The ongoing momentum towards renewals
Photo: Statoil's Dudgeon offshore wind farm near Great Yarmouth. Wind turbines in Scotland generated almost twice the entire country's domestic power requirements in the first half of 2019. Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-27/britains-coal-free-future-as-old-power-plants-close/11635548
Putting Australia’s federal paralysis on these issues to one side for the moment, David Suzuki and Ian Hannington, whom we met earlier, are somewhat upbeat and point to a few initiatives in this area that they say are actually working. “Renewable energy investments”, they say, “have surpassed fossil fuel investments every year since 2010, and the gap continues to grow; American states and cities are putting a price on carbon, investing in renewable energy and in transit; electric vehicles will achieve price parity with gas vehicles by 2022; and the global movement against climate change is not going to stop…. Now, it's up to those of us who believe in a brighter future to bring the fire under control without killing the flame. Despite Donald Trump's promises to overturn what progress has been made on environmental and climate policies and initiatives, there's no stopping the wave already under way”.[1]
Investment in a coal mine is very expensive and a risky long term investment as the momentum shifts towards renewables. A large investment is required and it takes many years to see a return. By way of contrast, investment in renewables such as wind and solar is relatively cheap by comparison, and they can be up and running in a much shorter time frame, so much so that, during 2019, investment in renewable in this country jumped 24%, and by 2030, it is said that all coal capacity will be uncompetitive with renewable in all markets.
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) research as to how fuel and electricity markets will evolve by 2040, solar power, once very costly, is becoming cheap enough that it will push coal and even natural-gas plants out of business faster than previously forecast. It is a matter of when not if. Solar already rivals the cost of new coal power plants in Germany and the US and by 2021 will do so in quick-growing markets such as China and India. This scenario would also mean that global carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels may decline after 2026, a contrast with the International Energy Agency's central forecast, which sees emissions rising steadily for decades to come.
The report also found that through to 2040:
Electricity from photovoltaic (solar) panels now costs almost a quarter of what it did in 2009 and is likely to fall another 66 per cent by 2040. Onshore wind, which has dropped 30 per cent in price in the past eight years, will fall another 47 per cent by the end of BNEF's forecast horizon. That means even in places like China and India, which are rapidly installing coal plants, solar will start providing cheaper electricity as soon as the early 2020s.
Coal will be the biggest victim, with 369 gigawatts of projects standing to be cancelled: about the entire generation capacity of Germany and Brazil combined; and even in the US, where the coal lobby underwent a resurgence under President Trump, BNEF expects the nation's coal-power capacity in 2040 will be about half of what it is now after older plants come offline and are replaced by cheaper and less-polluting sources such as gas and renewables.
In Europe, capacity will fall by 87 per cent as environmental laws boost the cost of burning fossil fuels. BNEF expects the world's hunger for coal to abate starting around 2026 as governments work to reduce emissions in step with promises under the Paris Agreement on climate change. By 2040, wind and solar will make up almost half of the world's installed generation capacity, up from just 12 per cent now, and account for 34 per cent of all the power generated, compared with 5 per cent at the moment[2].
In the United Kingdom, we find that renewable energy has overtaken fossil fuels to become Britain's largest source of electricity in a historic shift that could signal the "beginning of the end" for coal across Europe. National Grid data released on New Year's Day 2020 revealed that coal represented just 2.1 per cent of Britain's overall electricity output in 2019. By comparison, black and brown coal fuelled 74 per cent of Australia's energy mix in 2018.
An alliance of countries and American states at the Bonn climate conference committed to support each other to eliminate coal usage within 13 years, while the U.S. federal government pushes a so-called "clean coal" agenda instead. The new figures show 48.5 per cent of the United Kingdom's energy came from zero carbon technology in 2019, while coal, gas and oil crashed to just 43 per cent - down from 75.5 per cent in 1990.
In 1990, coal alone accounted for 75 per cent of all generation. That figure fell to 30 per cent in 2009 and now stands at only 2.1 per cent following a tsunami of power plant closures and nationwide boom in wind and solar. Just a handful of coal-fired power stations remain operational and all will be shuttered by 2025 under a plan legislated by former Tory prime minister Theresa May and embraced by her successor Boris Johnson. For the first time since the 1880s, 2019 was the year Britain went weeks without relying on coal to generate electricity.
Gas made up 38.4 per cent and biomass and waste 8.2 per cent last year in the UK. The country also imported about 8 per cent of its energy via undersea cables from continental Europe - the majority from green sources.
Wind, solar and hydro power totalled 26.5 per cent, while nuclear - which is classified as a zero carbon source - added 16.8 per cent to the mix. That meant renewables pumped out 48.5 per cent of all generation in 2019 - well above the 24.4 per cent figure recorded in 1990 - in a result that eclipsed fossil fuel's dominance for the first time in history. In other words, nuclear power and natural gas have now taken over from coal as the primary sources of electricity generation.
Britain is now home to the world's largest offshore wind farm off the coast of Cumbria, and onshore there are about 2,000 more. There are times in the UK where wind powers up to 30 or even 40 per cent of the UK's electricity generating capacity. Over the past 20 years, Britain has reduced its emissions by nearly 40 per cent. Britain i committed to zero emissions by the year 2050, but there is agitation to bring this forward to 2025.
Meanwhile, as at April 2020 17 EU nations, "striving to be the first climate-neutral continent" had signed onto a European Green Deal, agreeing to shape their recovery from Covid-19 around polices designed to speed up their efforts to reach net zero emissions. New Zealand is another country favouring a similar long-term green stimulus package that both rebuilds the economy and cuts emissions.
And in Australia…
... such initiatives are far too enlightened to attract the interest of of a Federal Government which reposes its confidence in a gas-led recovery. While renewables are on the rise, their contribution to the national energy grid is nowhere near the scale of the UK. Renewable sources grew by 25 per cent in Australia between 2017 and 2018 but their overall contribution to generation was still well below half of what it was in Britain.
Even if nuclear was removed from the UK's total renewable figure, wind, solar and hydro would still be more widely used in Britain than Australia London-based climate change think tank Sandbag recently highlighted how coal generation across Europe had fallen by one fifth in the first-half of 2019 alone. Half was replaced by wind and solar and the remaining slice by gas.
The Australian Energy Market Operator has forecast the need for 30 gigawatts of large-scale renewable generation by 2040 to replace old coal-fired power plants, as well as 20 gigawatts of dispatchable power like quick-start gas plants, batteries or pumped hydro to back up the renewables. It has also predicted that Australia's grid will be able to accommodate up to 75% renewable energy as soon as 2025.
Putting Australia’s federal paralysis on these issues to one side for the moment, David Suzuki and Ian Hannington, whom we met earlier, are somewhat upbeat and point to a few initiatives in this area that they say are actually working. “Renewable energy investments”, they say, “have surpassed fossil fuel investments every year since 2010, and the gap continues to grow; American states and cities are putting a price on carbon, investing in renewable energy and in transit; electric vehicles will achieve price parity with gas vehicles by 2022; and the global movement against climate change is not going to stop…. Now, it's up to those of us who believe in a brighter future to bring the fire under control without killing the flame. Despite Donald Trump's promises to overturn what progress has been made on environmental and climate policies and initiatives, there's no stopping the wave already under way”.[1]
Investment in a coal mine is very expensive and a risky long term investment as the momentum shifts towards renewables. A large investment is required and it takes many years to see a return. By way of contrast, investment in renewables such as wind and solar is relatively cheap by comparison, and they can be up and running in a much shorter time frame, so much so that, during 2019, investment in renewable in this country jumped 24%, and by 2030, it is said that all coal capacity will be uncompetitive with renewable in all markets.
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) research as to how fuel and electricity markets will evolve by 2040, solar power, once very costly, is becoming cheap enough that it will push coal and even natural-gas plants out of business faster than previously forecast. It is a matter of when not if. Solar already rivals the cost of new coal power plants in Germany and the US and by 2021 will do so in quick-growing markets such as China and India. This scenario would also mean that global carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels may decline after 2026, a contrast with the International Energy Agency's central forecast, which sees emissions rising steadily for decades to come.
The report also found that through to 2040:
- China and India represent the biggest markets for new power generation, drawing $US4 trillion, or about 39 per cent all investment in the industry.
- The cost of offshore wind farms, until recently the most expensive mainstream renewable technology, will slide 71 per cent, making turbines based at sea another competitive form of generation.
- At least $US239 billion will be invested in lithium-ion batteries, making energy storage devices a practical way to keep homes and power grids supplied efficiently and spreading the use of electric cars.
- Natural gas will reap $US804 billion, bringing 16 per cent more generation capacity and making the fuel central to balancing a grid that's increasingly dependent on power flowing from intermittent sources, like wind and solar.
Electricity from photovoltaic (solar) panels now costs almost a quarter of what it did in 2009 and is likely to fall another 66 per cent by 2040. Onshore wind, which has dropped 30 per cent in price in the past eight years, will fall another 47 per cent by the end of BNEF's forecast horizon. That means even in places like China and India, which are rapidly installing coal plants, solar will start providing cheaper electricity as soon as the early 2020s.
Coal will be the biggest victim, with 369 gigawatts of projects standing to be cancelled: about the entire generation capacity of Germany and Brazil combined; and even in the US, where the coal lobby underwent a resurgence under President Trump, BNEF expects the nation's coal-power capacity in 2040 will be about half of what it is now after older plants come offline and are replaced by cheaper and less-polluting sources such as gas and renewables.
In Europe, capacity will fall by 87 per cent as environmental laws boost the cost of burning fossil fuels. BNEF expects the world's hunger for coal to abate starting around 2026 as governments work to reduce emissions in step with promises under the Paris Agreement on climate change. By 2040, wind and solar will make up almost half of the world's installed generation capacity, up from just 12 per cent now, and account for 34 per cent of all the power generated, compared with 5 per cent at the moment[2].
In the United Kingdom, we find that renewable energy has overtaken fossil fuels to become Britain's largest source of electricity in a historic shift that could signal the "beginning of the end" for coal across Europe. National Grid data released on New Year's Day 2020 revealed that coal represented just 2.1 per cent of Britain's overall electricity output in 2019. By comparison, black and brown coal fuelled 74 per cent of Australia's energy mix in 2018.
An alliance of countries and American states at the Bonn climate conference committed to support each other to eliminate coal usage within 13 years, while the U.S. federal government pushes a so-called "clean coal" agenda instead. The new figures show 48.5 per cent of the United Kingdom's energy came from zero carbon technology in 2019, while coal, gas and oil crashed to just 43 per cent - down from 75.5 per cent in 1990.
In 1990, coal alone accounted for 75 per cent of all generation. That figure fell to 30 per cent in 2009 and now stands at only 2.1 per cent following a tsunami of power plant closures and nationwide boom in wind and solar. Just a handful of coal-fired power stations remain operational and all will be shuttered by 2025 under a plan legislated by former Tory prime minister Theresa May and embraced by her successor Boris Johnson. For the first time since the 1880s, 2019 was the year Britain went weeks without relying on coal to generate electricity.
Gas made up 38.4 per cent and biomass and waste 8.2 per cent last year in the UK. The country also imported about 8 per cent of its energy via undersea cables from continental Europe - the majority from green sources.
Wind, solar and hydro power totalled 26.5 per cent, while nuclear - which is classified as a zero carbon source - added 16.8 per cent to the mix. That meant renewables pumped out 48.5 per cent of all generation in 2019 - well above the 24.4 per cent figure recorded in 1990 - in a result that eclipsed fossil fuel's dominance for the first time in history. In other words, nuclear power and natural gas have now taken over from coal as the primary sources of electricity generation.
Britain is now home to the world's largest offshore wind farm off the coast of Cumbria, and onshore there are about 2,000 more. There are times in the UK where wind powers up to 30 or even 40 per cent of the UK's electricity generating capacity. Over the past 20 years, Britain has reduced its emissions by nearly 40 per cent. Britain i committed to zero emissions by the year 2050, but there is agitation to bring this forward to 2025.
Meanwhile, as at April 2020 17 EU nations, "striving to be the first climate-neutral continent" had signed onto a European Green Deal, agreeing to shape their recovery from Covid-19 around polices designed to speed up their efforts to reach net zero emissions. New Zealand is another country favouring a similar long-term green stimulus package that both rebuilds the economy and cuts emissions.
And in Australia…
... such initiatives are far too enlightened to attract the interest of of a Federal Government which reposes its confidence in a gas-led recovery. While renewables are on the rise, their contribution to the national energy grid is nowhere near the scale of the UK. Renewable sources grew by 25 per cent in Australia between 2017 and 2018 but their overall contribution to generation was still well below half of what it was in Britain.
Even if nuclear was removed from the UK's total renewable figure, wind, solar and hydro would still be more widely used in Britain than Australia London-based climate change think tank Sandbag recently highlighted how coal generation across Europe had fallen by one fifth in the first-half of 2019 alone. Half was replaced by wind and solar and the remaining slice by gas.
The Australian Energy Market Operator has forecast the need for 30 gigawatts of large-scale renewable generation by 2040 to replace old coal-fired power plants, as well as 20 gigawatts of dispatchable power like quick-start gas plants, batteries or pumped hydro to back up the renewables. It has also predicted that Australia's grid will be able to accommodate up to 75% renewable energy as soon as 2025.
In any event, the picture in NSW could be about to change, because in mid-2020, the NSW government establishedf a number of renewable energy zones (REZ) with a view to encouraging investment in solar and renewable energy. Initially, there was the Central-West Orana Renewable Energy Zone, the first of its kind in Australia, closely followed by a new renewable energy zone for the New England region aiming to attract 8000 megawatts of generation capacity, nearly the size of the state's entire fleet of coal-fired power plants and envisaging an investment target almost triple the 3000MW earmarked for its first zone in the Central West.
The New England REZ will be able to power 3.5 million homes and, when coupled with Central-West Orana REZ, sets up the State to become the number one destination across Australia for renewable energy investment. The New England zone alone could meet about 30 per cent of NSW's existing annual use based on the 2019-20 figures, or about double Liddell's output. (Large-scale renewables met about 9 per cent of supply the previous financial year, rising to 13.5 per cent when rooftop solar is added in).
NSW presently has about 10,000MW worth of coal-fired power stations, a figure that will drop to about 8240MW assuming AGL's Liddell plant closes as scheduled in 2023. With new solar farms costing as little as half that of new coal-fired power plants, the main challenge for developers up to now has been to secure access to the grid, because Australia's grid was designed to connect to only a handful of large scale operators. While NSW has a pipeline of some 116 large-scale renewable energy proposals for more than 18,000MW of capacity, fewer than one in 20 are able to connect to the network. A $2 billion agreement between the NSW and Morrison governments this year aims in part to underwrite new transmission to support the rush of renewables.
Meanwhile, "coal-dominated" Singleton and Muswellbrook are among 10 councils in the Hunter Joint Organisation that are stepping up efforts to promote farming, renewable energy and tourism to wean the local economy off fossil fuels. Impetus for the shift has come in part from the Berejiklian government, which recently released its Future of Coal Statement, designating new areas for coal exploration but also noting a global shift to lower carbon emissions to address climate change would inevitably force changes for the Hunter. “It’s not so much about replacing coal, it’s about diversification,” Singleton's Mayor said, noting some mines are getting approval for 20 years more or longer.
The New England REZ will be able to power 3.5 million homes and, when coupled with Central-West Orana REZ, sets up the State to become the number one destination across Australia for renewable energy investment. The New England zone alone could meet about 30 per cent of NSW's existing annual use based on the 2019-20 figures, or about double Liddell's output. (Large-scale renewables met about 9 per cent of supply the previous financial year, rising to 13.5 per cent when rooftop solar is added in).
NSW presently has about 10,000MW worth of coal-fired power stations, a figure that will drop to about 8240MW assuming AGL's Liddell plant closes as scheduled in 2023. With new solar farms costing as little as half that of new coal-fired power plants, the main challenge for developers up to now has been to secure access to the grid, because Australia's grid was designed to connect to only a handful of large scale operators. While NSW has a pipeline of some 116 large-scale renewable energy proposals for more than 18,000MW of capacity, fewer than one in 20 are able to connect to the network. A $2 billion agreement between the NSW and Morrison governments this year aims in part to underwrite new transmission to support the rush of renewables.
Meanwhile, "coal-dominated" Singleton and Muswellbrook are among 10 councils in the Hunter Joint Organisation that are stepping up efforts to promote farming, renewable energy and tourism to wean the local economy off fossil fuels. Impetus for the shift has come in part from the Berejiklian government, which recently released its Future of Coal Statement, designating new areas for coal exploration but also noting a global shift to lower carbon emissions to address climate change would inevitably force changes for the Hunter. “It’s not so much about replacing coal, it’s about diversification,” Singleton's Mayor said, noting some mines are getting approval for 20 years more or longer.
In an article entitled "Coal or renewables: which is cheaper", SMH, 12 March 2019, Nicole Hasham compares the respective cost outlays of both forms of energy. The verdict: renewables will soon be a cheaper form of investment than coal. In the next two decades, around a dozen coal-fired power stations that currently provide more than half of the National Electricity Market’s demand will close. EnergyAustralia – one of the largest power providers and the owner of Yallourn – said ensuring the market was equipped to handle the exit of coal power plants in the coming years and filling the gap with affordable and reliable power "isn't engineering, it's planning".
And South Australia, once the problem child of power generation in Australia, is now in a position to derive all of its power needs from renewable (solar) energy: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-25/all-sa-power-from-solar-for-first-time/12810366 - a world first - so much so in fact that it is set up to become a net exporter of electricity (and to NSW, would you believe) simply because it has too much power, and too much power on the grid can lead to instability. For just over an hour on Sunday, October 11, 100 per cent of energy demand was met by solar panels alone. Rooftop solar panels contributed 77 %, and large-scale solar farms, like the ones operating at Tailem Bend and Port Augusta, provided the rest.
The US: absent federal leadership, the renewables baton passes to state governments, cities, large corporations, investors and individuals
Given the vacuum at the top in the U.S. during the Trump administration, a multitude of battles waged on many other fronts, and as, Suzuki and Hannington so presciently observed, the momentum is now unstoppable. Recall that on 1 July 2017, President Donald Trump said that the US, the world’s second biggest greenhouse polluter, would withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement[3]. However, a formal exit will take more than three years, and during this time, the US government is required to continue reporting its emissions to the UN. Trump said that staying in the accord would cost America $US3 billion in lost GDP and lost job opportunities.
However, within days, representatives of US cities, states and companies announced that they were preparing to submit a plan to the UN pledging to meet the US greenhouse emissions targets under the Paris accord[4]. The group includes 30 mayors (of cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh), the governors of three States (Washington, New York and California, the latter being the seventh biggest economy in the world), more than 80 university presidents and more than 100 businesses and large corporations such as Hewlett-Packard, Mars and others.
Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City who is co-ordinating the effort, expressed confidence that these “non-national actors” could achieve the 2025 goal alone, because the bulk of the decisions that drive US climate action in the aggregate are made by cities, states, businesses and civil society, which remain committed to the Paris accord. States hold significant sway over emissions, and Washington, for example, has adopted a cap on carbon pollution, has invested in growing clean energy jobs, and subsidises electric vehicle purchases and charging stations. However, there is no currently no formal mechanism for entities that are not countries to be full parties to the Paris agreement.
Coal mining in the United States is an industry in transition. Production in 2017 was down 33% from the peak production of 1,162.7 million tons (about 1054.8 million metric tonnes) in 2006. Employment of 50,000 coal miners is down from a peak of 883,000 in 1923. In 2016, US coal mining declined to 728.2 million short tons, down 37 percent from the peak production of 1,172 million tons in 2008, and in 2018, coal mining decreased to 755 million short tons, and American coal consumption reached its lowest point in nearly 40 years. Trump came to power in 2016 promising an end to the "war on coal", yet by the time he departed office in early 2021, US coal-fired energy capacity had fallen faster than in any other presidential term in history.
On a parallel note, Microsoft says it aims to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits by 2030 and that by 2050, it hopes to have taken out enough to account for all the direct emissions the company has ever made.
[1] Suzuki and Hannigton, op cit: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/how-to-fix-the-future-saving-the-planet-from-climate-change-requires-action--now-write-david-suzuki-and-ian-hannington-20170327-gv75h8.html
[2] Jess Shankleman and Hayley Warren, “Solar power will kill coal faster than you think”, SMH 16 June 2017; http://www.smh.com.au/business/energy/solar-power-will-kill-coal-faster-than-you-think-20170615-gws83v.html
[3] Kirsty Needham, “China poised to lead global action on climate change”, SMH, 3-4 June 2017.
[4] Hiroko Tabuchi, “US cities, firms step away from Trump”, SMH (New York Times, Reuters), 5 June 2017, 12.
China - simultaneously the word's largest polluter and biggest producer of renewable energy
And South Australia, once the problem child of power generation in Australia, is now in a position to derive all of its power needs from renewable (solar) energy: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-25/all-sa-power-from-solar-for-first-time/12810366 - a world first - so much so in fact that it is set up to become a net exporter of electricity (and to NSW, would you believe) simply because it has too much power, and too much power on the grid can lead to instability. For just over an hour on Sunday, October 11, 100 per cent of energy demand was met by solar panels alone. Rooftop solar panels contributed 77 %, and large-scale solar farms, like the ones operating at Tailem Bend and Port Augusta, provided the rest.
The US: absent federal leadership, the renewables baton passes to state governments, cities, large corporations, investors and individuals
Given the vacuum at the top in the U.S. during the Trump administration, a multitude of battles waged on many other fronts, and as, Suzuki and Hannington so presciently observed, the momentum is now unstoppable. Recall that on 1 July 2017, President Donald Trump said that the US, the world’s second biggest greenhouse polluter, would withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement[3]. However, a formal exit will take more than three years, and during this time, the US government is required to continue reporting its emissions to the UN. Trump said that staying in the accord would cost America $US3 billion in lost GDP and lost job opportunities.
However, within days, representatives of US cities, states and companies announced that they were preparing to submit a plan to the UN pledging to meet the US greenhouse emissions targets under the Paris accord[4]. The group includes 30 mayors (of cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh), the governors of three States (Washington, New York and California, the latter being the seventh biggest economy in the world), more than 80 university presidents and more than 100 businesses and large corporations such as Hewlett-Packard, Mars and others.
Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City who is co-ordinating the effort, expressed confidence that these “non-national actors” could achieve the 2025 goal alone, because the bulk of the decisions that drive US climate action in the aggregate are made by cities, states, businesses and civil society, which remain committed to the Paris accord. States hold significant sway over emissions, and Washington, for example, has adopted a cap on carbon pollution, has invested in growing clean energy jobs, and subsidises electric vehicle purchases and charging stations. However, there is no currently no formal mechanism for entities that are not countries to be full parties to the Paris agreement.
Coal mining in the United States is an industry in transition. Production in 2017 was down 33% from the peak production of 1,162.7 million tons (about 1054.8 million metric tonnes) in 2006. Employment of 50,000 coal miners is down from a peak of 883,000 in 1923. In 2016, US coal mining declined to 728.2 million short tons, down 37 percent from the peak production of 1,172 million tons in 2008, and in 2018, coal mining decreased to 755 million short tons, and American coal consumption reached its lowest point in nearly 40 years. Trump came to power in 2016 promising an end to the "war on coal", yet by the time he departed office in early 2021, US coal-fired energy capacity had fallen faster than in any other presidential term in history.
On a parallel note, Microsoft says it aims to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits by 2030 and that by 2050, it hopes to have taken out enough to account for all the direct emissions the company has ever made.
[1] Suzuki and Hannigton, op cit: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/how-to-fix-the-future-saving-the-planet-from-climate-change-requires-action--now-write-david-suzuki-and-ian-hannington-20170327-gv75h8.html
[2] Jess Shankleman and Hayley Warren, “Solar power will kill coal faster than you think”, SMH 16 June 2017; http://www.smh.com.au/business/energy/solar-power-will-kill-coal-faster-than-you-think-20170615-gws83v.html
[3] Kirsty Needham, “China poised to lead global action on climate change”, SMH, 3-4 June 2017.
[4] Hiroko Tabuchi, “US cities, firms step away from Trump”, SMH (New York Times, Reuters), 5 June 2017, 12.
China - simultaneously the word's largest polluter and biggest producer of renewable energy
In the US, the war on coal is said to be over – at least so says their revered President - but in China the outlook could not be more different[1]. China has in fact stepped up to fill the leadership role vacated by the US[2]. Plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants have so far been halted this year (2017). Steel production has been halved in major steel cities, coal banned in China's coal capital, factories closed down for failing pollution inspections, and hundreds of officials sacked for failing to meet environmental targets.
China's biggest coal hub, Taiyuan in Shanxi province, banned the sale, transport and use of coal on October 1 2017. The city produces a quarter of China's coal output, but the ban will stay in place over winter to reduce coal use by 2 million tonnes. Across northern cities, 44,000 small coal-fired furnaces will be shut by the end of October 2017, and 72 coal-fired generators will close. China has stopped construction on 150 gigawatts of planned new coal-fired power generation capacity until 2020. 176,000 companies who failed to meet emission targets were to be closed by October 1.
A national emissions trading scheme (ETS) is expected to begin by the end of 2017, starting with power generators, after seven pilots in major cities. Beijing closed its last major coal-fired power plant in March, and will replace coal heating in factories and households by the end of the year. Coal consumption fell to 9.5 million tonnes last year, down from 30 million in 2005[3].
The last coal-fired power station was shut down in March, and China’s National Energy Administration has set out a plan to spend $US360 billion by 2020 on renewable energy. The world’s largest solar floating farm was opened in June 2017 in Anhul province, China, on a lake created by subsidence from mining. Chinese companies are also becoming dominant in renewable technology investments worldwide. Chinese company Goldwind will build Australia’s largest wind farm at Stockyard, and the company has also offered free wind farm skills training for unemployed coal miners in Wyoming in the US. California governor Jerry Brown is also liaising with Beijing to discuss California’s carbon trading scheme with several Chinese trials[4].
Also, on the score of renewable energy, China's National Energy Administration plans to spend $US360 billion ($486 billion) by 2020 on renewable energy including solar and wind, to account for half of new generated capacity, and create 13 million jobs. China is already the world's largest renewable energy employer, with 3.5 million people working in the sector. It added 21 gigawatts of solar capacity in the past six months. And in the face of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from its Paris commitments, China’s President Xi Jinping, a former chemist, has staunchly reaffirmed his country's commitment to investing in renewable energy and meeting its emissions goals. China is a major exporter of solar panels and wind turbines, and is leading the construction of the Quaid-e-Azam solar park in Pakistan, one of the world’s largest. Chinese wind and solar companies are among the leading renewables companies around the world and play a key role in the dramatic fall of wind and solar power prices[5].
Apart from clean energy, China is also a strong supporter and participant in quantum satellite technology and genomics (the collective characterization and quantification of genes) and cutting edge renewable energy technologies as engines of economic growth and political strength. Bill Gates' nuclear firm TerraPower and the China National Nuclear Corporation have signed an agreement to develop a world-first nuclear reactor using other nuclear reactors' waste.[6] The joint venture will create an entity called the Global Innovation Nuclear Energy Technology Company which will build a Travelling Wave Reactor and commercialise the technology.
This joint venture aims to design and construct multiple nuclear power plants generating around 1150 megawatts over the next two decades which utilise this fourth generation nuclear technology. Fourth generation Travelling Wave Reactors would differ from third generation, more traditional light water nuclear reactors, as they would not require enriched uranium to generate energy, and could instead use waste uranium Travelling Wave Reactors would require less fuel per kilowatt-hour of electricity than light-water reactors, due to TWRs higher fuel burn, energy density, and thermal efficiency. It is also safer as spent fuels, such as depleted uranium, from other reactor types could be recycled without separating out plutonium, and could operate without refuelling for up to 40 years. The Travelling Wave Reactor would have the potential to use less nuclear fuel and produce less nuclear waste than the light water reactors that dominate today's nuclear fleet.[7]
On the other hand, let’s see what the Chinese are doing overseas. In China, whereas concerns over smog and climate change have prompted the move toward renewables, overseas, the situation could not be more different, as witness:
Overall, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent. The fleet of new coal plants would make it virtually impossible to meet the goals set in the Paris climate accord, which aims to keep the increase in global temperatures from preindustrial levels below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. This frenzied addition of coal plants underscores how the world is set to remain dependent on coal for decades, despite fast growth in renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power.
Writing for fossil fuels on the Great Wall?
However, notwithstanding China's recent expansion of its coal fleet and the fact that it will continue importing coal and gas, in September 2020, a major development occurred which may set all this on its head. China’s Chairman Xi at the UN General Assembly then committed to a so-called “green revolution” aiming to reach net-zero emissions by 2060. This commitment was made in the context of a number of catastrophic disaster’s hitting the mainland, including extensive floods and increased rainfall, which are blamed for increased water insecurity in China, in large part due to retreating glaciers in the Himalayas.
Xi’s commitment brings China broadly in line with Europe, which would mean roughly a third of the world’s population with governments backing mid-century net-zero targets, and should US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden win office in November and institute the climate policies he has campaigned on, global efforts on climate change could be overturned in the space of months, meaning that the world would then be 63 per cent of the way towards the emission reductions needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees celsius.
[1] http://www.smh.com.au/world/in-china-the-war-on-coal-just-got-serious-20171011-gyyvi6.html
[2] Kirsty Needham, op cit.
[3] Ibid.
[4] http://www.smh.com.au/world/while-the-us-exits-the-paris-accord-china-takes-real-action-on-climate-change-20170602-gwj5kk.html
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/climate/china-energy-companies-coal-plants-climate-change.html
[6] http://www.smh.com.au/business/energy/bill-gates-and-china-partner-on-worldfirst-nuclear-technology-20171106-gzfrf0.html
[7] Ibid.
[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/climate/china-energy-companies-coal-plants-climate-change.html
And in Germany ...
At the height of the coal industry, in 1957, Germany produced 150 million tonnes of black coal and employed 607,000 miners. The nation became an exporter of plant and equipment as well as chemicals and vehicles.
In the decades that followed though, Germany had to sink its mines deeper and deeper to reach the black coal, and the government was forced to subsidise the industry to keep it viable. Under an agreement between business, unions and the federal government the mines were consolidated under a single owner, RAG, and long-term plans were put in place to close the industry.
Operating under a slogan that, loosely translated, declares that no one would be left behind in the pits, it was determined that not a single miner would be forced out of work. Instead pits were closed progressively across the region. Workers who wanted to stay on were transferred from mine to mine, while others were offered retraining, or if they were over 50, generous voluntary payouts.
To maintain the communities from which the miners came, new transport infrastructure and universities were built, waterways rehabilitated and mine sites and coking plants were converted into parks, exhibition areas and museums.
The last mine was closed last year (2018) and today RAG’s headquarters at what was once Europe’s largest coking plant is part of a complex that is a world heritage site. RAG still employs 5000 staff across the region. Some work in offices dedicated to managing pensions and compensation, many more are engineers, working to rehabilitate the landscape and maintain the pumps that keep the region’s poisoned groundwater below ground, part of RAG’s €220 million ($355 million) annual “eternity fund”. According to one RAG executive, the company expects that more energy will be expended on the pumps than was extracted from the mines in the first place.
With the black coal industry closed, German policymakers turned to the nation’s brown coal, the softer, wetter, dirtier material still burnt to create 37 per cent of the nation’s energy - 41 gigawatts of power. In January this year, the government announced that it would close the brown coal industry by 2038 in order to meet its emissions targets under the Paris agreement. Observing the lessons learnt from the closure of the black coal industry, the transition would be phased and orderly, supported by government and marked by cooperation between unions and industry. It would be a “just transition” that will in the coming 20 years cost 20,000 jobs.
China's biggest coal hub, Taiyuan in Shanxi province, banned the sale, transport and use of coal on October 1 2017. The city produces a quarter of China's coal output, but the ban will stay in place over winter to reduce coal use by 2 million tonnes. Across northern cities, 44,000 small coal-fired furnaces will be shut by the end of October 2017, and 72 coal-fired generators will close. China has stopped construction on 150 gigawatts of planned new coal-fired power generation capacity until 2020. 176,000 companies who failed to meet emission targets were to be closed by October 1.
A national emissions trading scheme (ETS) is expected to begin by the end of 2017, starting with power generators, after seven pilots in major cities. Beijing closed its last major coal-fired power plant in March, and will replace coal heating in factories and households by the end of the year. Coal consumption fell to 9.5 million tonnes last year, down from 30 million in 2005[3].
The last coal-fired power station was shut down in March, and China’s National Energy Administration has set out a plan to spend $US360 billion by 2020 on renewable energy. The world’s largest solar floating farm was opened in June 2017 in Anhul province, China, on a lake created by subsidence from mining. Chinese companies are also becoming dominant in renewable technology investments worldwide. Chinese company Goldwind will build Australia’s largest wind farm at Stockyard, and the company has also offered free wind farm skills training for unemployed coal miners in Wyoming in the US. California governor Jerry Brown is also liaising with Beijing to discuss California’s carbon trading scheme with several Chinese trials[4].
Also, on the score of renewable energy, China's National Energy Administration plans to spend $US360 billion ($486 billion) by 2020 on renewable energy including solar and wind, to account for half of new generated capacity, and create 13 million jobs. China is already the world's largest renewable energy employer, with 3.5 million people working in the sector. It added 21 gigawatts of solar capacity in the past six months. And in the face of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from its Paris commitments, China’s President Xi Jinping, a former chemist, has staunchly reaffirmed his country's commitment to investing in renewable energy and meeting its emissions goals. China is a major exporter of solar panels and wind turbines, and is leading the construction of the Quaid-e-Azam solar park in Pakistan, one of the world’s largest. Chinese wind and solar companies are among the leading renewables companies around the world and play a key role in the dramatic fall of wind and solar power prices[5].
Apart from clean energy, China is also a strong supporter and participant in quantum satellite technology and genomics (the collective characterization and quantification of genes) and cutting edge renewable energy technologies as engines of economic growth and political strength. Bill Gates' nuclear firm TerraPower and the China National Nuclear Corporation have signed an agreement to develop a world-first nuclear reactor using other nuclear reactors' waste.[6] The joint venture will create an entity called the Global Innovation Nuclear Energy Technology Company which will build a Travelling Wave Reactor and commercialise the technology.
This joint venture aims to design and construct multiple nuclear power plants generating around 1150 megawatts over the next two decades which utilise this fourth generation nuclear technology. Fourth generation Travelling Wave Reactors would differ from third generation, more traditional light water nuclear reactors, as they would not require enriched uranium to generate energy, and could instead use waste uranium Travelling Wave Reactors would require less fuel per kilowatt-hour of electricity than light-water reactors, due to TWRs higher fuel burn, energy density, and thermal efficiency. It is also safer as spent fuels, such as depleted uranium, from other reactor types could be recycled without separating out plutonium, and could operate without refuelling for up to 40 years. The Travelling Wave Reactor would have the potential to use less nuclear fuel and produce less nuclear waste than the light water reactors that dominate today's nuclear fleet.[7]
On the other hand, let’s see what the Chinese are doing overseas. In China, whereas concerns over smog and climate change have prompted the move toward renewables, overseas, the situation could not be more different, as witness:
- The Shnaghai Electric Group, one of the country’s largest electrical equipment makers, has announced plans to build coal power plants in Egypt, Pakistan and Iran with a total capacity of 6,285 megawatts: almost 10 times the 660 megawatts of coal power it has planned in China.
- The China Energy Engineering Corporation, which has no public plans to develop coal power in China, is building 2,200 megawatts’ worth of coal-fired power capacity in Vietnam and Malawi. Neither company responded to requests for comment.
- And of the world’s 20 biggest coal plant developers, 11 are Chinese, and overall, Chinese companies are behind 340,000 to 386,000 megawatts of planned coal power expansion worldwide [8].
Overall, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent. The fleet of new coal plants would make it virtually impossible to meet the goals set in the Paris climate accord, which aims to keep the increase in global temperatures from preindustrial levels below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. This frenzied addition of coal plants underscores how the world is set to remain dependent on coal for decades, despite fast growth in renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power.
Writing for fossil fuels on the Great Wall?
However, notwithstanding China's recent expansion of its coal fleet and the fact that it will continue importing coal and gas, in September 2020, a major development occurred which may set all this on its head. China’s Chairman Xi at the UN General Assembly then committed to a so-called “green revolution” aiming to reach net-zero emissions by 2060. This commitment was made in the context of a number of catastrophic disaster’s hitting the mainland, including extensive floods and increased rainfall, which are blamed for increased water insecurity in China, in large part due to retreating glaciers in the Himalayas.
Xi’s commitment brings China broadly in line with Europe, which would mean roughly a third of the world’s population with governments backing mid-century net-zero targets, and should US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden win office in November and institute the climate policies he has campaigned on, global efforts on climate change could be overturned in the space of months, meaning that the world would then be 63 per cent of the way towards the emission reductions needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees celsius.
[1] http://www.smh.com.au/world/in-china-the-war-on-coal-just-got-serious-20171011-gyyvi6.html
[2] Kirsty Needham, op cit.
[3] Ibid.
[4] http://www.smh.com.au/world/while-the-us-exits-the-paris-accord-china-takes-real-action-on-climate-change-20170602-gwj5kk.html
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/climate/china-energy-companies-coal-plants-climate-change.html
[6] http://www.smh.com.au/business/energy/bill-gates-and-china-partner-on-worldfirst-nuclear-technology-20171106-gzfrf0.html
[7] Ibid.
[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/climate/china-energy-companies-coal-plants-climate-change.html
And in Germany ...
At the height of the coal industry, in 1957, Germany produced 150 million tonnes of black coal and employed 607,000 miners. The nation became an exporter of plant and equipment as well as chemicals and vehicles.
In the decades that followed though, Germany had to sink its mines deeper and deeper to reach the black coal, and the government was forced to subsidise the industry to keep it viable. Under an agreement between business, unions and the federal government the mines were consolidated under a single owner, RAG, and long-term plans were put in place to close the industry.
Operating under a slogan that, loosely translated, declares that no one would be left behind in the pits, it was determined that not a single miner would be forced out of work. Instead pits were closed progressively across the region. Workers who wanted to stay on were transferred from mine to mine, while others were offered retraining, or if they were over 50, generous voluntary payouts.
To maintain the communities from which the miners came, new transport infrastructure and universities were built, waterways rehabilitated and mine sites and coking plants were converted into parks, exhibition areas and museums.
The last mine was closed last year (2018) and today RAG’s headquarters at what was once Europe’s largest coking plant is part of a complex that is a world heritage site. RAG still employs 5000 staff across the region. Some work in offices dedicated to managing pensions and compensation, many more are engineers, working to rehabilitate the landscape and maintain the pumps that keep the region’s poisoned groundwater below ground, part of RAG’s €220 million ($355 million) annual “eternity fund”. According to one RAG executive, the company expects that more energy will be expended on the pumps than was extracted from the mines in the first place.
With the black coal industry closed, German policymakers turned to the nation’s brown coal, the softer, wetter, dirtier material still burnt to create 37 per cent of the nation’s energy - 41 gigawatts of power. In January this year, the government announced that it would close the brown coal industry by 2038 in order to meet its emissions targets under the Paris agreement. Observing the lessons learnt from the closure of the black coal industry, the transition would be phased and orderly, supported by government and marked by cooperation between unions and industry. It would be a “just transition” that will in the coming 20 years cost 20,000 jobs.
However, all this could never happen in Australia where there is no such thing as a working relationship between employers, trade unions and states, and where a confrontational rather than a consensus attitude prevails. However, it appears inevitable that in a generation or so, sometime after 2040, Australia’s thermal coal industry might begin to wind down. Perhaps when that happens, we might take a leaf out of Germany’s enlightened transition process book.[1]
[1] See also https://www.smh.com.au/national/what-s-a-just-transition-and-can-you-switch-to-green-energy-without-sacking-coal-workers-20201218-p56oub.html
Next
[1] See also https://www.smh.com.au/national/what-s-a-just-transition-and-can-you-switch-to-green-energy-without-sacking-coal-workers-20201218-p56oub.html
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