Biomass

Biomass Energy or Biopower
Biomass electrical generation or biopower is second only to hydropower as a renewable energy source.
Most electricity generated using biomass today is by direct combustion using conventional boilers. These boilers burn primarily waste wood products generated by the agriculture and wood-processing industries. When burned, the wood waste produces steam, which is used to spin a turbine. The spinning turbine activates a generator that produces electricity. Many coal-fired power plants also add biomass to their coal-burning process (i.e., co-firing) to reduce the emissions produced by burning the coal.


 


Advanced Pyrolytic System, waste to energy plant 

A more viable and environmentally-friendly alternative to a covenantal biomass plant is a “waste-to-energy” system known as the Advanced Pyrolytic System (APS).  Pyrolysis is a process that chemically decomposes organic materials by heat in the absence of oxygen and typically occurs under pressure and at operating temperatures above 430 degrees Celsius.

Instead of land filling or incinerating municipal solid waste (MSW) and other industrial waste streams, the Advanced Pyrolitic System utilizes household garbage, glass, yard waste, oil waste, sludge/bio-solids, plastics, paints, medical waste, contaminated, soils,  and tires to produce clean, renewable energy.
Unlike incineration, which produces fly ash, the Advanced Pyrolitic System has very low emissions with no harmful substances remaining, either in the atmosphere or as a residue. Over 99% of the waste processed is converted to energy and other saleable by-products.
We offer these plants in two sizes, one that processes 125 TPD of MSW, producing 3 MW of electricity a larger 250 TPD plant the produces approximately 6 – 7 MW.

Hydro Electric

How Hydropower Works

Hydropower is using water to power machinery or make electricity. Water constantly moves through a vast global cycle, evaporating from lakes and oceans, forming clouds, precipitating as rain or snow, then flowing back down to the ocean. The energy of this water cycle, which is driven by the sun, can be tapped to produce electricity or for mechanical tasks like grinding grain. Hydropower uses a fuel—water—that is not reduced or used up in the process. Because the water cycle is an endless, constantly recharging system, hydropower is considered a renewable energy.

The Water (Hydrologic) Cycle








When flowing water is captured and turned into electricity, it is called hydroelectric power or hydropower. There are several types of hydroelectric facilities; they are all powered by the kinetic energy of flowing water as it moves downstream. Turbines and generators convert the energy into electricity, which is then fed into the electrical grid to be used in homes, businesses, and by industry.

Types of Hydropower Plants

There are three types of hydropower facilities: impoundment, diversion, and pumped storage. Some hydropower plants use dams and some do not. The images below show both types of hydropower plants.

Many dams were built for other purposes and hydropower was added later. In the United States, there are about 80,000 dams of which only 2,400 produce power. The other dams are for recreation, stock/farm ponds, flood control, water supply, and irrigation.

 

Impoundment

The most common type of hydroelectric power plant is an impoundment facility. An impoundment facility, typically a large hydropower system, uses a dam to store river water in a reservoir. Water released from the reservoir flows through a turbine, spinning it, which in turn activates a generator to produce electricity. The water may be released either to meet changing electricity needs or to maintain a constant reservoir level.















An impoundment hydropower plant dams water in a reservoir.

Diversion

A diversion, sometimes called run-of-river, facility channels a portion of a river through a canal or penstock. It may not require the use of a dam.



















The Tazimina project in Alaska is an example of a diversion hydropower plant. No dam was required.

Pumped Storage

When the demand for electricity is low, a pumped storage facility stores energy by pumping water from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir. During periods of high electrical demand, the water is released back to the lower reservoir to generate electricity.(Source: U.S. Department of Energy)

Wind

How Wind Turbines Work

Wind is a form of solar energy. Winds are caused by the uneven heating of the atmosphere by the sun, the irregularities of the earth's surface, and rotation of the earth. Wind flow patterns are modified by the earth's terrain, bodies of water, and vegetation. Humans use this wind flow, or motion energy, for many purposes: sailing, flying a kite, and even generating electricity.

The terms wind energy or wind power describes the process by which the wind is used to generate mechanical power or electricity. Wind turbines convert the kinetic energy in the wind into mechanical power. This mechanical power can be used for specific tasks (such as grinding grain or pumping water) or a generator can convert this mechanical power into electricity.
GE Wind Energy's 3.6 megawatt wind turbine is one of the largest prototypes ever erected. Larger wind turbines are more efficient and cost effective.

Sizes of Wind Turbines
Utility-scale turbines range in size from 100 kilowatts to as large as several megawatts. Larger turbines are grouped together into wind farms, which provide bulk power to the electrical grid.Single small turbines, below 100 kilowatts, are used for homes, telecommunications dishes, or water pumping. Small turbines are sometimes used in connection with diesel generators, batteries, and photovoltaic systems. These systems are called hybrid wind systems and are typically used in remote, off-grid locations, where a connection to the utility grid is not available.

Types of Wind Turbines
Modern wind turbines fall into two basic groups: the horizontal-axis variety, as shown in the photo, and the vertical-axis design, like the eggbeater-style Darrieus model, named after its French inventor.
Horizontal-axis wind turbines typically either have two or three blades. These three-bladed wind turbines are operated "upwind," with the blades facing into the wind.

Geothermal

Geothermal Power
In the United States, geothermal energy has been used to generate electricity on a large-scale since 1960. Through research and development, geothermal power is becoming more cost effective and competitive with fossil fuels. 
Heat from the Earth—geothermal energy—heats water that has seeped into underground reservoirs. These reservoirs can be tapped for a variety of uses, depending on the temperature of the water. The energy from high temperature reservoirs (225º–600ºF) can be used to produce electricity. There are currently three types of geothermal power plants:
    Dry SteamDry steam plants use steam from underground wells to rotate a turbine, which activates a generator to produce electricity. There are only two known underground resources of steam in the United States: The Geysers in northern California and Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. Since Yellowstone is protected from development, the power plants at The Geysers are the only dry steam plants in the country.

    Flash StreamThe most common type of geothermal power plant, flash steam plants use waters at temperatures greater than 360ºF. As this hot water flows up through wells in the ground, the decrease in pressure causes some of the water to boil into steam. The steam is then used to power a generator and any leftover water and condensed steam is returned to the reservoir.
    Binary CycleBinary cycle plants use the heat from lower-temperature reservoirs (225º–360ºF) to boil a working fluid, which is then vaporized in a heat exchanger and used to power a generator. The water, which never comes into direct contact with the working fluid, is then injected back into the ground to be reheated.






Geothermal energy originates from deep within the Earth and produces minimal emissions.
Photo credit: Pacific Gas & Electric(Source: U.S. Department of Energy)

Solar

Solar Radiation Basics

Solar radiation is a general term for the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the sun. We can capture and convert solar radiation into useful forms of energy, such as heat and electricity, using a variety of technologies. The technical feasibility and economical operation of these technologies at a specific location depends on the available solar radiation or solar resource.


This solar thermal power plant located in the Mojave Desert in Kramer Junction, California, is one of nine such plants built in the 1980s. During operation, oil in the receiver tubes collects the concentrated solar energy as heat and is pumped to a power block (in background) for generating electricity.





Basic Principles

Every location on Earth receives sunlight at least part of the year. The amount of solar radiation that reaches any one "spot" on the Earth's surface varies according to these factors:

• Geographic location
• Time of day
• Season
• Local landscape
• Local weather.

Because the Earth is round, the sun strikes the surface at different angles ranging from 0º (just above the horizon) to 90º (directly overhead). When the sun's rays are vertical, the Earth's surface gets all the energy possible. The more slanted the sun's rays are, the longer they travel through the atmosphere, becoming more scattered and diffuse. Because the Earth is round, the frigid polar regions never get a high sun, and because of the tilted axis of rotation, these areas receive no sun at all during part of the year.

The Earth revolves around the sun in an elliptical orbit and is closer to the sun during part of the year. When the sun is nearer the Earth, the Earth's surface receives a little more solar energy. The Earth is nearer the sun when it's summer in the southern hemisphere and winter in the northern hemisphere. However the presence of vast oceans moderates the hotter summers and colder winters one would expect to see in the southern hemisphere as a result of this difference.

The 23.5º tilt in the Earth's axis of rotation is a more significant factor in determining the amount of sunlight striking the Earth at a particular location. Tilting results in longer days in the northern hemisphere from the spring (vernal) equinox to the fall (autumnal) equinox and longer days in the southern hemisphere during the other six months. Days and nights are both exactly 12 hours long on the equinoxes, which occur each year on or around March 23 and September 22.

Countries like the United States, which lie in the middle latitudes, receive more solar energy in the summer not only because days are longer, but also because the sun is nearly overhead. The sun's rays are far more slanted during the shorter days of the winter months. Cities like Denver, Colorado, (near 40º latitude) receive nearly three times more solar energy in June than they do in December.

The rotation of the Earth is responsible for hourly variations in sunlight. In the early morning and late afternoon, the sun is low in the sky. Its rays travel further through the atmosphere than at noon when the sun is at its highest point. On a clear day, the greatest amount of solar energy reaches a solar collector around solar noon.



This solar dish-engine system is an electric generator that "burns" sunlight instead of gas or coal to produce electricity. The dish, a concentrator, is the primary solar component of the system, collecting the energy coming directly from the sun and concentrating it on a small area. A thermal receiver absorbs the concentrated beam of solar energy, converts it to heat, and transfers the heat to the engine/generator. (Credit: Sandia National Laboratories)

Diffuse and Direct Solar Radiation

As sunlight passes through the atmosphere, some of it is absorbed, scattered, and reflected by the following:

• Air molecules
• Water vapor
• Clouds
• Dust
• Pollutants
• Forest fires
• Volcanoes.

This is called diffuse solar radiation. The solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface without being diffused is called direct beam solar radiation. The sum of the diffuse and direct solar radiation is called global solar radiation. Atmospheric conditions can reduce direct beam radiation by 10% on clear, dry days and by 100% during thick, cloudy days.




Mariner 5 is shown in flight. Photovoltaic systems were an important power source for that mission. Solar cells have not only enabled America to explore space, the solar system, and the Earth in great detail, they also have enabled the emergence of the telecommunications industry. (Credit: NASA and NSSDC Photo Gallery)

Measurement

Scientists measure the amount of sunlight falling on specific locations at different times of the year. They then estimate the amount of sunlight falling on regions at the same latitude with similar climates. Measurements of solar energy are typically expressed as total radiation on a horizontal surface or as total radiation on a surface tracking the sun.

Radiation data for solar electric (photovoltaic) systems are often represented as kilowatt-hours per square meter (kWh/m²). Direct estimates of solar energy may also be expressed as watts per square meter (W/m²).

Radiation data for solar water heating and space heating systems are usually represented in British thermal units per square foot (Btu/ft²).
(Source: U.S. Department of Energy)

The burning question of renewable energy

Age
Saturday 19/6/2010 Page: 2

DESPERATE battle is being fought on the sidelines of the government debate about the new renewable energy target (RET) legislation and it is set to resume this week. The fight is about burning native forest timber and calling it renewable energy. The dollar figures involved megawatts of power generated - are small, but the environmental ramifications are huge, and emotions are running high. The federal government, urged on by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, continues perversely to support logging our remaining native forests even though a sagging woodchip market puts no value on the resource.

At the moment, under renewable target rules introduced in 2001, wood waste from native forest can only be burnt for renewable electricity if the trees were logged for a higher-value purpose such as sawmilling. But there are negative public perceptions associated with the use of wood waste from forestry, "considered environmentally destructive," according to a biomass resource appraisal for the Clean Energy Council. 'A common misconception is that bioenergy production will become a lucrative primary end use for wood and trigger a land-clearing bonanza.

Unfortunately, the fact that all timber production in Australia is governed by a strict and comprehensive regulatory framework to ensure environmental sustainability is often overlooked. This framework ensures that forest resources cannot be exploited for any form of wood production and wood waste bioenergy targets could be achieved without harvesting a single extra tree from 'business as usual' production." It is true that, up to now, not many renewable energy certificates (REC) have been generated from wood waste. According to the official register, just 1.2 million RECs over the past decade, or 5% of a total 24 million. But with theRET target rising from 2% by 2010, to 20% by 2020, the market opportunity will be significantly bigger.

The Clean Energy Council expects 7% of the RET, or 3000GW hours of renewable electricity, could be generated from wood waste by 2020, of which 40MWs of electricity generation capacity could be fired by native forest resource. It estimates 2.2 million tonnes of native forest wood waste - roughly a quarter of the total native forest logged annually - could be used. On theABC's 7.30 Report on Thursday, Greens senator Christine Milne warned of this "massive loophole." Next week she will again move an amendment to remove native forest "furnaces" from the definition of renewable energy.

Depending what happens with the legislation, and if Milne's amendment fails, as expected, the final say may well lie with electricity retailers and other wholesale energy buyers (liable to buy a proportion of the power they use - rising to 20% by 2020 - from renewable sources). As of Thursday, conservation groups had written commitments from 11 electricity retailers, confirming they would not buy renewable energy certificates generated from burning native forest wood waste. They were: AGL Energy, Country Energy, EnergyAustralia, Origin Energy, TRUEnergy,Australian Power and Gas, Click Energy, ActewAGL Energy, Red Energy, Simply Energy andVictoria Electricity. That's a good chunk of the market.

Some have left themselves a little wiggle room: TRUEnergy states blankly that it will only use "commercially viable, environmentally responsible energy generation assets." And there are omissions: neither Integral Energy nor Tasmania's Aurora Energy have given commitments. TheEnergy Retailers Association of Australia is going to try to come up with an industry-wide policy. The fear is that, under present international carbon accounting rules, which allow Australia to ignore greenhouse gas emissions from forestry, generators burning heavily subsidised native timber generally supplied by state forestry agencies at a loss to the taxpayer-will sell power falsely designated as "carbon neutral" and "renewable," undercutting genuinely clean energy rivals. And they will get an extra subsidy to boot, in the form of a steady stream of RECs.

In Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales, proposals are being developed to tap in to this new income stream, which could transform the market for woodchips. The industry test case i s a proposal by South East Fibre Exports to build a 5.5MW biomass-fired power station at the huge woodchip mill at Eden in NSW. The plant would consume 57,700 tonnes of wood waste a year, drawn from its own forest operations and from nearby sawmills, to generate about 31GWhours of electricity, of which 9GW hours would power the mill and 22GW hours would be sold to the grid.

Majority owned by Japanese company Nippon Paper, SEFE hopes to spend $19 million on the power station, creating 30 jobs during construction and six permanently. SEFE chief executive Peter Mitchell says the proposal only stacks up because the mill has the waste at hand. "Even with the RECs, if you were to harvest waste in native forest for power generation, the returns aren't there."SEFE's proposal, currently with the NSW government, claims savings of 7508 tonnes of greenhouse gas a year under the current Kyoto Protocol carbon accounting rules, which do not count emissions from logging or burning the wood.

The Soutli-East Region Conservation Alliance submission counters that this claim is misleading and says wood-fired power is 6.4 times more greenhouse intensive than coal-fired power. It estimates that logging to supply the Eden mill is responsible for 18 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. The revenue from RECs could make a real difference to the viability of native forest logging operations. Australian National University economist Judith Ajani, author of The Forest Wars, says Australia has a historic opportunity to end native forest logging.

"We had the choice not to go into chip exporting in the 1960s... that's what's driven the forest conflict for four decades," she says. "We're now facing that same choice today, whether to facilitate native forest resources moving into the electricity and biomass feedstock markets, or not. "If they choose to stove into these new markets - they are big markets - then we are facing another lost opportunity to resolve Australia's forest conflict."

paddy.manning@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Modern makeover for an ancient idea

Hobart Mercury
Tuesday 6/7/2010 Page: 16

EVERY now and again in the big, unfolding saga that is climate change you find yourself heading back to the future, looking at something simple and basic that's been around forever. I had just that experience at a meeting in Hobart last week. The Tasmanian Biochar Workshop put a spotlight on charcoal, that dirty, unmanageable residue of burnt plant and animal matter, and provided its participants with ample evidence that this humble substance has big implications both for reducing atmospheric carbon and growing plants. Simply put,biochar is charcoal created by slow smouldering of organic material which, if dug into the ground, serves as a long-tern carbon store while enriching soils, boosting plant growth and improving water quality. It can hold carbon in soil for many centuries, even thousands of years.

Biochar has an ancient history. Early peoples of the Amazon basin in South America are believed to have made it by smouldering food and agricultural waste, digging it into the region's naturally infertile soil to be further broken down by native earthworms. European settlers called this wonder-soil "terra preta" (Portuguese for "black earth"). In more modern times, the charcoal burner was a familiar part of every settlement in Europe and elsewhere, including Australia, producing fuel for cooking and heating. The application of fine grained char as a soil additive is an old-new idea whose time has come around again.

But the idea of biochar has taken a while to catch on in Tasmania. In 2008 it got caught up in the debate about biomass energy from Tasmanian forestry operations, involving gathering up the woody debris left after logging and burning it in a biomass electricity generator. Some forests activists accused biochar advocates of aiding and abetting native forest clear felling by providing the logging industry with a convenient repository for its waste and a reason to extend its harvesting operations. The debate ignored the fact that the primary focus of biochar production is carbon storage and increased soil fertility. Energy generation from Pyrolysis (the process of producing biochar) and production of biofuel are additional outcomes. The process is carbon negative, which means that it takes more carbon out of the atmosphere than it releases.

The Hobart meeting was organised by international biochar consultant Attilio Pigneri, now living in Tasmania. Held under the auspices of the Australia New Zealand Biochar Researchers Network, it brought together specialists from the University of Tasmania, CSIRO, government and industry. Farmers, soil scientists and biochar business representatives mixed with interested outsiders to hear research outcomes from trials happening in Australia (including Tasmania) and New Zealand. The 60-strong audience heard that biochar production was potentially a highly valuable greenhouse mitigation and growth-enhancing tool for Tasmania whose efficacy depended on environmentally friendly biomass sourcing and production techniques and good knowledge of the best kind of biochar for particular soils.

The meeting was told that feedstock, or raw material, for biochar can come from a big range of sources, including green waste from gardens and orchards, woody weeds such as gorse or willow, food processing waste, sewage sludge and manure (including poultry litter), seaweed, crop stubble, sawdust and wood "from responsible forest management operations." Different sources produced different results, with biochar from animal waste providing better productivity for some crops and woody material benefiting others. Other variables included different soil types and climatic conditions.

The workshop examined key environmental and economic issues in use of biochar in Tasmania, questions about logistics and sustainability, synergies between environmental mitigation and regional development, commercial possibilities and the challenges of bringing biochar activities into a national carbon pricing scheme. To Pigneri, the workshop are significantly raised awareness of current biochar activities, including five University of Tasmania projects, and begun to link researchers and their work across Australia and New Zealand, while providing a base for a permanent industry Association. He and his team will use discussion outcomes from the workshop to guide future planning and inform governments about the technology's potential both in reducing atmospheric carbon and helping Tasmania improve its agricultural productivity.

My father grew up on a farm and was a lifelong vegetable gardening enthusiast, but on that score I'd have been a disappointment to him. Like so many post-war children, I turned away from my rural background towards the city life, becoming part of the "great forgetting" that serve to distance much of modern humanity from the production of food. Now, our roots are calling us back. Besides finding better ways of keeping carbon out of the atmosphere, communities everywhere need to start taking an interest in how they derive sustenance from their lands, and that means getting heads around how to manage soil to grow better plants. For me the great appeal of biochar is its basic simplicity. There's much more work to be done - years of trialling different scenarios to ensure we maximise the game from the effort - but all the signs are that public support for a biochar industry will be a splendid investment in the future.

pb@climatetasmania.com.au.

Good design sense

Sunday Canberra Times 
Sunday 11/7/2010 Page: 26 

I SEE there are more outrageous claims from the Housing Industry Association about mandatory energy ratings. Are we really expected to believe that the move from a five to six-star minimum would add another $100,000 to an average $400,000 to home build? The HIA has opposed Every single energy efficiency initiative around Australia for years. In 1999, it damned Queensland's first 3.5-star minimum, outraged that it would make it virtually mandatory that ceilings were insulated.

We faced an incredible battle finding enlightened builders here in Canberra But now our six-star home heats itself to 22 degrees and more every sunny winter's day, regardless of outside temperatures less than 10 degrees. With the tuning expenses a good home design saves our additional build costs - far lower than HIA's claim - are being repaid in just a handful of years. And our home is far more comfort· able to live in.

Alan Kerlin. Harrisor.

Still living in the dark on baseload power

www.smh.com.au
October 31, 2009

WE ARE often told we need more ''baseload'' power. But baseload power generated in a distant coalfield, delivered by a dumb grid, suits almost nobody these days, bar the incumbent operators. What's occurred in the past decade or so is a rapid growth in peak loads-especially on summer afternoons, when everyone gets home and turns on their air-conditioners, causing a huge spike in demand. Total electricity use, as against peak demand, has increased much more slowly and even fallen in some cases.

Forget for a moment whether those air-conditioners are necessary; we don't need to build more baseload power stations just because peak loads are expanding. A presentation this month byAGL's Paul Simshauser, chairman of the Loy Yang brown coal-fired power station in the Latrobe Valley, showed the national electricity market (NEM) had too much base and intermediate-load power (by about 4000 MWs, enough to power more than 1.5 million homes) and not enough peak-load power (we are short about 1700 MWs).

Michael Ottaviano, chief executive of Western Australia's Carnegie Corporation Energy, took up the theme at this month's Eco Investor conference in Sydney, arguing for an expanded role forwave energy, sitting somewhere between baseload power and intermittent energy sources such as wind. ''Wave is a very consistent resource with 90 per cent-plus availability,'' he said later. ''It will vary as wave height varies. But unlike wind, which varies in minutes and is difficult to predict more than a few hours in advance, wave will vary over hours and be predictable over days.''

A key, Ottaviano says, is a smart grid that can make use of all the available energy - renewable sources are not always conveniently located near coalfields, so we're going to need new transmission lines- and supply it where and when it is needed. (Communications MinisterStephen Conroy is on to this and on Thursday, with cabinet colleagues Martin Ferguson andPeter Garrett, invited bids to build a $100 million smart grid in Queanbeyan, near Canberra. Which is a start.)

Distributed generation can help, too. At the same conference, Ceramic Fuel Cells managing director Brendan Dow Chemical presented slides showing about 80 per cent of the energy generated by coal-fired power stations is lost as heat (65-70 per cent wastage) or in transmission and distribution (5-8 per cent). Given coal-fired power stations account for about 35 per cent of Australia's carbon dioxide emissions, that's a lot of carbon pollution for nothing.

Ceramic Fuel Cells makes a gas-powered fuel-cell appliance about the size of a dishwasher that can provide 17,000 kW hours of electricity a year- twice that needed to power an average home, meaning far greater energy savings than an equivalent-cost solar panel installation. The so-called BlueGen units have a world-beating 60 per cent electrical efficiency. Even without any subsidy in the form of a feed-in tariff, the BlueGen unit is a commercial proposition-as long as utilities will connect them to the grid, and take the electricity they generate, as they must do with home solar panels.

Meanwhile, the grid continues to roll out, whether the public wants it or not. As reported earlier this month, on the NSW North Coast there is majority community opposition to a $227 million power line from Lismore to Tenterfield, according to state-owned proponent TransGrid's own consultants. The residents say they don't need the power, question the demand projections and point to cleaner alternatives such as solar, wind and the bioenergy already generated frombagasse at sugar cane mills at Condong and Broadwater.

At the root of the problem is this: the national electricity market is run with disregard for the environmental objectives contained in the original Ministerial Council on Energy agreement that established it. A recent report for the Total Environment Centre, by energy consultantsMcLennan Magasanik Associates, showed the agreement aimed to ensure ''environmental impacts are effectively integrated into energy-sector decision-making'' but the institutions that run the market were not given this responsibility. In 2005, what is now called the Australian Energy Market Operator said it had ''neither the power nor the authority to make decisions based on considerations of sustainability and balance in resource management''.

Efficient, clean-energy development was being frustrated by the current market frameworks, MMA found. TEC campaigner Jane Castle says the owners of Australia's power stations, and the network, have every incentive to build more infrastructure and none to cut electricity use. ''It's called gold-plating,'' she says. ''If the networks save energy, they lose revenue.'' Demand modelling, she says, is based on the assumption that the market will continue to be operated in the interests of energy suppliers, and not in the interests of energy consumers. ''There's an assumption that supplying more energy is the only way to go,'' says Castle. ''It serves the interests of the incumbents.We're stuck in a paradigm of generating more power as people come online.

It's completely outdated in the era of climate change.'' The power of the generators is obvious, and extends to forcing brown-outs and blackouts. If they want to shut down a power station to send a message, they will, and worry about the fines later. Britain's International Power, owner of the Hazelwood power station, is already threatening to run down Victoria's power supply if it doesn't get enough compensation under the emissions trading scheme.

"Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," showed us how California's economy was held hostage by energy traders in the crisis of 2000-01. Now, says Castle, the US state has one of the most progressive market regimes. ''When they look at new demand they have a loading order: first, energy efficiency. Then demand management. Then renewables. Then gas,'' she says. Australia's energy problem, says Castle, is ''not a baseload problem, it's a problem of how we're meeting increasing demand''. Reducing demand does not mean going back to the Stone Age. It means making the grid work for us, not against us.

paddy.manning@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Stop wasting energy, there's money in it

Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday 28/11/2009 Page: 7

Cutting energy waste maybe the only thing we can all agree on at the fag end of a divisive debate about the best way of tackling climate change in Australia. As it happens that is the most productive area we could possibly focus on, environmentally and economically. One proposal that may emerge from the carbon pollution reduction scheme now before Parliament is the creation of a prime ministerial task group to develop a broad-based market mechanism to promote energy efficiency in 2010. Ho hum, you say? No money in it? Wrong.

Energy efficiency is the fastest growing carbon abatement market of all, according to HSBC'srecent Climate Annual Index Review. HSBC estimated that the global market for energy efficiency in 2009 was$US164 billion ($178 billion) and would grow to more than $US600 billion by2020.

Clean coal versus renewable energy versus nuclear gets all the headlines. But the International Energy Agency expects 63% of the world's emissions reductions by2030-needed to meet an inadequate 450 ppm carbon dioxide stabilisation target will come from energy efficiency. A 2007Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource Economics study estimated energy efficiency would directly account for 55% of Australia's carbon abatement by 2050.

This is what energy experts call plucking the low-hanging fruit. Last year McKinsey & Co ranked carbon abatement strategies from cheapest to dearest, and showed many energy-efficiency strategies have a negative cost-that is, they make you money. In the commercial property sector, for example, McKinsey & Co says we can save $130 for each tonne of carbon dioxidepollution avoided.

This puts into perspective the debate about whether Australia meets its international emissions reduction obligations at home or by importing carbon credits-for example, paying to leave rainforests standing in developing countries while continuing to burn coal here like there's no tomorrow. Energy efficiency strategies are the cheapest abatement of all.

At the household level, this means "50 ways to beat the new green tax", as touted by one newspaper this week during this week's parliamentary negotiations. Too right. Let's change our globes (didn't we already?), hang out our clothes and wash the dishes by hand - or at least fill the dishwasher before turning it on. Such steps seem obvious but are we really going to beat climate change by killing the standby switch? Rightly or wrongly, it feels trivial.

Technology won't do the hard work for its. Mark Lister, from the Alliance to Save Energy, says in almost all cases the energy efficiency dividend from use of better technology over the years has been taken up as increased consumption. Demand continues to grow at about 2% a year - higher than population growth. Though we have more efficient fridges than we did a decade ago, they are bigger and there's a spare beer or wine fridge out the back. Add in air conditioners andplasma TVs, McMansions and SUVs, and you get the idea. Things have got worse, not better, in housing and transport.

Meanwhile prodigious amounts of energy are wasted by business, which dwarf anything householders can come at. Rob Murray-Leach, chief executive of the Energy Efficiency Council, says Australia is well behind Europe and the US. Historically, low energy prices have made its sloppy in our energy use-although it gets complicated when you start trying to put figures around sloppy. At its lead and zinc smelter at Port Pirie, for example, the Belgian company,Nyrstar, last year found annual savings of $5.5 million after doing an assessment with the federal energy department.

Or take the Moomba gas plant in South Australia, where Murray-Leach says Santos found it could reduce energy use by a third - enough to power 100,000 homes. In commercial buildings, energy efficiency retrofits routinely achieve energy savings of 40-50%. The profits, often measured in payback periods counted in years, are real but are too small for most property investors to bother about.

The visiting TEA energy efficiency chief, Nigel Jollands, who recently called our commercial building standards "appalling", hopefully gave a wake-up call to an industry that pats itself on the back every time it announces a new green star rated office building but has been lax on maintaining and improving the existing stock. The potential savings in this sector are guaranteed.

One Sydney company, EP&T, which has partnerships with the likes of Westfield, Colonial, GPT, Macquarie and Investa, is launching a service in which it stumps up the money for retrofits and reaps a return from the savings. That's not to say energy efficiency is easy. It's the ultimate marathon, as constant technological improvement increases potential savings against "business as usual" - itself a moveable feast. Plus it's a marathon with obstacles. Worst of all, our national energy market encourages participants to increase energy use.

Then there are cultural issues, information and skills deficits and downright pig-headedness or what economists call "bounded rationality"- when people don't behave optimally, in this case refusing to save money. Another obstacle would be the pollution reduction scheme itself. Currently structured, it would increase energy prices a little, shortening pay back periods from efficiency improvements. But demand is stubbornly price-inelastic.

Worse, according to energy expert Richard Dennis from the Australia Institute, the scheme would create structural impediments to a fair allocation of the return from investment in energy efficiency. "Say a large commercial property owner spends a lot of money on energy efficiency. It's true that they capture the savings in electricity - their bill will fall - but it's their electricity generator who will make money from sale of spare permits."

What is needed (and what could be introduced next year) is a complementary mechanism to the planned scheme to create an economic incentive to pursue energy efficiency - particularly in the commercial and industrial sector, because the carbon trust is meant to promote voluntary energy reduction in the household sector.

Mark Lister says a full policy response to climate change - as proposed in the US under the Waxman-Markey emissions trading scheme would have three strands, a "white certificate" scheme to promote energy efficiency, alongside "green" certificates under the renewable energy target regime, and "black" pollution permits as outlined under the CPRS. That's for next year.