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ONE STEP CLOSER: Researchers say a safe and effective vaccine against the Zika virus is a step closer after two successful trials on mice.

Solar thermal technology uses the sun's heat to generate electricity, or heating. Beyond Coal & Gas Image Library/Flickr, CC BY-NC

Recently Sandfire Resources, a gold and copper producer based in Western Australia, announced its new solar power plant will soon start powering its DeGrussa mine. By replacing diesel power, the 10-megawatt power station, with 34,000 panels and lithium storage batteries, is expected to reduce the mine’s carbon emissions by 15%.

This is an exciting development because it realises an important potential that has long been recognised but not exploited. Two of Australia’s greatest resources – solar energy and minerals – are, as luck would have it, both highly concentrated in the same parts of Australia.

In this case, solar energy is being used to power the mine, but there is also great potential for solar energy to be used to convert the minerals to chemicals and metals.

In metal production, most greenhouse gases are generated when carbon (often coal) is used to produce metal from the rocky ore. Some of this carbon is used in the actual chemical reactions, but a large proportion is just providing energy for the process.

Replacing the carbon energy source with renewable or other lower-emission energy has the potential to dramatically lower the greenhouse gases associated with metal production.

For example, in iron production, more than 400kg of coke and coal is use to make every tonne of iron. Using renewable energy as a heat source could reduce this carbon input by up to 30%.

The next revolution

Currently, Australia’s use of solar energy is largely limited to homes, for hot water and solar-powered electricity. But solar energy has great potential for regional Australia too.

Mines are often isolated. There is typically limited natural gas and electricity supply, and in remote areas energy supply is limited to liquid fossil fuels. This is exactly the potential being exploited by Sandfire Resources at its mine facility 900km north of Perth.

Recent studies by CSIRO have identified the potential to use solar in high-temperature processing of ores such as bauxite, copper and iron ore. This process would use concentrated solar thermal (CST) energy as a heat supply. This heat can also be converted to electricity, known as concentrated solar power (CSP).

This is different to the solar photovoltaic technology used in Sandfire’s solar power plant (and rooftop solar panels), which converts sunlight directly to electricity.

Solar thermal energy works best at temperatures between 800℃ and 1,600℃ – which can be achieved with existing technology that concentrates the sun’s heat. This is currently too hot for converting the heat to electricity, which generally operates below 600℃.

But processing minerals can make use of these high temperatures, because the heat is used directly for chemical conversion, rather than first being converted to electricity.

It is this rationale that is driving research, at the University of Adelaide, into producing alumina using concentrated solar energy and, at Swinburne University, into producing iron from ore.

We have tested a range of temperatures and mineral mixes, and have produced iron products similar to commercial-grade iron products. We envisage a solar iron-making plant operating in Western Australia and value-adding to our iron reserves before being shipped overseas.

We expect this could reduce energy and emissions by 20-30% compared to current iron-making processes, by replacing carbon-based fossil fuels with solar energy, although carbon would still be used in the chemical processes.

Whether this is cost-effective will depend on the manufacturer, as the saving in energy and carbon will need to compensate for the high capital cost associated with high solar fluxes.

Concentrated solar energy is still relatively expensive. The Australian Solar Institute estimated in 2012 that the cost of electricity from concentrated solar was approximately double the current cost for conventional energy, reflecting largely the high capital cost of solar systems.

This gap can reasonably be expected to close with increases in the scale of operations (lowering manufacturing costs) and in regulatory pressure on conventional power sources.

It may be a way off, but the small step by Sandfire Resources could be the start of a revolution in the Australian minerals industry.

Geoffrey Brooks and his co-workers have received funding from ARENA for work into solar thermal processing and Cartwheel Resources for evaluating the potential of solar thermal processing of iron ores.

New report says Flint water crisis is not an anomaly, as analysis reveals 5,363 water systems – providing drinking water to 18 million – breached federal laws

More than 18 million Americans are served drinking water by providers that have violated federal laws concerning lead in water, with only a tiny proportion of offenses resulting in any penalty, a new report has found.

The toxic water crisis in Flint, Michigan, is “not anomalous”, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) report states, with widespread violations of national rules designed to protect people from lead, a known neurotoxin that is harmful even in small doses.

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Fears had been raised that EU referendum would result in deadline being missed but sources say carbon budget will be agreed

Ministers will this week approve a world-leading carbon emissions reduction target for the early 2030s, the Guardian understands.

Fears had been raised by green groups and industry that the EU referendum would cause the UK government to miss a deadline on Thursday for accepting carbon targets from its statutory climate advisers.

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Nasa has conducted a second round of test on a booster which is designed to send human beings deep into space.

The UK Science Minister, Jo Johnson, says that world class research will "endure" following the Brexit.

The overall awards winners have been announced in the 2016 Atkins Ciwem environmental photographer of the year competition, an annual international showcase for thought-provoking photography and video that tackles a wide range of environmental themes. A shortlist of 60 images has also been chosen from more than 10,000 entries for an exhibition that will run at the Royal Geographical Society, London, from 29 June to 22 August 2016.

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Two wings from birds that lived alongside the dinosaurs have been found preserved in amber.

Christiana Figueres tells business leaders that Brexit vote is not an obstacle to continued cooperation between Britain and the EU on global warming

Britain must continue to be a world leader when it comes to acting on global warming despite the EU referendum result last week, the UN’s climate chief has urged.

Christiana Figueres warned that should article 50 be triggered it would bring uncertainty for two years but cooperation on climate change could be one area of continuity between the UK and EU.

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German energy firm will not make fresh plans until the UK’s European relationship becomes clearer, but existing manufacturing will not be affected

Siemens is putting new wind power investment plans in the UK on hold due to uncertainty caused by last week’s Brexit vote, the Germany energy company has told the Guardian.

A £310m manufacturing hub in Hull that employs 1,000 people will not be affected by the decision, and should still begin producing blades and assembling turbines next year.

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The strangeness of last Sunday …

Has there ever been better times for our electricity utilities?

Sunday is typically pretty subdued in terms of electricity demand. Consequently Sunday market prices are at the low-end of the weekly range, even with the extra demands of a chilly winter day.

Since the beginning of 2008, the Sunday market price in Victoria averages about $23 per megawatt hour, factoring out the carbon tax component. That is about half the average weekday price of $43.

Victorian wholesale electricity pricing for Sundays from 2008 on. Note the extraordinary nature of Sunday 26th, 2016. Data from AEMO’s half hour price and demand datasets. Coloured solid lines show Sunday averages. Coloured dashed lines show the volume weighted price for working week-days. Black line shows Sunday 26th 2016. Colour distinguishes carbon pricing (blue) and non carbon pricing (red) intervals. Data sourced from AEMO.

Sunday prices do vary across the year rising slightly in the winter months. Between 2008 and 2015, June Sunday prices have averaged about $31 with a high of $50 on Sunday June 1, 2008.

So what can we make of the last Sunday (26th June 2016), when the volume averaged price in Victoria was a staggering $120, almost four times the average?

It’s not a once off, as the Victorian price for every Sunday this last June has topped $75 - more than 50 per cent higher than any previous June Sunday in the last 8 years.

And Victoria isn’t alone. Right across the National Electricity Market (or NEM), prices have been stratospheric. Last Sunday, South Australia topped the class at $158, closely followed by New South Wales at $133.

As pointed out in my post a week ago, in historical terms these prices are simply staggering, and it’s not very obvious why.

If these prices remain, they will have widespread consequences. So it is important to get to grips with what is going on.

Last Sunday was Melbourne’s coldest morning of the year, with several coldest-day records set across Victoria. So we might expect some extra heating was stretching the power system, helping drive up prices.

However, while the Victorian demand was higher than average for a Sunday, it was about 10 per cent lower than the Victorian average weekday demand. So we really can’t pin Sunday’s extreme prices on unusual demand. Moreover, last Sunday net Victorian exports amounted to about 15 per cent of its electricity production (see note 1). So there was no shortage of supply to meet local demand.

Victorian average Sunday electricity demand in megawatts, from 2008 on. Note while last Sunday (June 26 2016) demand was above the Sunday average, it was substantially lower than the weekday average. Coloured solid lines show Sunday averages. Coloured dashed lines show weekday averages. Black line shows Sunday 26th 2016. Colour fills distinguish carbon pricing (blue) and non carbon pricing (red) intervals. Data from AEMO’s half hour price and demand datasets.

Why are prices so high?

Rather than originating locally, the reasons for the strange pricing events on Sunday morning in Victoria, seem to reside elsewhere on the NEM. They point to the emerging issue of the inter-regional coupling, the tangle of energy policies across the NEM and other energy sectors, and the power of industry incumbents.

In comparison to Victoria, Queensland demand last Sunday morning was significantly above expectation, slightly exceeding even the weekday demand average. Demand has been growing strongly in Queensland, partly because of the commissioning of its gas export processing plants. Still, at not much more than the weekday average, it is hard to understand why last Sunday’s demand in Queensland would be sufficient to drive prices to $115. At the time coal generation was running at around 75 per cent capacity.

Queensland average Sunday electricity demand (grid-based) in megawatts, since the beginning of 2008. Data from AEMO’s half hour price and demand datasets. Coloured solid lines show medians for this period. Colours dashed lines show the average for all times of the week. Black line shows Sunday 26th 2016. Colour distinguishes carbon pricing and non-carbon pricing days. Queensland wholesale Sunday pricing since the beginning of 2008. Data from AEMO’s half hour price and demand datasets. Coloured solid lines show medians for this period. Colours dashed lines show the volume weighted price for all times of the week. Black line shows the morning of Sunday 26th 2016. Colour distinguishes carbon pricing and non carbon pricing days.

As with Queensland, New South Wales demand was close to the highest recorded for a Sunday. But while New South Wales was importing furiously, paying what would seem to be over the odds prices, its coal generators were only running at 68 per cent capacity. Why?

In South Australia demand was not exceptional in terms of recent history, but the recent closure of Northern coal-fired power plant has significantly tightened supply settings there and made it more sensitive to the cost of marginal gas generators. Meanwhile its cleanest, most efficient, and one of its largest gas generators, Pelican Point, sits idle. Why?

Sunday was not only cold in South Australia, but it was also not very windy. As a consequence output from wind generation averaged only about 25 per cent of installed capacity. With only modest wind output, and with no coal, South Australia generation was dominated by gas, with consumption augmented by Victorian imports.

South Australian dispatch in megawatts for Sunday 26th 2016, showing the dominant role played by gas generators. In addition to local generation, imports from Victoria averaged around 300 megawatts over the day (see note 1).

The important point is that, for whatever reason, prices are being signalled right across the NEM, from Queensland and South Australia through to Tasmania.

This price signalling is having some paradoxical effects. Just last week, the Office of the Tasmanian Economic Regulator approved an increase in retail prices of 3.43 per cent, effective this Saturday, on the back of the high market prices in Victoria. The surprise is that Tasmania has just emerged from its own energy crisis with recent rains together with the re-connection of Basslink allowing exports for the first time in almost 10 months. Just as supply constraints relaxed for the time being and security restored though Basslink, long-suffering Tasmanian consumers are the first to be hit with price-hikes.

And in Victoria, where prices are responding to distant drivers, brown coal generators must be laughing at their good fortune.

Hazelwood’s super-profits

Across the last 4 weeks, prices in Victoria have averaged $98 per megawatt hour when weighted by volume. In Victorian market terms the total value of dispatch was worth about $370 million. That is almost three times higher than the equivalent period last year, when prices averaged $35.

Victorian price by 5-minute intervals, for the last 4 weeks. red line shown the average prices weighted by volume. Note how regularly 5-minute prices have risen to $300 per megawatt hour as indicated by the dashed line. As with the above figure, for the equivalent period in 2015.

It is boom times for the owners of Victoria’s brown coal stations, like the French energy utility Engie that operates the Hazelwood power station.

In Victorian market terms, the value of Hazelwood’s dispatch over the last 4 weeks is around $70 million.

Total value of Hazelwood dispatch in terms of Victorian market prices, for the 4 week period from May 29 - June 25. Carbon tax contribution calculated using emissions intensity of 1.56 tonnes CO2 per megawatt hour. Costs of $2.50 per megawatt hour are from AEMO estimates(http://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/Planning/Related-Information/Planning-Assumptions).

That compares with the market value of $17 million in June last year, and around $10 million in June 2014 when the carbon tax liability is factored out.

On an annualised basis, Hazelwood’s latest returns amount to around $900 million, a truly phenomenal turn-around from 2013 when the Commonwealth Bank valued its 8.3 per cent stake at just $1 million, before selling for an undisclosed sum (see note 2).

Hazelwood is Australia’s most contentious power station - a proverbial lightning rod for the debate about our energy system. As Victoria’s oldest, most emission intensive coal fired power station it has been plagued by community concern. At around 1.56 tonnes per megawatt hour it produces about three times the CO2 of a modern gas plant such as the super efficient combined cycle Pelican Point gas plant in South Australia,Engie’s other main asset in Australia. Already it is some 10 years over its use by date.

But, in terms of its balance sheet, Hazelwood has probably never had such good times as the last few months. Meanwhile Engie reportedly disputes liability for the $18 million costs incurred by the Country Fire Authority for fighting a month long fire in Hazelwood’s mine in early 2014.

While Engie enjoys remarkable “super-profits” from Hazelwood, should we ask at what cost. With Victorian electricity exports to South Australia and New South Wales averaging around 1000 megawatts, Hazelwood arguably exists to underwrite those exports (see note 1). Meanwhile Engie’s Pelican Point Power Plant in South Australia sits idle, its gas contracts reputedly on sold presumably to the export market. If Engie were to fire up Pelican Point, it would reduce our national emissions by several million tonnes each year, and arguably put downward pressures on South Australian prices that would then be signalled across the country.

But perhaps that is exactly why. Oh what a tangled web our national energy policy is.

The headache for next Sunday

I doubt next Sunday, on the morning after the federal election, many will be watching the electricity prices. But some will, hoping the electricity market magically returns some normality. After all, it will not just be the first day of the new government, it is also the start of a new financial year.

Could it be that the current market prices are being manipulated by our electricity oligarchs to improve their bottom lines before the end of the financial year? Or will the high prices persist, reflective a fundamental shift in market dynamics, as the various threads of national energy policy tangle more tightly.

Surely we can understand that it is just not right to let the market dynamics encourage the likes of Engie to operate in Australia as if there is no tomorrow, rewarding it handsomely to dump some 15 million tonnes of CO2 into our atmosphere each year leaving Pelican Point idle. Would Engie be given license to do that in France. I doubt so, so why here?

But it is not so much Engie that is the problem, or any other player, as it is the whole tangled web of our national energy policy that is tightening at each turn. Either way, next Sunday will present the new government with the massive headache of untangling this web. We are in desperate need of a bipartisan approach with a sharp focus on how we rebuild our energy system fit for the challenges ahead, adding environmental concerns as an equal to the existing priorities of security and affordability. After all, last Sunday highlights that our existing energy system is not looking particularly affordable. And, like Hazelwood, much of it is beyond its use-by-date, so probably it is not that secure. And for sure it is an environmental disaster.

Notes

[1] The exceptional electricity pricing on Sunday 26th June 2016 is illustrated by the morning period between 8am and 9 am. Electricity consumption (TOT.DEMAND), production (DISPATCH.GEN), interchanges (NETINTERCHANGE) and prices (VWP) by the NEM regions. NETINTERCHANGE are +ve for export. Flows between the regions are coloured by the exporting region, and labelled by INTERCONNECTOR. Note that Victoria was exporting over 1160 megawatts, 380 megawatts to South Australian and 880 megawatts to New South Wales. In turn Victoria was importing 200 megawatts from Tasmania. The difference is essentially equivalent to the output of Hazelwood.

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[2] Hazelwood Power Station was purchased by a consortium led by International Power in 1996 for $2.35 billion, before merging with GDF Suez, now Engie. In 2010, CBA revealed had written down its 8 per cent share to $1 million “The Hazelwood power station probably wasn’t the best investment the bank made,” CBA chairman David Turner said at the time. CBA sold that share to GDF Suez for an undisclosed amount in 2013.

Disclosure

Mike Sandiford receives funding from the Australian Research Council for geological research.

New advances in technology are sparking efforts to use virtual reality to help people gain a deeper appreciation of environmental challenges, reports Yale environment 360

Could virtual reality (VR) — immersive digital experiences that mimic reality — save the environment?

Well, that may be a bit of a stretch. But researchers say that it could perhaps promote better understanding of nature and give people empathetic insight into environmental challenges.

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Scientists hope new information will help protect the little-understood whale population that feeds and travels through the city’s waters

The habits of New York’s little-understood whale population is to be fully analysed for the first time, with scientists hoping the new information will help protect the marine behemoths that navigate one of the busiest shipping areas in the world.

An acoustic monitoring buoy has been deployed off the coast of Long Island to eavesdrop on the cacophony of underwater noises made by whales that feed and travel through New York waters.

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The Thames estuary is home to the world’s largest offshore wind farm – a model for exploiting the potential of Britain’s gusty coastlines

At the widest point of the Greater Thames estuary, 12 miles north of the Kent coast and 12 miles south of Essex, lies the London Array – the largest operational offshore wind farm in the world. Completed in 2013, after 10 years of planning and construction, it covers an area of 40 square miles – roughly the same size of Bristol – and comprises 175 individual turbines laid out in neat rows like an enormous nursery flower bed.

It's a mature technology, and it’s a very effective way of installing new power on to the grid

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Scientists say they have found a large helium gas field in Tanzania, amid concerns global supplies are running out.

Fisheries chiefs and campaigners say current catch quotas will continue until the UK leaves the EU, and new arrangements may not be more generous

British fishermen have been warned that, despite the promises made by the leave campaign, they cannot expect to be granted greater catches after the UK leaves the European Union, and they may face increased economic turmoil.

Fishermen will have to remain within their current catch quotas while the UK is still a member, and even if new arrangements are negotiated after a Brexit, they will not necessarily be more generous, fisheries chiefs and campaigners have warned.

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Cecil’s death could spark a global rethink on how to protect lions – ending Africa’s dependence on hunting revenues to sustain wildlife habitats and crucial conservation projects

The tiny lion cubs bounce down the dusty track alive with curiosity about their new world from their inquisitive faces to the tips of their tails. This new life is a symbol of the surprising good that has stemmed from the tragic death of their grandfather, Cecil.

Cecil, killed by US dentist Walter Palmer one year ago, has 13 surviving sons and daughters and 15 known grandcubs so far. They, like Cecil before he died, have survived brushes with death.

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Private sector needs to work in Africa, Asia and Latin America to drive down carbon emissions, Christiana Figueres to tell business and climate summit

“Universal support” is needed from businesses across the world to tackle global warming, the United Nations climate chief says.

Business leaders and politicians are meeting in London to discuss how to implement the first comprehensive climate agreement, secured at UN talks in Paris in December, to cut greenhouse gas emissions and avoid dangerous temperature rises.

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The number of boats using the traditional fire fishing method in Jinshan, Taiwan, has fallen from 300 to just three. The remaining fishermen have a seasonal window from May to July when they can catch sardines using fire, a practice that dates back hundreds of years

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Analysts say Brexit will create uncertainty for energy sector, which could hit £20bn investment a year needed to replace ageing, dirty power plants

The UK’s challenge to build a clean, secure and affordable energy system has become significantly harder amid the political and economic turmoil following the nation’s vote to leave the European Union.

Higher customer bills and delayed or cancelled projects are expected by experts, the most pessimistic of whom warn of the lights going out. The optimists argue that the global rush towards clean energy and strong domestic UK climate change targets can keep the transition to clean, green energy moving forward.

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