic opportunity to add energy storage to the grid.

Pushing storage

To help realise this potential, in South Australia and elsewhere, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) will spend A$20 million of public funds on helping flexible capacity and large-scale energy storage projects become commercially viable, including pumped hydro and batteries.

PHES constitutes 97% of worldwide electricity storage. The retail market for household storage batteries such as Tesla’s Powerwall is growing, but large-scale storage batteries are still much more expensive than PHES. “Off-river” pumped hydro has a bright future in Australia and many other countries, because there are very many suitable sites.

Wind and PV are the overwhelming winners in terms of new low-emissions electricity generation because they cost less than the alternatives. Indeed, PV and wind constituted half of the world’s new generation capacity installed in 2015 and nearly all new generation capacity installed in Australia.

Recently, we modelled the National Electricity Market (NEM) for a 100% renewable energy scenario. In this scenario wind and PV provide 90% of annual electricity, with existing hydro and bioenergy providing the balance. In our modelling, we avoid heroic assumptions about future technology development, by only including technology that has already been deployed in quantities greater than 100 gigawatts – namely wind, PV and PHES.

Reliable, up-to-date pricing is available for these technologies, and our cost estimates are more robust than for models that utilise technology deployment and cost reduction projections that are far different from today’s reality.

In our modelling, we use historical data for wind, sun and demand for every hour of the years 2006-10. Very wide distribution of PV and wind across the network reduces supply shortfalls by taking advantage of different weather systems. Energy balance between supply and demand is maintained by adding sufficient PHES, high-voltage transmission capacity and excess wind and PV capacity.

Not an expensive job

The key outcome of our work is that the extra cost of balancing renewable energy supply with demand on an hourly, rather than annual, basis is modest: A$25-30 per megawatt-hour (MWh). Importantly, this cost is an upper bound, because we have not factored in the use of demand management or batteries to smooth out supply and demand even more.

What’s more, a large fraction of this estimated cost relates to periods of several successive days of overcast and windless weather, which occur only once every few years. We could make substantial further reductions through contractual load shedding, the occasional use of legacy coal and gas generators to charge PHES reservoirs, and managing the charging times of batteries in electric cars.

Using 2016 prices prevailing in Australia, we estimate that the levelised cost of energy in a 100% renewable energy future, including the cost of hourly balancing, is A$93 per MWh. The cost of wind and PV continues to fall rapidly, and so after 2020 this price is likely to be around AU$75 per MWh.

Crucially, this is comparable with the corresponding estimated figure for a new supercritical black coal power station in Australia, which has been put at A$80 per MWh.

Meanwhile, a system developed around wind, PV and PHES and existing hydro can deliver the same reliability as today’s network. PHES can also deliver many of the services that enable a reliable energy system today: excellent inertial energy, spinning reserve, rapid start, black start capability, voltage regulation and frequency control.

Ageing system

Australia’s fossil fuel fleet is ageing. A good example is the pending closure of the 49-year-old Hazelwood brown coal power station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley. An ACIL Allen report to the Australian Government lists the technical lifetime of each power station, and shows that two-thirds of Australia’s fossil fuel generation capacity will reach the end of its technical lifetime over the next two decades.

The practical choices for replacing these plants are fossil fuels (coal and gas) or existing large-scale renewables (wind and PV). Renewables are already economically competitive, and will be clearly cheaper by 2030.

Energy-related greenhouse gas emissions constitute about 84% of Australia’s total. Electricity generation, land transport, and heating in urban areas comprise 55% of total emissions. Conversion of these three energy functions to renewable energy is easier than for other components of the energy system.

Transport and urban heating can be electrified by deploying electric vehicles and heat pumps, respectively. Electric heat pumps are already providing strong competition for natural gas in the space and water heating markets. Importantly, these devices have large-scale storage in the form of batteries in vehicles, and thermal inertia in water and buildings. Well-integrated adoption of these technology changes will help reduce electricity prices further.

So wind, PV and PHES together yield reliability and affordability to match the current electricity system. In addition, they facilitate deep cuts to emissions at low cost that can go far beyond Australia’s existing climate target.

Andrew Blakers receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

Matthew Stocks receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

Bin Lu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Better managing how we use electricity in our homes will reduce pressure on the grid, and reduce the need for more power stations.

The PM's call to arms on energy storage R&D is a welcome sign of forward policy thinking on renewables. Or is it?

Report says "exceptional" 2016 battery uptake points to even more remarkable growth in 2017, with 15 per cent of new solar installations expected to include storage, and a massive 70% of solar households looking to invest in a battery system.

South Australia’s energy minister, Tom Koutsantonis, responds to the federal government’s push for clean coal generation as an energy source for Australia’s future. He says ‘clean coal is a fairytale, clean coal doesn’t exist’, following calls by the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull and his deputy, Barnaby Joyce

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SENG QLD February Newsletter - Emergency Climate Action

When will Turnbull and co, take their blinkers off and recognise Australia should be getting into battery storage, not clean coal.

Turnbull government ministers rally to support PM's vision of clean coal power generation in Australia, – financed by the CEFC.

The Coalition could use the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to finance new coal power stations but it wouldn’t be cheaper than renewables

Just a few months ago, the idea that a new coal power station would ever be built in Australia seemed laughable. Banks, energy companies and even the Turnbull government seemed to accept the inevitable decline of the coal industry.

But, since then, the Turnbull government has been furiously talking up the idea of “clean” coal. And while no bank is likely to finance the building of a new coal-fired power station here, Turnbull and his ministers have been indicating the government might themselves fund them.

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The Murray–Darling Basin has more than 30,000 wetlands — 16 of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, which are fundamental to the health and viability of the whole basin.

Once Hazelwood goes the question is what will replace it? Not nearly enough renewables are being built.

The mobile phone apps that are enabling fishermen to increase their catches at the same time as helping environmentalists monitor and preserve stocks.

EVOLUTION OF LIFE: A bacterium dubbed the "platypus of microbiology" is even stranger than first thought, with the discovery it contains structures normally only found in more complex cells.

Prof Sir Mark Walport has been appointed to head Britain's newly created science funding organisation.

Physicists have drawn up construction plans for a large-scale quantum computer.

A new report points to a global decline in coal generation as solar PV and electric vehicles gain market share.

After reading your article (Weighing in to fight waste in the kitchen with a measuring spoon – and an app, 28 January) I felt so guilty I went and dug out from the compost bin two very brown soggy bananas I had thrown away earlier and made them into a banana loaf. Apart from the satisfaction of the loaf, I was also able to knock 252g/9oz off my somewhat nerdy tally of food wasted in January. I decided at new year to record how much food we wasted in an effort to reduce it – a paper version of the app in the article. It’s made us really conscious about not wasting food, because we hate to be the one who has to “put it in the book”. I thought the bananas were beyond hope – but I’ve just had a delicious slice and will live to tell the tale. Now for the sugar angst.
Patricia Golding
London

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Geologists in Iceland have drilled deeper into a volcano than ever before, reaching a depth of 4,659m.