Interview by Rikki Stancich in Paris

Powering Australia with 100% renewable energy would be, in Matthew Wright’s words, “like re-powering Texas with the entire renewable energy resource of the US”. In other words: highly feasible.

Indeed, the latest action plan from Australian environmental think tank ‘Beyond Zero Emissions’ and Melbourne University demonstrates - from every angle - just how easily Australia could switch to renewables within the next ten years.

The so-called Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Stationary Energy Plan (ZCA2020) calls for a renewable energy mix comprising 40% wind energy (23 sites with 2-3000 MW of turbines per site) and 60% concentrated solar power (12 sites, each with a 3,500MW capacity), using off-the-shelf technology backed-up by hydro and biomass.

The resource requirement is minimal: 7% of Australia’s concrete production over the ten-year period; 1.3% of Australia’s total iron ore exports and steel production; and 2% of Australia’s total silver production.

And by creating a rigourous project timeline that demands continuous construction, the manufacturing industry would run continuously and in doing so, achieve scale economies and production efficiency, reducing project development costs by roughly 30%.

As for siting, the total land requirement for all of the CSP projects combined is 2,760km squared, or 0.04% of Australia’s total land mass  - less than the land area of two cattle stations on the Northern Territory. Siting would ideally be on marginal farming land.

At the end of the day, Australia’s total investment requirement for switching to 100% renewable energy would be AU$370 billion. This amounts to 3% of gross domestic product.

However, that figure reflects the investment costs rather than the overall economic impact.

A preliminary analysis carried out by BZE based on funding the investment through electricity revenues using current industry standard rates of return indicates that the system would raise delivered electricity prices by about AU6.5c/kWh.

Current residential prices are around 17-20c/kWh. The extra equates to about $8 per household per week.

The full report is now available at BeyondZeroEmissions.

Wind Energy Update: The report proposes that 40% will be provided by wind and 60% from CSP (using tower technology), generated at 23 wind sites and 12 CSP sites. Can you briefly outline the rationale for this breakdown?

Matthew Wright: Originally, we started with the hypothesis of a 50/50 share and perhaps this is the way it will go again we revise the figures in version 2 of the report.

The figure for wind could be upwardly revised on the basis of its lower resource requirement in terms of construction materials. Wind uses fewer commodities (such as steel).

At the time of writing the report, we had limitations due to the lack of hub height wind data (we were relying on met masts).

Since then, we have entered into non-disclosure agreements with wind companies that have wind monitoring towers, who have agreed to share data that can be extrapolated to the 120 metre hub height of the Enercon turbines.

We have operational hub height data for south Australia, Vivtoria and Tasmania for this version of the report, and we are finalising gaining access to data from other states for version 2 which should show smoother output as per studies from Europe and, more recently, EWITS in the United States. 

In the absence of this data our system has had to be designed with full peak supply from towers with storage and existing hydro sources. However, with the geographically diverse wind data we should be able to increase wind penetration and reduce the overall system cost.

Wind Energy Update: The Plan calls for a build-out of 42 GW of wind power, across 23 sites, using 6MW Enercon turbines. The sites are located in coastal regions, which are also the most heavily populated areas. Is siting likely to present a problem?

Matthew Wright: We have had issues with anti-wind groups in the past, but to date no wind farms have been knocked back.

In Australia we have less population density in the coastal areas than in other countries.

The report illustrates that the proposed wind farms could easily fit into the largest cattle farms – most of which house around nine people - on each state.

Wind Energy Update: Why hasn’t the plan considered offshore wind, which doesn’t compete for land space and is more reliable?

Matthew Wright: Australia has an amazing onshore wind resource and siting wind farms does not present the kind of problems you incur in the more populated countries.

We were also concerned about the cost of offshore wind – which is about 30-50% higher.

Also we have a steep drop off the continental shelf, which means we would need to use floating turbine technology.

Wind Energy Update: The researchers selected geographically dispersed wind sites that exploit the diversity in weather systems occurring simultaneously across the Australian continent. To what extent can balancing take place? Combined with Hydro, couldn’t wind play an even larger role?

Matthew Wright: We’ve only been able to demonstrate that for four Australian states – similar to what was demonstrated in the US’ EWITS and WWSIS studies, where you have high levels of dispatchable wind when geographical diversity is introduced on a large-scale.

Hydro is not a strong source of energy for us here, so it is not used for dispatchibility.

Wind Energy Update: The ZCA2020 calls for a national grid, which combines Australia’s 3 existing grids. What are the major obstacles to this becoming a reality?

Matthew Wright: If the grids were somehow merged and privatized, it would have to be a public-private partnership based on an incentives system. 

Currently we have a mix of state-owned corporatised (so, state-owned, but run like a business) and privatized grids. We have not seen much infrastructure build-out since the late eighties, early nineties.

There has been little build-out and no talk about grid upgrades. But by mapping out a grid and by establishing the goal posts, it is more likely that an end goal will be reached.

If the money is there they will do it – and the response to this so far has been positive.

Wind Energy Update: The Zero Carbon Emissions Plan will create 77,000 jobs for which people can be trained within 6-12 months. This seems a low figure, given that the Carbon Trust estimated the same number of jobs for UK’s Round 3 alone. And when you consider the competing demand for skills for decommissioning in the extractives industries, there will likely be a significant skills gap. What kind of cost does this training represent and how feasible is it that enough people can be trained in engineering, project management etc.?

Matthew Wright: There will definitely be capacity constraints, but it is more likely the case that it will be the extractives industry that suffers the vacuum of skills.

We are already seeing that.

The technical lead on this project quit his post at Exxon-Mobil to get involved in the renewables industry.

Half the people who wrote this report have defected from the extractives industries.

With regards to the cost, we don’t foresee training costs presenting a problem for the wind industry.

We based our cost estimates on the CSP sector, which included the cost of training up the employee base.

There is a lot of skills overlap with traditional power generation, such as the use of continuous pour concrete for towers.

The CSP and wind sectors are more job-rich than conventional power generation plants, such as a gas plant, which requires a handful of permanent employees. And when you consider employee health risks associated with, say, coal – the asbestos exposure and mercury in the waterways – the benefit of working with clean energy is clear.

To respond to this article, please write to the editor:

Rikki Stancich: rstancich@gmail.com

Photo Source: Picasaweb, Matthew Wright