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The last few weeks have set new standards for national stupidity, as the government dances to the tune of the fossil-fuel industry, and tries to establish as many new coal,VSG, LNG and oil projects as it can before the shutters come down.

Australia’s network of climate science deniers continue to grasp at straws, despite multiple technical inquiries refuting their claims.

High-voltage power lines stand near an electricity substation on the outskirts of Sydney. Reuters

Australia’s energy market is a prominent fixture in our daily news cycle. Amid the endless ideology and politics swirling around the sector, technical terms such as “baseload power” and “dispatchable generation” are thrown around so often that there is a danger the meaning of these terms can get lost in the public debate.

The term “energy crisis” is bandied around quite loosely with some confusion around whether the crisis is about prices or security of supply. The politics of this are infernal and largely avoidable if all sides of politics had paid consistent and principled attention to energy policy over the 20 years since the formation of the National Energy Market.

It’s worth setting the record straight on the meaning of some of these terms and how they relate to climate policies, new technologies and the progression of market reform and regulation in Australia.

This glossary, which is by no means exhaustive, is a first step.

Baseload power

Baseload power refers to generation resources that generally run continuously throughout the year and operate at stable output levels. The continuous operation of baseload resources makes economic sense because they have low running costs relative to other sources of power. The value of baseload plants is mostly economic, and not related to their ability to follow the constantly varying system demand.

Baseload plants include coal-fired and gas-fired combined-cycle power plants. However, Australia’s international commitment to reduce carbon emissions is curtailing the economic viability of traditional baseload sources.

Coal-fired power stations like this one at Loy Yang are being gradually retired. Wholesale market (the “National Energy Market”)

The term National Energy Market is confusing because it refers to a competitive market for wholesale energy mostly on the east cost of Australia. It doesn’t include Western Australia or the Northern Territory and also includes the gas system. The National Energy Market allows all kinds of utility-scale power resources to connect to transmission system to meet large-scale power requirements.

However, industry talk about the “energy market” or even the “NEM” can also refer to the entire supply chain that includes the networks for voltage transmission, and medium- and low-voltage distribution as well as the retailing to the end consumer. The prices consumers see include all these aspects of the supply chain. This can add significantly to confusion.

The wholesale market is referred to as a “market” because there is competition between generators. Each generator places daily price “bids” to sell power and adjusts quantities in up to 10 price bands every five minutes. In this way, the sale of power is matched to the available energy and performance of the generating unit.

The market works to efficiently dispatch all variable and “dispatchable” resources to minimise the cost of electricity. The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) co-ordinates the National Energy Market.

Wholesale price

The wholesale “spot” price at which power is traded in the NEM is based on the highest accepted generator offers to balance supply and demand in each region. This is intended to encourage efficient behaviour by generators, as well as to co-ordinate efficient directing of resources.

Storage

Storage refers to energy captured for later use, typically in a battery. Electricity has been expensive to store in the past, but the cost of storage is expected to continue to fall with the improvement of battery technologies. For example, lithium-ion batteries were developed for mobile communications and laptops but now are being upscaled for electric vehicles and utility-scale energy storage.

Lithium-ion batteries were developed for mobile phones, but are now being used as part of electric vehicles such as Tesla Inc’s Model S and Model X. Reuters

Due to traditionally low storage levels in the system, electricity has to be mostly generated within seconds of when it is needed, otherwise the stability of the system can be put at risk. Storage technology will become more valuable as the market penetration of wind and solar power increases. With declining costs of various battery technologies, this will become easier to deliver.

Demand (and peak demand)

Demand refers to the amount of electricity required to meet consumption levels at any given moment. Power refers to the rate of energy consumption in megawatts (millions of Watts, or MW), whereas energy in megawatt-hours (MWh) refers to the total consumption over a period, such as a day, month or year.

Peak demand is the highest rate of energy consumption required in a particular season, such as heating in winter or cooling in summer. It is a vital measure because it determines how much generation equipment is needed to cover for unexpected outages and maintain reliable supply.

Dispatchable generation

Dispatchable generation refers to a type of generation based on fossil fuels or hydro power that can be controlled to balance electricity supply and demand. More flexible power plants based on natural gas firing (such as open-cycle gas turbines or hydro power plants) can operate at partial loading and respond to short-term changes in supply and demand.

Flexibility is the key here. Storage can provide flexibility as well, either from batteries or pumped-hydro storage. The need for such resources is becoming more urgent due to retirement of the older baseload plants and the growing amount of less emissions-intensive energy sources.

Frequency control

Synchronous generators in power stations spin at around 50 cycles per second. This speed is referred to as “frequency” (denoted Hertz, symbol Hz). Controlling this constant frequency is essential for maintaining voltage and thus reliability.

If there is loss of generation somewhere, extra power is drawn through the electricity network from other plants. This causes these generators’ rotors to slow down and the system frequency to fall. A key parameter is the so-called “maximum rate of change of frequency”. The faster the frequency changes, the less time is available to take corrective action.

Inertia

Inertia refers to the ability of a system to maintain a steady frequency after a significant imbalance between generation and load. The higher the inertia, the slower the rate of change of frequency after a disturbance.

One critical concern is that inertia must almost always be sufficient to enable stable power. Given many coal-fired power plants are being retired, the amount of inertia is falling markedly.

Eventually power systems will need to provide inertia explicitly by adding synchronous rotors (operating independently of power generation) or by providing other power system controls that are able to respond very quickly to deviations in power system frequency. These can be based on a combination of storage and advanced power electronics already available today.

Regional markets within the National Energy Market

The National Energy Market operates as five interconnected regional markets in the eastern states: Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. This reflects the way the power systems were originally set up under state authorities.

The National Energy Market cannot operate as a single market with a single price due to two important factors. It is not cost-effective to completely remove power transmission constraints between the state regions, and electrical losses in power transmission mean that each location requires a different price to efficiently reflect the impact of these losses.

When there are large power flows between regions, the prices can vary by up to 30% between regions due to losses. High prices occur when there is a power shortage relative to demand. Negative prices occur when load is less than the minimum stable generation committed. During periods of high prices (usually due to high demand or, less frequently, due to lower capacity) greater price differences can occur when the interconnectors reach their limits, causing very high-priced generation in the importing region to be dispatched.

The National Energy Market operates across Australia’s east coast. Interconnectors

In view of the long distances in the National Energy Market (4000km from end to end, the longest synchronous power system in the world), there are significant constraints in transmission capacity between the state-based regions. These constraints are given special treatment called “interconnectors”.

The marginal power losses across these interconnectors are calculated every five minutes to support efficient dispatch of resources and to ensure that the spot prices in each region are efficient and consistent with prevailing supply and demand. These interconnectors have limited capacity (due to overheating and other factors), however, and AEMO carefully manages their use to ensure balancing and inertia can be provided across regions.

Ancillary services and spinning reserve

Ancillary services refer to a variety of methods the market requires for consistent frequency and voltage control. They maintain the quality of supply and support the stability of the power system against disturbances. This frequency control is required during normal operation to maintain the continuous balance of energy supply and demand. For this purpose some generation capacity is held in reserve in order to vary its output up and down to adjust the total system generation level.

This difference between the maximum power output and the lower operating level is called “spinning reserve”. Spinning reserve is also required for output reduction to cover sudden disconnection of load or sudden increase in solar or wind power.

Transmission upgrades

The upgrading of the transmission system, including the interconnectors, is a complex regulatory process. Transmission has a significant value across the whole electricity supply chain from producers to consumers.

This value is easy to measure given electricity market conditions at any given moment. But it’s difficult to predict when these interconnectors need to be built or replaced because some transmission assets can operate for up to 80 years. Significant co-ordination is required in planning new investments as the location and deployment timing of new renewable generation capacity is uncertain and variable.

30-minute price settlement windows (and five-minute ones)

Generators are paid the spot price for all their output, and consumers (via retailers) are charged at the spot price for their consumption by AEMO. This “trading” price is calculated every 30 minutes for the purpose of transacting the cash flows (as an average of the five-minute dispatch price). This process is called “settlement”.

There is a plan in place to move to five-minute settlement over the next three years. This would help reward more flexible resources (including batteries) as they respond more efficiently to the impact of sudden changes in output.

Ariel Liebman receives funding from the Australian Federal Departments of Education and Foreign Affairs and Trade through the Australia Indonesia Centre

ross.gawler@monash.edu is affiliated with Monash Univeristy, Jacobs Consulting and McDonald Gawler Pty Ltd I occasionally consult to participants in the National Electricity Market in affiliation with Monash University or Jacobs Consulting or through McDonald Gawler Pty Ltd, a small private company. I contribute a small monthly donation to Get-up!

We should use our collective purchasing power to send a clear message to businesses threatening communities across the globe, says Ruth Chambers

John Vidal shines a light on communities across Africa, Latin America and Asia fighting to protect their land, water and livelihoods (Land defenders call on UN to act against violence by state-funded and corporate groups, theguardian.com, 21 September). The efforts of these land rights defenders benefit us all. The forests and land they fight to protect provide globally important carbon stores, havens for wildlife, life-saving medicines and clean water for millions. But these lands are often sacrificed to grow crops or mine metals that end up in our everyday lives. As consumers, we should use our collective purchasing power to send a clear message to businesses that these lands – and their people – matter, and they should be protected.
Ruth Chambers
London

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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US firm Planet Labs makes satellites you could hold in your hands, and has more in orbit than anyone else.

Despite signs that numbers of giant pandas are rising, suitable habitat has shrunk, satellite data shows.

The country is one of the few major developed nations not to have a dedicated agency.

A Highway Code prompt aimed solely at cyclists – not to the road users that caused more than 99% of deaths on UK roads last year – has nothing to do with improving safety

On Friday, transport minister Jesse Norman wrote to cycling leaders asking them to remind their members to follow the Highway Code. The letter came less than 48 hours after the announcement of a review on whether the law should be changed to tackle dangerous cycling.

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Right-wing media outlets like Breitbart, Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh echoed the Mail’s “significantly misleading” and now censured climate story

Back in February, the conservative UK tabloid Mail on Sunday ran an error-riddled piece by David Rose attacking Noaa climate scientists, who had published data and a paper showing that there was never a global warming pause. The attack was based on an interview with former Noaa scientist John Bates, who subsequently admitted about his comments:

I knew people would misuse this. But you can’t control other people.

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Mount Agung on Bali is an active volcano that may be about to erupt for the first time in 54 years.

On September 21, the Victorian Parliament delivered a major step forward for Victoria’s traditional owners, by passing the Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) Act 2017. Until now, the Wurundjeri people have had little recognition of their important role in river management and protection, but the new legislation, set to become law by December 1, will give them a voice.

The Act is remarkable because it combines traditional owner knowledge with modern river management expertise, and treats the Yarra as one integrated living natural entity to be protected.

The new law recognises the various connections between the river and its traditional owners. In a first for Victorian state laws, it includes Woi-wurrung language (the language of the Wurundjeri) in both the Act’s title and in its preamble. The phrase Wilip-gin Birrarung murron means “keep the Yarra alive”. Six Wurundjeri elders gave speeches in Parliament in both English and Woi-wurrung to explain the significance of the river and this Act to their people.

The Act also gives an independent voice to the river by way of the Birrarung Council, a statutory advisory body which must have at least two traditional owner representatives on it.

Read more: Three rivers are now legally people, but that’s just the start of looking after them.

Giving legal powers to rivers has become fashionable recently. Aotearoa, New Zealand passed legislation in March to give legal personhood to the Whanganui River, the voice of that river being an independent guardian containing Māori representation.

Within a week of that decision, the Uttarakhand High Court in India ruled that the Ganga and Yamuna Rivers are living entities with legal status, and ordered government officers to assume legal guardianship of the two rivers (although that decision has since been stayed by the Indian Supreme Court).

All of these developments recognise that rivers are indivisible living entities that need protection. But the Victorian legislation differs in that it doesn’t give the Yarra River legal personhood or assign it a legal guardian. The Birrarung Council, although the “independent voice” of the Yarra, will have only advisory status.

Speaking for the silent

The practice of giving legal voice to entities that cannot speak for themselves is not a new one. Children have legal guardians, as do adults who are not in a position to make decisions for themselves. We also give legal status to many non-human entities, such as corporations.

The idea of doing the same for rivers and other natural objects was first suggested back in 1972. In general terms, giving something legal personhood means it can sue or be sued. So a river’s legal guardian can go to court and sue anyone who pollutes or otherwise damages the river. (Theoretically, a river could also be sued, although this has yet to be tested.)

So how will the Yarra River be protected, if it doesn’t have legal personhood or a guardian?

Like the Whanganui River Settlement legislation, the Yarra River Protection Act provides for the development of a strategic plan for the river’s management and protection. This includes a long term community vision, developed through a process of active community participation, that will identify areas for protection. The strategic plan will also be informed by environmental, social, cultural, recreational and management principles.

These Yarra protection principles further enhance the recognition of traditional owner connection to the Yarra River. They highlight Aboriginal cultural values, heritage and knowledge, and the importance of involving traditional owners in policy planning and decision-making.

And the Birrarung Council will have an important role to play. It will provide advice and can advocate for the Yarra River, even if it can’t actually make decisions about its protection, or take people who damage the Yarra River to court.

Importantly, the Council does not have any government representatives sitting on it. Its members are selected by the environment minister for four-year terms and once appointed they can’t be removed unless they’re found to be unfit to hold office (for example, for misconduct or neglect of duty). This makes sure that the Council’s advice to the minister is truly independent.

So, although the new law will not give the Yarra River full legal personhood, it does enshrine a voice for traditional owners in the river’s management and protection – a voice that has been unheard for too long.

Katie O'Bryan is a member of the National Environmental Law Association, Environmental Justice Australia and the Australian Conservation Foundation.

A record 60,000 people took part in the Big Butterfly Count but each participant saw on average only 11 butterflies, the lowest since the count began in 2010

Summer’s washout failed to dampen the prospects for the red admiral, one of the UK’s most popular butterflies, whose numbers rose by 75% compared with last year, according to the annual Big Butterfly Count.

Other butterfly species were less fortunate, however, with declines seen across the three common species of white butterflies. The green-veined white and both the large white and small white were down more than a third on last year, reflecting difficult weather conditions.

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AEMO sees the new build of renewable energy as critical to meet power supply shortfalls, noting in its latest report that more renewables will mean less need to burn gas for electricity. It also warns more gas will be needed if one of the country's ageing coal generators fails.

Construction boom in large-scale solar farms and wind projects in Australia hits major road hump, with "retrospective" rules imposed by market operator causing delays, and in some cases added costs and equipment changes.

Start-ups specialising in EV support, energy efficiency for homes and businesses, and the efficient roll-out of solar PV selected among 5 new participants in 12-month clean energy “incubator” program.

Allendale, Northumberland I count 50 butterflies working the double row of sedums spilling their sticky scent onto the early morning air

There’s an urgency to the swallows’ flight as they hurtle low over the field, snatching flies that the restless cattle have disturbed. With a late brood just fledged from the barn, they have a keen need for food. There’s also a sense of limited time in the frenzy of bees and butterflies rummaging through late flowers within the walled enclosure of the garden. This little domain within the valley provides them with an end-of-season smörgåsbord. Most of the plants I grow are for both day- and night-flying insects, chosen for their pollen and nectar or as food plants for caterpillars.

The sun has only been up for half an hour. A butterfly is pressed against the house wall to absorb warmth after the night. A red admiral with pristine wings. I inch up slowly so I can study its striped antennae, its black-haired body, its legs braced against the stone. It is one of many, drawn by the mass of sedums that are spilling their sticky scent onto the early morning air. I count 50 butterflies slowly working the double row planted either side of the path. As the day heats up they will become a restless throng, jostling with the numerous bumblebees, flies and honeybees among the deep pink flowers.

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The main news of the week was Brendan Pearson's departure from Minerals Council of Australia. The numbers opposing a clean energy target are dwindling rapidly.

Renault to offer its fully electric ZOE "supermini" EV and Kangoo minivan for sale on Australian market in "couple of months."

Report says emissions have fallen after Hazelwood closure, but finds It hard to think of a more expensive & unreliable way to achieve reliable and affordable energy than prolonging the life Liddell coal generation.

Report shows least cost way to meet Paris climate goals and cut emissions is to fast-track Australia's transition to renewable energy.