Climate, technology and chaos Blog

Index: Capitalism and Neoliberalism

April 7, 2021

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This blog is about, again: Dealing with crises

April 6, 2021

This is something of a sequel to the post “What is this blog about?”

Multiple Crises

We are in the midst of several crises of ecological and social destruction, , mainly brought about by our processes of extraction and pollution. Focusing only on the climate crisis can be a distraction from, or a defense against, realising how deeply we are caught in these multiple crises.

The Eco-crises include:

Deforestation
Destruction of agricultural land, through mining, house building, over-use, erosion etc
Poisoning through pollution
Over-fishing
Ocean Acidification
Disruption of the Nitrogen and Phosphorus cycles
Pollution, and loss, of water supplies
Introduction of new chemicals and materials
Changes in weather patterns

There are also social crises:

of information,
of social and political fracture,
of wealth and power disparities, including poverty
of political corruption,
of insecurity of work and income for most people (what is often called ‘precarity’),
of psychological contentment (existential crises)
and so on.

All these various crises interact in complex ways. Loss of agricultural land, for example, will probably spur the fractures of wealth and power, increase poverty and increase insecurity.

Part of the aims of this blog is to identify the problems, the underlying causes of the problems, and the ways we might come to change our minds and actions so as to deal with those problems.

Complexity and wicked problems

Complexity [1], [2], [3] adds to the difficulties of solving the crises. However, complexity has to be part of our understanding of social problems.

The term ‘wicked problems’ is used for problems:

Which don’t have a standard precedent, or standard formula for action; or the precedents and formulas appear to dig us deeper into the problem.
With no universal formulation; every wicked problem appears to be unique.
The people involved are in conflict, with different opinions and different aims, and there does not seem to be a possible mutually pleasing or agreeable solution. So solutions are likely to be undermined by those participating in the process, or prove unstable in the long run.
There are many linked problems, factors, drivers and consequences. The problem branches out into the systems.
Knowledge of the situation is obviously, and perhaps dangerously, incomplete. Some important people may dispute we have any knowledge.
There is little certainty a solution can be found in the time available for solving.
The problems are likely to change over time.
Solutions can also change the nature of the problem, and create further problems.

Wicked problems are systemic problems within complex systems. They sound impossible to fix, and hence are psychologically disorienting.

However, I’d say it is very difficult to fix the system rather than impossible. But the longer we leave it to stop what we are doing to disrupt the system, then the harder it will get to ‘fix’ it – or to keep it livable for the kind of society we might like.

It is easy to forget that we have always lived in complex systems and, in general, humans survive quite well – it’s not as if ‘wickedness’ or complexity are new phenomena, just something we often don’t recognise in contemporary societies.

If we remember we live in complex systems with a degree of unpredictability and uncertainty, and need to modify actions as we go along (and observe what happens), rather than assume we know in advance, then this realisation can change the ways we act, and process the results of our acts.

Complexity implies learning as we go along, trial and error, and so on.

It can also be helpful to pay attention to other sources of information than just our standard orderings. Information is a real problem nowadays, partly because there is so much of it, and so much of it is evaluated by whether it fits in with the politics of our ‘information groups’ online or in the media, and sometimes information primarily relies on the techniques of magic.

Social breakdown?

We are currently not organised to solve complex problems of great magnitude, but this does not mean it is impossible.

People may note that many large scale societies seem disrupted by ‘tribalism’ I don’t like the term ‘tribalism’ because not all forms of organisation we call tribal, have the features people use the word ‘tribal’ to indicate, However, the UK was at one time incredibly split and diverse, with big breaks between people. Papua Niugini was likewise one of the most diverse and splintered countries ever, with more completely different languages than any other country in the world. Both those places are now reasonably together, PNG in a remarkably short time – even if there are still obviously problems. We can, and have reduced the problems of ‘tribalism’ in the past.

Consequently, I don’t think there is any inevitability in the idea that people cannot unify or recognise difference and be able to live with it.

We may need to look at more closely, is what kinds of patterns of social organisation promote ‘gentler competition,’ more cross-social empathy and a sense of unity and, on the other hand, what patterns promote faction. That has become a recurrent theme on this blog – observing the ways that contemporary political communication patterns depend on the creation of enemies and outgroups, to bond the ingroup together behind the rulers.

My suggestion is that the patterns of behaviour over the last 40 years have increased the factionalisation of the US, for example. Things can get better or worse. But if we think the world is hostile, and prominent people encourage this thinking, then we tend to retreat from being-together, into being against each other. If we think that different humans can get on pretty well in general, and there are fewer forces promoting separation, then we are more disposed to try and get on.

We have also had times in human history in which the difference between the top and the bottom of the wealth hierarchy was not that great in terms of poverty, we have had times in which living conditions improved for a lot of people, and we have had times of better social mobility than others. These kinds of conditions need to be investigated without dogma, and without trying to prove that our dominant groups are really the best ever, or that hierarchy is essential – hierarchy is common, but hierarchies can vary in depth and separation between levels.

I have this vague suspicion that if we had encountered eco-problems we face now, in the 50s or 60s of last century, we would have found it easy to do a better job of handling it. We had a better sense that we all were all in things together, that sometimes money was not the only thing – and we had a growing sense that the world was fragile, which was useful, if threatening to some people.

Conceptual steps

It is now not uncommon to recognise the issues around complex systems, once people become aware of them. It is not hard to gain an awareness of the dangers of ecological destruction. It is easy to gain some sense of the political confusion, and learn that this confusion is not necessary, if you are not afraid to take on established destructive powers and habits. There are lots of people working on these issues; they even get some coverage in some media. There is a lot of effort put into discrediting science, on behalf of profit, but we can still learn if we want to.

As implied above the first step is to recognise that we do live in a set of complex systems, and that we need an experimental politics that looks for unintended consequences, and is prepared to modify policies depending on results.

We then need to be able to live with some levels of uncertainty and skepticism towards our own understandings – which plenty of people do already. In this skepticism, it is useful to be aware of the difference between real skepticism and directed skepticism, in which you are only skeptical of the out-group’s ideas, and use this apparent skepticism to reinforce your own dogmas.

We need to be able to recognise the ecological crises are problems, and that we probably cannot survive without working ecologies, and that societies previously have seemed to collapse because of ecological crisis. Dealing with the problems cannot be postponed indefinitely.

We need to understand that everything operates in contexts, and that changing the context can change the whole system, or even the meaning that some events have for us.

We probably need to be able to perceive some things in terms of continua, or statistical difference, rather than as binary opposites – because it is more realistic, and allows greater communication.

We need to be able to recognise that people are hurting because of the social and eco-crises, and that we cannot afford to have that pain be commandeered by fascist-like movements who try and impose more dogmatic order on the world.

Talking to each other with as much respect and kindness as we can, is often a good start.

Practical steps

While we cannot solve the problems entirely by ourselves, and they can seem overwhelming, it is useful to make whatever start you can, by yourself if necessary.

I’ve seen books which have long lists of things people can do:

learn as much as you can,
cut your electricity usage and bills as much as you can,
turn the heating down, and wear warmer clothes if possible, when its cold.
buy food from local producers,
buy organic food when you can afford it,
eat a bit less meat,
sit with local plants, get to know your local environment,
be careful what weed killers, insecticides and fertilisers you might use,
don’t use bottled water unless you have to,
avoid buying plastic,
engage in recycling even if it does not work,
don’t use a car for short distance travel if you can walk,
contact your local representatives about ecological and climate problems,
sign online petitions (if you don’t sign them, they won’t count),
engage in, or help organise, street marches or blockades. Start with the easiest first,
talk to friends about the issues, but not aggressively,
write about heavily polluting local industries to the owners, managers and local politicians,
buy ecologically principled renewables if you can afford them, or get together to explore organising a community buy in, if you can’t,
if you have superannuation, try and make sure it is not invested in fossil fuels or other ecologically damaging industries,
if you do buy shares, buy them in beneficial businesses,
let politicians and business people know that climate change and preserving the environment are important to you.

I’m sure people can think of other things which could make a difference in their area – even showing your support for other people who are doing the work is good.

If you are retired or young, you get extra opportunities to practice these kinds of things, and to work out what to do.

All these actions may sound trivial, but they will help a little. The greater numbers of people who act, then the greater the effect, the more it becomes part of their habits and common sense, the more it becomes part of social common sense, and the more it carries political weight, and the further sensible action will go. Find the things you can do and do them. Even better if you can join do them with others, as that helps support your actions and widens them, but the main thing is to do them.

We are helped in this process of change because of two factors:

1) small events, especially small accumulating events, can have large effects in complex systems, and

2) people tend to emulate others; so if you set as good example as you can without forcing it on others, then people may pick up the ideas and actions themselves and these actions may spread – and that builds a movement, even if it is not organised.

If you identify as part of the ‘political right’ and you think climate change is a danger, then it could be even more important for you to set an example, as people are more likely to learn from those they identify with, or classify themselves with.

There will be opposition to your protests, but that is life….

Old regulation

One of the main things that obstructs renewables in Australia is regulation, and I’d guess that would be a factor in most places. Markets tend to be regulated to favour those who have historically won in those markets, and those regulations often make assumptions which are no longer accurate. When something new starts, it has to fight against the established regulations. There are few markets without regulation. If there are no regulations then there might be ingrained corruption.

Anyway, finding out the regulations, finding out where they stop change, and agitating to change them, or draw attention to how they work, can also be useful. Politicians, or people in the market, may not even be aware of the regulatory problems

Climate Generosity

I’m interested in the idea of climate generosity as opposed to climate justice [1], [2]. It seems to me that people living in the justice or fairness framework, often behave as if they should begin to act when it’s fair, and that other people should act first to show them it’s fair. People are always saying things like “why should we destroy our economy while they are still polluting?” and so on. Leaving aside whether action on climate change necessarily involves economic destruction, we can’t really afford to wait. So we may need to just be generous and act before others act. We might be being exploited by those others, but who cares if it encourages more people to act and we survive?

This is another reason to act, even if it seems pointless.

Generosity is quite normal human behaviour. We might give gifts to gain status, or gain advantage, but that is fine. It often feels good to be generous and helpful. How we act is up to us: we might try and gift solar panels to a community building, even better if we work with others. We might try to get our politicians to use our taxpayer funds to help gift solar panels to a village, rather than force a coal mine on them, we could try and raise money for this ourselves.

Again we might talk to people and find out what they want rather than we think they should want, and see if it’s possible to help them get it with minimal ecological damage. Gifting is fraught, but you can increase the beneficial nature of the gift, by finding out in advance whether people would like it, and whether they will accept it, and understand that no return is expected, except for them to use it and acknowledge it. There are all kinds of ways to proceed, and involve others. Most people can at least make a present of some of their time.

Generosity reputedly helps people to feel good, build relationships, creates meaning and allows action. It helps solve the existential crisis.

Environmental relating

Sitting with, and observing, your environment can be fundamental to relating to the world, and getting a sense of how it works and changes, how important it is to you, and how much a part of it you are. Almost everywhere that people live there is some sense of environment, some form of nature.

One of the problems with renewables at the moment, seems to be that the people installing them think primarily in terms of business and money, rather than in how renewables can be installed with relative harmony, help people relate to their environment, and be socially fair and appropriate. This is partly because of the success of neoliberal ideologies in shaping people’s common sense and sense of how the world works.

The number one bad?

One of the most dangerous things that has happened in the last 40 to 50 years is the triumph of ‘neoliberalism’. Hence I write about it a lot on this blog [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and so on.

Neoliberalism is the idea that only important social function is business. The only responsibility of business is to make profit. People are taught that business can do anything, and that what it wants to do, must be good, that wealthy people are inherently virtuous, and that the job of government is to support established business and protect them from any challenge at all. This is usually justified by a kind of naïve Marxist idea that the economy determines everything else, so a ‘free market’ must mean freedom. But the idea is nearly always used to structure the economy to support the established wealthy, who can buy policies, buy regulation, buy politicians and so on.

A standard neoliberal process is to strip away regulation of the corporate sector, particularly ecological regulation, and try and regulate ordinary people so they cannot stop corporate action. Common tools of neoliberal economic policy include taxpayer subsidies of corporations when they face trouble, selling off public goods and profit to the private sector, tax cuts for corporations and wealthy people, and cut backs in the helpfulness of social services and making social services punitive. The main idea is that the wealthy deserve even more privilege, and the poor deserve less.

As such, neoliberalism has helped lessen the sense of possibility, and collaboration, that I referred to above. I suspect that neoliberalism, and the power relations that go with it, have done more to slow our response to the problems we face than anything else. This is not to say that free markets are not useful tools, but they are not the only tools or always the best tools, and neoliberals tend to want to structure the world so that it helps markets, rather than structure the market to serve and preserve the world. Indeed many people will argue that the idea of structuring the market to serve the world and its ecologies is tyrannical. But the basis of all economies is ecology. If we don’t make sure the ecological system can regenerate all that we take from it in a reasonable time (even, or especially, in a bad year), then we are on a dangerous path. Neoliberalism seems inherently opposed to action to stop ecological destruction [1], [2].

One reason neoliberalism is harmful, is that its supporters cannot win elections if they tell people that their primary interest is transferring wealth upwards, increasing the power of corporations, rendering ordinary people powerless, and making ecologies expendable, so they have to lie, stir up culture wars, and build strong ingroups to have any chance of victory [1], [2]. Now, in the US, they appear to be trying to stop people from voting. Sadly, the end point will probably be something like fascism [3], [4], [5], [6].

Neoliberalism suggests that ordinary people have no ability to cooperate (and should not cooperate outside of their jobs), are largely competitive and selfish, poverty is a moral failing, and that money is the measure of all virtue.

Any conservative should be able to tell you:

a) that people are cooperative and competitive, and that for good social life we want a competition which builds cooperation amongst the population rather than destroys it,
b) people are selfish, but they are not only selfish, and
c) virtue has little to do with money.

So we have to move on from the idea that it should be forbidden to criticise markets in politics – or perhaps more precisely, the players in those markets and the way they play. Tax cuts for wealthy people are not the only economic policies which exist.

The problem of virtue – the prime dangers of renewables comes from companies not from renewables

We should never assume that because a project appears to be virtuous, and we support its virtue, it will not have harmful effects. Furthermore, our ideas about the project, and how it works, may be completely wrong.

This applies to everything. Recognising that a virtuous, useful project that we completely support can have harmful and unintended consequences is fundamental to an experimental politics, and to navigating complexity.

So far the main problem we have had with renewable energy, is that we are often (although not always) carrying out the transition through the normal ways that we have carried out business and development in the past. These ways of proceeding have traditionally harmed people, and harmed ecologies, partly I suspect because they have always put development, business and profit ahead of those people or ecologies. So we have to be careful.

For example, production of solar panels can involve ecological destruction through mining or pollution. The factories can have harmful working conditions – workers can be poisoned. Disposing of old, or broken, panels can create pollution. We face the usual consequences we might expect from attempts to increase profit, without any ecological or social concern.

Biofuels have in many places resulted in small farmers being pushed off their land, loss of casual farm work for people without land, breakdown of village relationships, deforestation (which goes against the point of the fuels), replacement of food crops with fuel crops pushing up the price of food and leaving people short of food. Biofuels have resulted in greater use of fertilisers which may harm the soils and rivers, they may consume vast quantities of water which can threaten local livelihoods, if rain is rare.

It’s pretty obvious that cultivating vast areas of monocrops takes fuel burning, and making and transporting the resulting fuels can take fuel burning. As well, it usually takes much longer to grow biofuels than to burn them, so it is not immediately obvious that, unless fossil fuel consumption is significantly curtailed by these processes, that it is actually helping at all.

Likewise, wind and solar farms can involve companies fraudulently stealing land from small farmers (people I research with have observed this in action), can involve secret agreements which split townships, unclear distribution of royalties, disruption of people’s sense of the land, agreements that do not involve local people or only involve some local people, fake community consultations, use of water which is in short supply to clean panels, destruction of jobs without replacement and so on. Sometimes it can even involve organised crime, or militia’s, intimidating opposition, forcing people to sell land, or provide ‘services’ for the non-local labour that has come in to install the renewables.

Even events like attempting to conserve forests can lead to traditional people who have lived pretty well with the forests for thousands of years, being thrown out of the forests and becoming homeless.

It should be clear to anyone, that an energy transition does not have to proceed like this, but this is how normal developments proceed at the moment. Mining is often surrounded by local protest and horrendous treatment of local residents, and even poisoning. Having a large chain supermarket arrive in your town, can destroy local business, and create unemployment amongst previous business owners. However, for some reason or other, many of the people who lead country wide protests against wind farms, do not see a problem with mining, even when destroying agricultural land completely, perhaps because they think mining is virtuous. However, it is not just renewables that cause problems, it is the system. So the system needs change, at whatever levels we can manage.

The point is we need to have more care about how we proceed, and more awareness of the problems in virtuous projects without feeling we have to abandon them. If people get dispossessed by renewable companies, behaving as companies often do, we need to stop this, as they may tend to react with hostility towards the transition in general, when the problem is company behaviour not transition.

This blog aims to explore some of these effects, and suggest possible remedies. We cannot afford for business to behave like this, so renewables companies must be regulated to engage with communities.

Perhaps this means that community based renewables are a better way to go? People working as a community are more likely to listen to each other, and to relate to the place they are working in – which does not automatically mean harmony of course. If this is true, then it again demonstrates the importance of working at a local level – even in cities.

The downside is that careful processes take longer and slow progress down, but we want a liveable world at the end of it.

Problems of Fantasy Tech

Finally, some imagined technologies like ‘clean coal,’ ‘carbon capture and storage,’ or geoengineering [1], [2], [3] often act as ways to reassure us we can continue on as we are doing, and suggest we can fix everything up with a future technological add on to the process. These technologies currently do not exist safely, or are not working at the rates we need. It is generally not sensible to imagine that a working technology must appear because we need it, or in the right amount of time to solve our problems. That is just fantasy. While we should research new technologies, we also have to act with the technologies we have now, as well as we can. Further delay, because of technological fantasy, just makes the situation worse.

Tags: complexity, Disinformation, disorder, neoliberalism, renewable energy, social action, social category theory
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Ember Global Electricity Review: Australia

April 5, 2021

This continues the rather heavy policy, figures posts I’ve been making recently, to try and make sense of what is happening with the confusions in Australia over energy transition.

General Remarks

This is a quick account of the Ember Global Electricity Review: Australia. (EGER-A)

I sometimes wonder why people report on electricity supply alone when its total energy use and total greenhouse gas emissions that count for climate change. Focusing on electricity supply may give a false optimism, as it ignores other massive sources of emissions, such as petrol burning for transport, concrete manufacture, bad agriculture and so on. We have a lot more emissions problems to solve than electricity supply – and that is before we get to the ecological destruction produced by deforestation, mining, over-fishing and so on.….

However, while Australia is doing fairly well in this account, it is not on track to do as well as it needs to; and when we factor in the other sources of Greenhouse gases, the likelihood is high we will not lower emissions by anything like what we need – especially given the vague and conflicting policies.

Australian Figures

Let’s look at the figures.

Firstly,

Australia’s electricity demand per capita (9.9 MWh, in 2020)… is still three times the world average (3.3 MWh, in 2020) and well ahead of many other G20 countries, such as China (5.3 MWh), Germany (6.6 MWh), and the United Kingdom (4.8 MWh).
(EGER-A: 9)

So Australia has a culture of high electricity usage, which may well make it hard to phase out emissions.

Despite these high levels of consumption, wind and solar have increased from 7% of total electricity supply in 2015 (33TWh) to 17% of total supply in 2020 (63 TWh) (EGER-A: 1, 3).

Renewables were at 2% in 2010 (EGER-A: 5), which makes the growth appear even higher, but it needs to continue at the same rate to be useful.

Coal’s market share has declined by 10%. It is now 54% (135TWh) of total E generation. For the world as a whole, coal now makes up 34% of E generation (EGER-A: 1, 3), so Australia is particularly coal intensive. In the G20 Australia is ranked 5th in terms of its dependence on fossil fuel electricity.

Gas and oil burning accounts for about 20% of Australian electricity generation. This has been more or less steady over the last 5 years (EGER-A: 1).

Renewables make up 25% of total generation in Australia (this figure may include hydro), while renewables and nuclear add up to 39% for the world (EGER-A: 1). Again Australia is high on GHG emitting electricity – Australia has no nuclear power, and is unlikely to get any, any time soon.

This usage points to problems for emissions levels:

Coal generation needs to be completely phased out in Australia by around 2030, in order to put the world on track for 1.5 degrees, according to Climate Analytics.
This is much ahead of the announced coal retirement schedule, which will still leave over 15 GW of coal capacity in the generation-mix by 2030, representing more than 70% of the current capacity.
EGER-A: 3

The Australian department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources estimates coal will remain “the single largest source of electricity by 2030, responsible for over 30% of electricity generation” (EGER-A: 7). These figures are somewhat confusing, but let’s assume coal will generate 30% of electricity as opposed to 54% as now. So while ghg emissions will decline, they will still be significant, by 2030.

[T]here still remains significant uncertainty about whether [State and Territory] targets can incentivise wind and solar uptake to the extent considered essential for putting the world on track for 1.5 degrees.
EGER-A: 5.

Again we face the problem that people either through their own expenditure, Council expenditure, or corporate expenditure, are doing a reasonable job in lowering the emissions of Australia’s electricity generation, but government policy is possibly not helping enough, and is hindering progress by enforcing fossil fuel use, and by subsidising fossil fuel exports through low royalty and low tax regimes.

World Figures

The same Source states that across the world

Wind and solar generation rose by 15% (+314 TWh) to produce a tenth of global electricity. So Australia is slightly ahead of average
Coal fell by a record 4% (-346 TWh)
The only place coal generation increased was in China, rising by 2% in 2020, and falling elsewhere.
Coal generation has only fallen 0.8% since 2015, while methane burning (gas) rose 11%.
World GHG emissions rose -despite Covid. I’m not sure if this is emissions from electricity or in general, or both.

Dave Jones, the Global Programme Lead of Ember, states:

Progress is nowhere near fast enough. Despite coal’s record drop during the pandemic, it still fell short of what is needed. Coal power needs to collapse by 80% by 2030 to avoid dangerous levels of warming above 1.5 degrees. We need to build enough clean electricity to simultaneously replace coal and electrify the global economy. World leaders have yet to wake up to the enormity of the challenge.
Ember Global Electricity Review 2021

It may, of course, be the case that global leaders do know of the enormity of the challenge, and don’t want to face it, or don’t want to face the possible political fallout, from those who oppose action.

Concluding Remarks

To go back to the original point: electricity supply is just the first step to reducing emissions and repairing ecologies. If we are going to electrify cars for example, we need to generate even more electricity, and that requires even more renewables in a short space of time, if we are going to reduce emissions. The sector needs political help to meet real targets, and that requires action from ordinary citizens…

If you think this is a problem, please do not just trust to business to do it right, but think about telling your local representatives they are not doing enough, and join in protests, or support protestors, whenever possible.

*************

The inevitable endnote….

An email from the International Renewable Energy Agency, tells us more about the state of the world, and but uses different measures, so they are hard to convert for comparison. It states:

the world added more than 260 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity last year [2020], exceeding expansion in 2019 by close to 50 per cent….
More than 80 per cent of all new electricity capacity added last year was renewable, with solar and wind accounting for 91 per cent of new renewables.

This means that 20% of new electricity capacity was not renewable, I need to check whether that was a significant decline, although it does not seem that much of a decline:

Total fossil fuel additions fell to 60 GW in 2020 from 64 GW the previous year.

Most renewables are still hydro, which is vulnerable to changing rainfall, or ice formation…

At the end of 2020, global renewable generation capacity amounted to 2,799 GW with hydropower still accounting for the largest share (1,211 GW) although solar and wind are catching up fast.
The two variable sources of renewables dominated capacity expansion in 2020 with 127 GW and 111 GW of new installations for solar and wind, respectively….
Wind expansion almost doubled in 2020 compared to 2019 (111 GW compared to 58 GW last year). China added 72 GW of new capacity, followed by the United States (14 GW). Ten other countries increased wind capacity by more than 1 GW in 2020. Offshore wind increased to reach around 5% of total wind capacity in 2020….
Total solar capacity has now reached about the same level as wind capacity thanks largely to expansion in Asia (78 GW) in 2020. Major capacity increases in China (49 GW) and Viet Nam (11 GW). Japan also added over 5 GW and India and Republic of Korea both expanded solar capacity by more than 4 GW. The United States added 15 GW

Tags: politics, renewable energy
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Labor and Community Batteries: Information mess or reality?

April 4, 2021

One of the recurrent themes of this blog is that climate policies all over the world, seem spur of the moment, confused contradictory, and hard to trace. I’ve argued that this partly derives from the existential crisis posed by climate change. Climate change is psychologically and sociologically disorienting at the same time.

Anyway, whether the theory is correct or not, this is the story of the confusions around the Australian Labor Party’s community battery ‘policy’ and whether it exists or not.

There are numerous stories indicating that Labor supports community batteries which have appeared in the last six days. For example:

Should it win the election, Labor says it will spend over $200m to install 400 community batteries across the country to service 100,000 households. Labor says this will help encourage households to invest in solar panels.
Kurmelovs Community batteries: what are they, and how could they help Australian energy consumers? The Guardian 5 April 2021

Federal Labor has unveiled some of its first new policies designed to slash greenhouse gas emissions, promising to slash federal taxes for electric vehicles and committing to build hundreds of community batteries.
A proposed $200 million ‘Power to the People’ initiative would see a federal Labor government fund the installation of up to 400 medium-scale batteries distributed across the grid, allowing households to enjoy the benefits of battery storage through a community shared battery.
Labor estimates that around 100,000 households could benefit from the deployment of community batteries.
Mazengarb Federal Labor promises to slash taxes for electric vehicles, build community batteries. RenewEconomy, 30 March 2021

Anthony Albanese will promise a Labor government would deliver a discount to cut the cost of electric cars and install community batteries, in modest initiatives costing $400 million over several years….
The announcement, to be made Wednesday, comes as Labor debates its platform at a “virtual” national conference involving some 400 participants.
Gratten Labor proposes discounts for electric cars and ‘community batteries’ to store solar power. The Conversation, 30 March 2021

The opposition is also vowing to spend an additional $200 million on 400 medium-sized batteries in suburbs and towns.
The so-called “community batteries”, which are about the size of a large car, are aimed at cutting power prices for up to 100,000 homes and taking better advantage of household solar.
About 20 per cent of households have rooftop solar panels – a figure that’s world leading.
But far fewer homes, closer to one in 60, have battery storage, which means during peak periods in the evening, or when the sun doesn’t shine, they are reliant on the grid.
The “community batteries” would connect somewhere between a few dozen and a few hundred households.
They would charge during the day and be drawn down during the night, saving households the costs of battery installation and maintenance.
Glenday & Doran Labor promises cheaper electric cars and cash for solar powered batteries, if it wins next federal election. ABC 31 March 2021 ??

So we can see that some of this is a reporting of the announcement that an announcement would be made. At the moment, I am not sure if a formal announcement of the policy was made, although there is some hint it might be. It is, for example, not in the National Platform released after the recent conference, which was after the announcement of the announcement. Although that Platform does say:

Community and publicly-owned energy systems will play a critical role in the modernisation of Australia’s energy system, including in regional and remote communities. Labor will support the ongoing development and deployment of community and publicly-owned energy systems, ensuring all Australians can access the economic and environmental benefits of renewable energy.
ALP National Platform: 34

This paragraph is just previous to the announcement that:

Labor recognises and supports the critical role that gas plays in the Australian economy. Labor recognises that gas has an important role to play in achieving Labor’s target of net zero emissions by 2050.
ALP National Platform: 34

Mixed messages?

Anyway, google advanced search reveals no mention of “community batteries” or “community battery” and very little on batteries or battery on the ALP website. The conference blog does not mention this policy. However, an account of the closing speech by Anthony Albanese, the parliamentary leader of the ALP does say:

If you want a world-leading plan to build community batteries for households and reduce electricity costs for families, Labor is on your side.
Albanese Lighting the Road Ahead. 31 March

I then looked at Anthony Albanese’s website. Over the last year Mr. Alabanese was remarkably quiet about batteries other than about manufacture. However, a press conference does have these comments which is the best evidence the reports quoted above are not entirely fantasy.

Albanese: Today, also, we’re announcing our Power to the People Plan. This is a plan for community batteries. We know that Australia has the highest take-up in the world of putting solar panels on roofs. Australians are literally voting with their own roofs when it comes to taking action, which reduces the costs of energy for families, but also is, of course, good for our environment. But we know also that a constraint is being able to afford to put a battery on individual homes. We know also that batteries will make an enormous difference in terms of dealing with the issues that the take-up of renewables have had for reliability of the grid. By having community batteries, that will be a big step to overcoming that and to improving the functionality of the grid, as well as making it affordable for people to participate and to ensure that, at the time that they’re getting their energy through the solar panels, that it’s stored and used when it’s needed. So this is a practical plan. A practical plan for both community batteries and a practical plan for electric vehicles. It’s just our first step when it comes to these strategies. And I’d ask Chris Bowen to make some further comments before Ed Husic and then we’ll hear from someone from the EV sector….
Chris Bowen:…. But one in 60 has a battery because they’re very expensive. Now, that’s bad for the families because they have to draw on the grid at night in particular or when the sun’s not shining, and pay electricity bills for that. And it’s also providing a lot of pressure on the grid as solar feeds in during the day, really pumping the system of electricity, but we need those power stations at night. So those who care about grid reliability know that we have to get many more batteries. Now, there’s a role for batteries of the household, there’s a role for grid-wide batteries like the one in South Australia. But more and more, there’s a role for community batteries. Neighbourhoods coming together to share their power, feeding in from their solar panels to the battery during the day and drawing off it at night. So we will fund 400 batteries around the country where communities can come together, pay a very small fee of a few dollars a week to participate in that community battery, which will lower their energy costs and also reduce their emissions. And importantly, it will also be possible for people who can’t have solar panels for whatever reason. They might be renters and the landlord hasn’t put solar panels on, they might live in apartments and not be able to put solar panels on, they’ll also be able to participate in the scheme. And while they won’t feed in during the day, they’ll be able to draw out at night, providing the opportunity of renewable energy to more Australians. So these are the practical measures that we’re announcing today.
Ed Husic:… And particularly focused at the beginning on battery manufacturing as well, because a lot of people here have been dedicating themselves to that issue about how do we actually bring all of that together, manufacture the batteries and build from that moving forward? So it’s really big in that respect.
Sydney Doorstop Interview 31 March 2021

I suspect most of the journalism is based on this, press conference. At the moment I cannot find any details for this Power to the People plan, and it is surprising that it is not mentioned in the Party Platform. A last minute promise?

In any case without knowing the size of the batteries, the number of houses that would be connected to each battery, and where the stored energy would come from, we know very little about how effective the plan would be.

Previous to the last election, Albanese remarked:

People in the Inner West know that we need a Labor Government to get our nation’s climate change and energy policies back on track.
Through Labor’s plan residents in Grayndler will have assistance to slash their power bills and help in the national effort to reduce emissions, by installing household batteries in their homes.
Our Household Battery Program will provide a $2,000 rebate for 100,000 households on incomes of less than $180,000 per year to purchase and install battery systems, as well as low-cost loans for households.
Our target of 1 million new batteries to be installed by 2025 would triple the number of battery systems in Australian households compared to today.
Albanese Labor’s Renewable Energy Plan To Turbo Charge Inner West Sustainability, 23 November 2018

No idea whether this still stands or not, or whether it has been discarded…

Perhaps of some relevance, Albanese also has a section of his website which states:

Where Anthony Stands
Find out Anthony’s position on what matters to you:
The Economy
Jobs and the Future of Work
Nation Building Infrastructure
Child Care Education

Nothing about Climate or Energy, although to be fair the nation building infrastructure says:

Labor will invest in our energy grid, bringing the power of renewables to consumers and industry. Rewiring the Nation will enable us to power our manufacturing sector with cleaner energy.
https://anthonyalbanese.com.au/the-issues/nation-building-infrastructure

There is nothing about this in the Platform either. Not of grids nor of “Rewiring the Nation”.

This is information mess in action. Perhaps the real announcement and details have yet to come and this was just a warm up? Or perhaps they got the headlines without making any formal promises…. Perhaps things shift from day to day, and these are aspirations not policies?

Tags: politics, renewable energy
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More on the Political Background: The ALP Platform

April 1, 2021

The Australian Labor Party had its national conference yesterday. They are Australia’s only practical hope for action on climate change and energy transition.

However, they seem to have decided to support, and lock-in, gas and drop any targets for 2030.

The Party platform, makes a lot of vague statements, but it does commit to a ‘safely in the future’ target of: “zero net emissions by 2050”

We should note that a recent report from the Australian Academy of Science states:

The total emission reductions currently pledged by the Australian and international governments through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Paris Agreement (UNFCCC), even if implemented on time, will translate as average global surface temperatures of 3°C or more above the pre-industrial period by 2100….
If the international community fails to meet the emission reduction targets under the UNFCCC Paris Agreement, this will result in a global mean surface temperature increase of approximately 3°C or more by mid to late century. This level of warming is well above the targets considered manageable under that agreement….
Given how much Australia stands to lose if GHG emissions are not reduced, we also recommend that Australia accelerates its transition to net zero GHG emissions over the next 10 to 20 years.
The risks to Australia of a 3°C warmer world

Labor is not heading that way, but they do say:

as a substantial power we can make a significant contribution to international efforts on climate change, biodiversity and waste management….
Working with First Nations peoples, modern science and traditional knowledge will together be instrumental in solving today’s environmental challenges.
We will develop and implement practical, collaborative policies informed by the best science and consistent with the goals of the Paris Accord to realise Australia’s huge renewable energy opportunities and ensure all Australians benefit not only through stronger economic growth but also access to more affordable energy.
ALP National Platform: p31.

Which is nice, but what does it mean? Is growth compatible with a decline in ecological destruction?

More dangerously they leap into stating, that:

Supported by the advice of experts including the Chief Scientist and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Labor recognises and supports the crucial role that Carbon Capture and Storage will play in abating carbon pollution and ensuring industries like heavy manufacturing and gas production are able to play their role in meeting carbon pollution reduction goals consistent with achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. Labor has a proud history of supporting the development of CCS technologies, including through substantial financial support, which stands in sharp contrast to the record of the Coalition government which has abolished CCS support programs and cut $460 million in CCS financial support.
ALP National Platform: 32

You would have thought they might have learnt from the huge amounts of money they threw at CCS during their last period of government, that the fossil fuel industries are not that interested in CCS other than as an excuse to allow them to keep polluting, on the grounds that they might be able to capture emissions emitted in a distant future.

Companies working in Australia did some research on CCS, but none of it was as successful as promised, and non of it was successful enough to suggest that the dangers and risks of CCS (such as undetectable leakage, long term collapse, or poisoning of water supplies) were counter-balanced by its usefulness.

This policy marks an almost certain complete waste of money and effort. Although maybe government based research might be more productive? if we were lucky.

On the good side.

A federal Labor Government will join Australia with the dozens of countries around the world developing plans consistent with the Paris Agreement which requires a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities.
ALP National Platform: 33

Continuing the good side, if somewhat waffley:

Labor will modernise Australia’s energy system and develop a framework that will ensure reliable, affordable and clean energy for families and businesses. Labor will ensure sufficient investment in new generation to replace retiring assets, support the electrification of our transport infrastructure, and grow new industries such as green steel and green aluminum, as well as ensure affordability, reliability and pollution reduction goals….
Community and publicly-owned energy systems will play a critical role in the modernisation of Australia’s energy system, including in regional and remote communities. Labor will support the ongoing development and deployment of community and publicly-owned energy systems, ensuring all Australians can access the economic and environmental benefits of renewable energy.
ALP National Platform: 34

No targets or anything, or suggestions of how they will do this, but good.

This is followed by the lay down and surrender section

Labor recognises and supports the critical role that gas plays in the Australian economy. Labor recognises that gas has an important role to play in achieving Labor’s target of net zero emissions by 2050. Labor’s policies will support Australian workers in the gas extraction industry, building on Labor’s legacy of supporting sufficient and affordable gas supply for Australian industry and consumers. This includes support for new gas projects and associated infrastructure, subject to independent approval processes to ensure legitimate community concerns are heard and addressed.
ALP National Platform: 34

So gas can go ahead, and keep going ahead, despite the emissions. We can have lock in to fossil fuels! Not even a mention of phase out, or when it should be phased out by. Together with the up front emphasis on CCS, it appears “modernis[ing] Australia’s energy system” means staying with fossil fuels.

Labor will ensure the industry assesses and manages environmental and other impacts, including on water reserves and co-existence with other agricultural activities, and engages constructively with landholders.
ALP National Platform: 34

This has never worked in the past. Australia’s approval mechanisms tend to favour mining over agriculture – because mining is ideologically important and because mining is wealthy. So without modification of those processes, we can assume destruction of water and agriculture.

I am curious as to what “other agricultural activities” means in these circumstances. Gas drilling is now considered as agriculture?

The Federal government must also institute policies like more rigorous use-it or lose-it conditions for offshore gas resources, a price related export control trigger, and domestic reservation policies to ensure environmentally approved gas projects are developed for the benefit of Australians, including as a feedstock to crucial strategic manufacturing industries including chemical and fertiliser production. Consistent with the advice of energy market agencies such as the Australian Energy Market operator, Labor recognises that gas-power generation has a critical role to play in firming the National Electricity Market (NEM) to ensure reliability and price affordability as it transitions to net zero emissions and as other technologies emerge.
ALP National Platform: 34

“Rigorous use-it or lose-it”, implies offshore drilling must take place, rather than be delayed until it is pointless. That policy appears to be encouraging rush and ecological damage – leaks at sea are really hard to fix or even observe. Domestic reservation policies are largely irrelevant, as where the gas burns does not matter for climate. They restate the importance of gas, just in case you missed it, and cut backs in emissions seem to be phased into the distant future.

Working with industry, workers and states, Labor will ensure access to affordable gas to support Australian households, power generation and industry, including through measures designed to ensure Australia’s energy security.
ALP National Platform: 34

Lock in is clearly good. They assume energy security depends on gas, so consequently it will never ‘go away’.

I don’t think the platform says “Labor will ensure access to affordable renewable energy to support Australian households, power generation and industry.” So gas is special and privileged.

This idea that fossil fuels are a necessary economic backbone, which must be locked in, is further supported by another paragraph.

Australia is one of the only developed countries in the world that does not consistently meet the 90-day requirement for domestic fuel storage. Labor will secure Australia’s fuel security and ensure Australia meets its IEA obligations, including by ensuring a robust domestic fuel refining and storage capability.
ALP National Platform: 35

This is followed by another good point.

Labor recognises the strength and sustainability of our economy depends on the health of the environments in which we work, live and play… The current environmental trajectory is unsustainable…. Labor is committed to addressing the environmental crisis, while also building sustainable jobs and an economy that builds prosperous regions.
ALP National Platform: 35

Environmental protection is elaborated at such length, in comparison to everything else, that it is clear that Labor thinks environmental protection is a winner, in a sense in which climate change, or renewable energy, is not.

SO the conclusion is that the ALP is good on environmental protection, as long as it does not clash with fossil fuels, or maybe the environmental protection is where they hope to get movement on fossil fuels.

However, another light on environmental protection is shed by the Tasmanian Labor Party’s announcement during the conference period that:

Labor commits to legislate to protect workers from radical Greens
The Greens destroy jobs of hardworking Tasmanians
Labor wants to help the resources industry where the Liberals failed
A Labor Government will create the offence of aggravated trespass and put in place timber harvesting safety zones backed up with fines of $10,000 and up to 2 years in jail for individuals and up to $100,000 for entities.
Labor will protect resource industry where the Liberals failed, 30 March

So no more protests about deforestation in Tasmania by people wanting environmental protection. This is excused by preventing “dangerous workplace invasions” as if forests are workplaces alone. The proposed legislation seems to make sure that this just about stopping protests about tree felling or ecological destruction, just so unions don’t feel threatened about their capacity to protest changes in their workplaces. So is Labor’s environmentalism real, or just as shady as its gas policies?

***********

Other recent comments on the ALP here….

Tags: politics, renewable energy
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A facebook post about Trump from March 2017

March 31, 2021

I posted this quick analysis of Trump on the 26 March 2017, which is about 2 months after Trump came to power…. It seems pretty accurate for the rest of his reign, although I did not anticipate how much lying and positive thinking would dominate his mode of operations.

*********************

What we have learnt about Republican politics in the last couple of weeks….

1) It appears Trump cannot do deals even with his own people. He makes threats and then withdraws when they don’t agree.

2) The Republicans can criticise something [policies and legislation] for years, but have no idea what to do, when it becomes time to do something.

3) Trump, and his party have no ideas and no plans, just vague directions and value judgements. [I did not guess how harsh, those value judgements would come be, and how they would seem to consign non-agreeing people to the pit].

4) Their directions can be summarised as: always subsidise the rich, always step on the poor. Pollution is good.

5) If anything goes wrong, Republicans will blame the Democrats [mainly Hillary Clinton and Obama], because the failure can’t have anything to do with them. [They are still fighting Clinton].

6) They will probably try and sabotage Affordable Health Care, or any other protective legislation, simply to get revenge and give corporations liberty. [This fight seems to now include being against the right to vote]

7) Trump follows his ‘instinct’ or intuition, and he is always right – even when he isn’t.

8) He does not need any empirical checks or testing. He just ‘knows’, and thinks everyone will come to agree with him eventually.

9) Consequently he hates science.

10) Hypothesis: It would seem there is no dealing with, or reasoning with such people. They can go anywhere their drives, intuition, complexes, or possession, take them – and they will take others with them.

11) There is the possibility that most of them would rather destroy the world than confront their fallibility. [This seems even more true nowadays]

Tags: politics
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A New Report on the possibility of Renewable Transition

March 29, 2021

Background

The report comes from the Australia Institute (AI) and the the Victorian Energy Policy Centre, who will undoubtedly be dismissed as a bunch of old lefties, or the socialist dictatorship in hiding.

Anyway their Report released Monday 29th March 2021, is in stark contradiction to the attitudes of the major Australian political parties, who seem to be all in favour of tax payer support for fossil fuels.

The Report is being issued ahead of an important meeting scheduled for mid this year in which Australian energy ministers will decide on a new design for the National Electricity Market (NEM), based upon advice from the Energy Security Board (ESB), and which should be implemented in 2025 or thereabouts. The new design is intended to maintain reliability, stability and security. Current politics suggest that the favoured solutions will be new fossil fuel power stations – probably gas, but we cannot predict with certainty. The ESB advice should be published soon, so this report is probably a bit late to have much influence.

The Socio-Technical Problems

Many technological problems turn out to be social problems, in that the technology is designed for particular ends, to intensify power relations, keep challenges to power relations at bay, or to support (or challenge) the established ways of doing things, although these intentions may be undermined by unintended consequences, or by a change in demand (as with the decline of fossil fuel based electricity). The fact that the energy system will be set up, to some degree, by the social intention of some groups of people, makes this claim clear.

Some terminology

However, let us begin with some technical vocabulary, because it is part of the socio-technical imperatives, providing both focus and limitation. For example, the new design for the market could be limited as it apparently does not include emissions reduction as a primary focus.

The ESB’s workstream is focused on inertia and system strength services. Inertia refers to the extent to which the power system resists changes to demand and supply, over microsecond time scales. System strength refers to the extent to which a stable voltage waveform is maintained after disturbances to the system, such as from short circuits.
Cass Volt-face: Changing energy security in the National Electricity Market, Discussion Paper p.2

Security refers to the ability of the power system to stay within safe technical limits…. [and] less synchronous generation does present a system security challenge
Cass Volt-face: Changing energy security in the National Electricity Market, Discussion Paper p.3-4

This research report is entirely about these stability, or security, issues, which were supposed to be the reason for the move to charge people to export solar power to the grid.

Changes in technological use and capacity

In the past coal, gas and hydro were used to produce stability in both frequency (the rate the system oscillates between positive and negative voltage) and voltage. However, that dependency is becoming a problem. Prof Bruce Mountain, Director of Victoria Energy Policy Centre at Victoria University, Founder of BeatyourBill; and Director of Carbon and Energy Markets (Pty Ltd) and part of this research is quoted as saying:

“The business model underpinning coal and gas is collapsing before our eyes…
“Renewables already create the cheapest electricity in the market and the last leg the fossil fuel industry had to stand on was the security services they have historically provided. Now we can see [see below] that even those services are being delivered in a more reliable and affordable way by renewable energy and that trend will only accelerate in the future,”
Batteries and Renewables to Provide Secure Energy Future: New Report

In the summary of the research (Discussion Paper) Dan Cass remarks:

One of the emerging difficulties is that coal generators are starting to lose money and make financial decisions that harm system security. They will reduce maintenance, generate at a lower level and mothball or ‘decommit’ units, which makes them unavailable even when required for system security
Cass Volt-face: Changing energy security in the National Electricity Market, Discussion Paper. P.11

So the system is becoming unstable because fossil fuels are failing financially not directly because of renewables, as is frequently suggested. Fossil fuel generation is starting to lose money primarily because there is less and less demand for electricity during the day, because of rooftop solar, which possibly has something to do with people’s response to climate change. Hence the idea of either letting the system turn off domestic solar, or charge for domestic solar export, which might help bring in extra income and provide a role for fossil fuels.

Renewables may supply stability if the system is configured correctly

As we have seen above, the research claims necessary security and stability services are being increasingly supplied by renewable energy, batteries and demand response, making coal and gas less essential, which probably makes them even less profitable.

Batteries and demand response provided more than a third (38%) of all frequency control markets in Q4 2020, despite comprising just 0.5% of the grid’s generation capacity
Batteries and Renewables to Provide Secure Energy Future: New Report

Now 38% is not that close to 95% or thereabouts…. so we are nowhere near there yet. However, they go onto claim that Energy Australia’s proposed new 350 MW is “likely” to be able to give three times more stability than was given by the discontinuing 1,480 MW Yallourn coal power station. Which suggests that more large batteries would provide even more stability and possibly all the useful stability we might need.

Over the long term the NEM might not need inertia as conventionally defined at all.
Cass Volt-face: Changing energy security in the National Electricity Market, Discussion Paper p.2

‘Might’ is a hypothetical, suggesting we need more work here. Anyway, the research claims that there is:

no technical obstacle to… replacing the system security which has been provided by coal and gas generators. Innovative new inverter-based sources are already proving themselves cheaper and better than legacy technologies.
Cass Volt-face: Changing energy security in the National Electricity Market, Discussion Paper. Executive summary

Solar, wind and batteries use inverters to convert DC to AC and control power output to the networks and this ‘inverter-based’ class of technologies will <likely> provide most inertia and system strength in the future
Cass Volt-face: Changing energy security in the National Electricity Market, Discussion Paper p.4

These inverters could have advantages if set up properly.

Inverter-based systems can resist system frequency change, like a synchronous generator. Software determines the shape of the frequency response. Inverter based systems can also provide fast frequency or active power response, which does not mimic a synchronous generator and may be as fast as 70 milliseconds [which is a lot faster than the present system]….
The settings on grid-following inverters can be tuned so that instead of creating cascading system strength and inertia problems they can support system strength.
Cass Volt-face: Changing energy security in the National Electricity Market, Discussion Paper p.6 Rearranged for clarity.

Batteries also can be ‘grid forming’ – “setting frequency not simply following it” and batteries “have inertia in proportion to energy stored”.

Interestingly, the AI adds that “new or stronger interconnections in a network increase inertia” (Cass p.6). This seems to be a suggestion in favour of more “poles and wires” and making a more distributed grid.

They also estimate that:

the cost of system security represents around 2% of the cost of wholesale energy
Cass Volt-face: Changing energy security in the National Electricity Market, Discussion Paper. Executive summary

Which is surprisingly little in my eyes, and suggests a relatively easy transition.

Regulation

However, transition will probably not occur at the moment, as the existing regulatory structure inhibits that transition. Regulation is part of the social background to technology, and usually results from a competition between various social groups. It is not surprising that regulation tends to enforce the ‘markets’ favoured by established and dominant players, to the extent those players have been able to get away with it.

Rules:

governing the provision of inertia and system strength are not fit for purpose for the Post-2025 market. They are a brake on the clean energy transition and undermine state-based Renewable Energy Zones.
Cass Volt-face: Changing energy security in the National Electricity Market, Discussion Paper. Executive summary

A rather unclear example they give suggests that regulations prevent solar farms from using their inverters to provide system strength – but I’m not entirely sure if that is what they mean (cf Cass: p.5).

For them, the:

critical test is whether [the regulation] encourages investors to fund the innovative energy and system security capacity Australia needs as coal exits the stage.
Cass Volt-face: Changing energy security in the National Electricity Market, Discussion Paper

We may also need to think about whether contemporary capitalism can provide the transition which might have been provided by other forms of capitalism, or other forms of investment, but that is a different problem and we cannot expect such considerations in this kind of report.

The preferred solution of the general public?

Finally, only 26% of people surveyed preferred the idea of paying coal powered energy stations for this stability service. I’m not yet sure if they asked about gas.

It does not matter what people prefer, if they are wrong. Many people seem to think that Donald Trump was working for ordinary Americans, and that Republicans can be said to be the party of the working class. This does not mean those statements and preferences are remotely accurate or plausible.

But it does mean that people would like to progress if possible, just as the Trump results suggest that Americans recognise the need for a party that represents working class interests.

If more, and better regulated, renewables is the preferred solution of the public then the indication provided by the mainstream political parties is that the public will have to agitate for this solution, and not entirely leave it to committees which may still live in a fossil fuel universe in which emissions do not matter.

********************

Endnote from a day or two later…

The Clean Energy Council has said that more than 3 gigawatts of new small-scale solar capacity has now pushed the total renewable mix to almost 28 per cent of total supply. The number of individual installations reached 378,451. The average size of installations was 8kW. Renewable generation reached 27.7% of the total production over the whole year for the first time ever.

More Background

The Energy Security Board delivered some public recommendations in January 2021, saying:

The intent of this paper is to set out the direction of work within the Post-2025 work program, rather than elicit stakeholder views at this time. In March 2021, the ESB will consult on potential market designs which are being developed in accordance with the direction in this paper. Various accompanying papers published with this paper are, however, open to consultation
ESB Post-2025 Market Design Directions Paper p.10

The paper has been summarised as having the following aims:

1. Manage exit of coal stations while providing reliability
2.     Work out how to provide system services when everything is done by power electronics
3.     Work out how to redesign the system so that distributors, communities and household seamlessly integrate with industrial size generators and consumers.
4.     Coordinate REZ introduction process and associated transmission
5.     Try and herd the States back into the NEM framework

As the Energy Security Board (ESB) released its latest Health of the National Electricity Market report.

Chair of the Energy Security Board, Dr Kerry Schott, said “years of insufficient action” and “band-aid solutions” have characterised Australia’s response to growth of renewable energy generation….
“The technology and renewables-driven transformation of our energy market is no longer an if or when proposition. It is here and now,”…
“The current set of systems, tools, market arrangements and regulatory frameworks is no longer entirely fit for purpose.
“This pace of change means there are now just months to finalise the redesign of the electricity marketplace so consumers can reap the benefits of this change.”
Clarke Blistering assessment gives Australia ‘just months’ to fix nation’s energy security. ABC News 5th January 2021

Professor Ken Baldwin of the ANU’s Energy Change Institute said an integrated energy and emissions reduction policy was needed.

“If there was a consistent policy going forward which had targets milestoned at every decade for the amount of emissions reduction we need to achieve in the electricity sector, that would help,”
Clarke Blistering assessment gives Australia ‘just months’ to fix nation’s energy security. ABC News 5th January 2021

**************

Another Endnote from April

The Energy Security Board has apparently delivered its recommendations to the Minister Angus Taylor, and is apparently supposed to be distributed to to state and territory energy ministers before being released publicly for feedback.

One of the apparent problems, is that the Energy ministers meet as part of a ‘national cabinet’, subcommittee which means participants are bound by, strict cabinet confidentiality rules and that external viewers, interested parties, experts etc are excluded from the meetings. Some say that Angus Taylor is the only formal member of this subcommittee, and thus effectively controls the agenda and results. It could mean that blatant giving of taxpayer funds to ‘mates’ could proceed without challenge.

Despite the restrictions, it appears that ministers have complained that Taylor will not allow emissions reductions to be discussed. He is the minister for emissions reduction. ACT climate change minister Shane Rattenbury said “If the federal government doesn’t want to talk about it, Angus just doesn’t let it on the agenda.”

RenewEconomy has made several attempts to request information about the proceedings of the federal cabinet energy subcommittee, only to be denied on the basis that all such material is cabinet-in-confidence.
Mazengarb Transparency lost as Taylor seizes control of now “secret” energy minister forums. RenewEconomy 1 DEcember 2020

It is apparently the case that “ministers meet ‘as required’ and that no details of the next meeting are available.” It is also not an unreasonable assumption that the Federal Government will try to design the market so it requires lock-in of coal and gas, and the inhibition of renewables.

Angus Taylor recently wrote:

The record level of renewable investment is in mostly non-dispatchable intermittent energy that works only when the sun shines and the wind blows…. this means there is an urgent need for more investment in dispatchable capacity, and a need to avoid premature and unanticipated closure of thermal generators, which are mainly coal and gas….
The Kurri Kurri gas generator, to be built by Snowy Hydro, will help fill the gap in the market when Liddell closes, if the private sector doesn’t step up. We are working closely with private sector proponents, but with only two years to go, we can’t risk under-supply and the higher electricity prices that would result.
We are strengthening incentives for the private sector to invest in dispatchable generation, whether it is pumped hydro, gas, batteries or just continuing to maintain existing coal and gas generators….
the Energy Security Board is currently working on initiatives that will strengthen dispatchable investment incentives further.
Gas will inevitably provide part of the answer. Opposition to investment in gas generation makes no sense, as generators are now typically [not universally] built to be hydrogen-ready [not much deal if there is no hydrogen] and offer an immediate pathway for decarbonisation <only if gas can be produced without massive leakage>.
Taylor, We need a balance of technologies. Australian Financial Review, 29 March 2021

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What is this blog about?

March 28, 2021

The blog is about trying to navigate the problems of ‘solving’ climate change and ecological destruction. Trying to make the problems clear, and trying to point to the politics, psychology and technology of problem solving, energy transition and rethinking the crises. If we can’t solve the problems in time, it hopes to give people a way of living which might be useful in the ‘new world’ we face.

Multiple crises

Climate change is only one consequence of the ecological destruction and pollution that overwhelms our ecologies. We also live in many ecologies in crisis: social relations are disrupted and disrupting, we have precarious economies, our politics inclines towards fascism as we try and impose order, information is repeatedly and sometimes deliberately confused, which produces uncertainty, bewilderment and, sometimes in reaction, over-certainty. There are many problems, and we can ignore some of them if we focus on climate change alone.

Hence I try and situate climate change amongst these other problems. Once we see a mess of crises, then the social, economic, political and technical connections between them all seem clearer, as is the need for something like a thorough social and conceptual change.

Existential Crisis

I’m deeply concerned about the ‘existential crisis’ that arises from people’s recognition of climate change and ecological destruction. Basically, everything we have learnt to do to lead a satisfactory life, is now potentially destructive, or undermining of that life. The problems are so big, and complex, that it is hard to imagine being able to make much difference by anything we do personally. Ways of giving meaning to life are threatened. This sense is overwhelming and confusing at best, and fairly depressing.

We are largely ‘unhomed’ by climate change, it creates unacknowledged anxiety and distress, and may even threaten our existence. We are in a situation in which the future is essentially unknown but disturbing. Even if you deny climate change as a problem, then you realise that your way of life is potentially under threat from other people. These factors can be hard to live with, and I suspect this is why why our responses are so dis-coordinated, confused and slow.

However, it is our thinking, feeling and acting that is as much a problem as what is happening in the world, and this primarily calls out for us to change our thinking, understanding and values – together with the ways we relate to, and connect with, other people. Which can be difficult.

Complexity

One change of thought that is probably required is the recognition that we live within largely unpredictable complex systems. Everything interacts with everything else, and modifies itself and each other. We cannot perceive the whole system, and the only real/accurate model of the system is the system itself. This renders our traditional modes of problem solving, in which we work out a solution and carry it steadfastly out until the bitter end, extremely dangerous.

We may need to use more of the pattern recognition parts of our mind, and less of the linear reasoning parts. If so, we need to recognise that we can detect patterns that are not there, and need to put our understandings to the test all the time. This means we now need an experimental politics, in which we seek out not only what is going right as a result of our behaviour, understanding and policies, but what is going wrong, so that we can modify our behaviour constructively, or even discard our proposed solutions.

Because policies are partial understandings, complexity almost always implies that we will, in part at least, be mistaken. Persisting with mistakes, and ignoring the disorder arising from our attempts to impose order, is probably going to be destructive in most cases, even if there is a social demand to stick to what we recognise as ‘truth’. Accepting the importance of recognising error and disorder and not attempting to deal with it purely by suppression, is now fundamental to being able to live a good life. Everything we do has the potential for unintended consequences. Every situation, amidst these crises, is potentially new, no matter how similar it may look to previous situations.

Ordering practices can produce disorder and unconsciousness

To repeat, what we call disorder is often created by our ordering processes, and by our suppression of recognising vital events because we try to make ourselves socially acceptable to people we like, people who are significant to us, or because our culture and theories direct our attention away from those vital and disorderly events.

To use a dramatic but well known, example: loyal Catholics did not see, or notice, abusive priests. Perhaps they thought the authorities would deal with the issue appropriately, perhaps they did not want to bring the Church (which they thought essentially valuable) into disrepute, or they thought that children were lying and punished them, and so children learnt to shut up, and became more damaged. As a result well-intentioned Catholics could not improve the situation, until people persisted in being attacked and unpopular and brought the events to everyone’s attention.

Similarly this suppression of what we perceive as disorder is the way we create our own personal or cultural unconsciousness – by suppressing drives and behaviour we consider unethical, or even insights, wisdoms and compassion which go against our cultural or political norms. These suppressions often come back to bite us, or consume our energy in keeping awareness and distress suppressed.

Obviously once you have recognised some of the problems it should change the ways that you live and think.

I suspect that paying attention to neglected events like dreams, body sensations or senses of failure, can be useful in expanding your awareness, and hence our ability to live well. This is possibly one of the few great insights of psychoanalysis, or in particular of Jungian forms of analysis.

Technology

Technology is often a mode of ordering, which has unintended consequences as its use interacts with other complex systems, and disrupts them. Sometimes the disruption may be deliberate as when technology is designed to watch over and control workers, and prevent them ‘wasting’ the employer’s time by enjoying themselves, or resting. This is why it is useful to pay attention to the unintended consequences of technology: social, environmental, economic, polluting, destructive and so on. Often because some people like what the technology allows them to do, they ignore the harmful consequences it might have for both themselves or others.

Information mess

What I have called the information mess, arises through a number of factors, and adds to confusion.

The mess arises through information and communication technology and the way it is organised. In the contemporary world Information can be found to justify any position, and it will not be removed if it is false. A significant number of people try to impose political order on the world, not by discussion or finding the truth, but by repeating their claims and attacking those who disagree. To make sense of this information mess, and to save time, we tend to accept information which is accepted by others in our ‘identity’ or ‘information’ groups. Rejecting the information they share can risk our losing our place in the group, or losing our sense of identity. This is reinforced, by ‘winner take all politics,’ and by the politics between States, in which promoting false information of the right type can be seen as destructive towards our opponents. We also tend to be skeptical of information which comes from other groups, particularly outsider groups, or groups which our group defines itself as being against.

Information mess is reinforced by work hierarchies in which bosses are judged on informational competence, appear reluctant to admit they were wrong, and are fed what they want to believe by underlings who know better than to cross them.

Neoliberalism is one of the most important forms of attention direction and deceit in the contemporary world. It leads to harmful forms of common sense, and justifies the eco-destruction that is being pursued as necessary for prosperity and liberty. It helps people ignore the reality that without working ecologies we have no working basis for prosperity or liberty. What I’ve called the ‘neoliberal conspiracy’ is a basic part of the information mess and contemporary politics. It supports contemporary disorder and crisis.

Information mess is fundamental to understanding contemporary society, and our ability to steer our way through the mess is often disrupted by the conviction that we can steer our way through it.

Thoughts and theories

I take the theory dependence of observation quite seriously, and think it is useful to remember that we respond, not only to reality, but to our thoughts about reality which may not be accurate or useful. This is why the information mess is important, what we think directs our attention towards some factors of life, and away from others. What we think is heavily influenced by the groups we belong to, deliberately or accidentally. Being aware of this feature of our social-psychology is often helpful – we can challenge what we think is the case.

This is why it is useful to recognise that popular forms of so-called ‘positive thinking; in which we deliberately, and repeatedly, lie to ourselves in the hope that we will come to shape the world by our lying are probably harmful.

For example, President Trump seemed to want to solve the problems of Covid largely by playing down the danger and keeping people optimistic and alarmed at possible restrictions, and then by encouraging quick vaccine development. It is probable that this approach did not slow the virus very much, especially during that first year. Of course you cannot tell for sure, and what is done is done (so using Trump as an excuse for current failures is pointless), but I think being prepared to be aware of the problems and their complexities helps us to solve them, or bypass them. Denying the problems often does not.

To be clear, the kind of positive thinking I’m protesting about is the kind that tries to impose order on the chaos of life without any attention to what is happening. It’s not necessarily harmful to think that with practice and persistence you can come to do stuff that you currently are not that great at. This latter kind of positive thinking is useful for dealing with crises. It enables us to be open to the perception of the crises, and yet not completely overwhelmed by them, and to think that if we keep persisting and learning then we can help.

Dadirri

This is one reason why I have been talking about Dadirri and other forms of cognitive relaxed attention.

Going into these kind of states of listening, can relax a person’s attachment to programmed thoughts. It can also allow our inner wisdoms, pattern detections and perceptions arise.

This can help reduce the sense of existential crisis.

We can diffuse the urgency with which we can run away from unpleasant feelings or sensations, we can accept them gently, and sometimes that allows events to progress, we can get insight and understanding from not suppressing these unpleasant sensations, the sensations can perhaps move on.

Likewise attention given to spontaneously arising symbols and images can expand our awareness.

All of this can free our creativity, generate new meanings, and allow problems to be solved, by-passed or diminished.

It may not solve everything, but it can help.

We then take our solutions to the world, and see if they can help other people live through the situations we face. If they reject those solutions or find they do not work, that still does not mean we have not contributed something.

To go back to an earlier point, all solutions are experimental, and need to be tested and refined or abandoned. That is how we learn constructively.

Tags: climate change, depth psychology, ecology, neoliberalism
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Some current background to the charges for solar export

March 25, 2021

The whole process of charging for solar export has to be seen in the context of Australian Politics – and the confusion around policies, or the reluctance to move on from fossil fuels.

I will be expanding this….

But let’s start with a quick point about the Coalition Federal Government:

representatives of the Climate Change Authority confirmed to a senate estimates hearing earlier in the week that Angus Taylor [Minister for Emissions Reduction] has never asked the expert authority to provide a pathway to net zero emissions. It follows earlier revelations that Taylor has also never asked his department to prepare such modelling.
Mazengarb Taylor requests yet another review of future grid needs, to deal with “intermittents”. RenewEconomy 25 March 2021

You might expect a Minister for Emissions Reduction to want to model emissions reduction and find the best way to zero emissions, but apparently not. However, Taylor has initiated yet another inquiry into the transition. It does not seem improbable that the aim of the inquiry is to justify more tax payer subsidy of gas and coal, especially given that it mentions in its title: “future need and potential for dispatchable energy generation,” when for the Coalition ‘dispatchable energy’ has nearly always meant fossil fuels (even if coal power takes quite a while to ramp up and down).

When asked whether agriculture would be excluded from the 2050 emissions goal. The Deputy Prime Minister responded:

Well indeed that could well be one of the options. But as I say, it is a long way off. There are huge challenges in 2021 and we’re not worried, I’m certainly not worried about what might happen in 30 years’ time…. there is no way known that we are going to whack regional Australia, hurt regional Australia in any way, shape or form to get a target for climate in 2050. It’s not going to happen. The Prime Minister has said it’s not going to happen. If we get there, we will get there through technology. We’ll get there though our technology roadmap.
Transcript: interview with Kieran Gilbert – SkyNews 7 February 2021

Unfortunately, the main technological roadmap the government seems to support is its “gas-led recovery,” and other ways of supporting fossil fuels. The ABC claims:

The federal government is spending millions of dollars on consultants to advise [it] on how to subsidise the multi-billion-dollar gas industry, despite it employing just 0.2 per cent of the Australian workforce, according to tender documents and ABC sources….
[The Government is] refusing to say what the consultancy fees are for, citing commercially sensitive information.
A request to see the specific terms of the contracts with [the Boston Consulting Group] was denied, despite the AusTender website listing them as “not confidential”….
One of the contracts with BCG, worth more than $2.5 million, was awarded without an open tender
Roberts Federal government paying millions in consulting fees for advice on subsidising gas industry, documents show. ABC News, 9 March 2021

The Boston Consulting group seems to have been commissioned to design the National Gas Infrastructure Plan (NGIP), which will subsidise gas infrastructure with taxpayer funds. It is not clear why the Australian Energy Market Operator could not do the work.

The gas-led recovery means opening gas fields in Narrabri and risking the bore water and local agriculture, and opening massive fields in the Norther Territory, ignoring the protests of those who live on the land. In the October 2020 Budget, the Government budgeted to “unlock five key gas basins. Starting with the one in the Northern Territory and the North Bowen and Galilee Basins in Queensland”. They also promised more money for CCS, which does not work, and for keeping the most polluting coal fired power station in NSW going.

They have tried to use the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) to provide support for the gas fields in the NT and for taxpayer funded infrastructure for the massive Adani mine in Queensland, which has been struggling to raise private funding.

Independent MP Zali Steggall sought to introduce amendments that prohibited the NAIF from investing in fossil fuel projects, but the government and Labor opposition blocked the changes.

If my amendments had been successful, they would have prohibited taxpayer money being used to fund the fossil fuel industry.
Only Helen Haines, Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie supported the amendments. We stared down the rest of the Chamber as both the Government and Labor passed this legislation supporting the fossil fuel industry.
Zali Steggal on Facebook 25 Marsh 2021

The resources minister Keith Pitt said later:

It was the height of hypocrisy to see inner-city southern MPs trying to delay the Bill because the NAIF proudly supports resources projects throughout the north….
NAIF supports a wide range of industries and I look forward to the Bill passing through the Senate so we can deliver new projects for the north as soon as possible
Keith Pitt NAIF reforms pass through House of Representatives, 25 March 2021

Objecting to producing more climate change through increasing emissions is not even vaguely hypocritical, and they were not interested in stopping the NAIF from supporting a wide range of industries, only in stopping it from supporting fossil fuels.

On the other hand, the Labor Opposition has already announced its support for fossil fuels, particularly gas, but coal is included. Chris Bowen the Shadow Minister for Climate Change, is reported as saying:

“To be honest, gas is not a low emissions fuel. It is not the answer to climate change. I don’t refer to it as a transition fuel either. But it is a very important part, nevertheless, of the transition, and will be for some time to come…
When there’s long periods of no sun or low wind, a battery is great for hours, not for weeks or months. Pumped hydro and hydrogen is better for longer periods. But we’re going to need gas to assist in that process. If you’re not going to have renewables, you’ve really got a limited number of choices: Nuclear, which I don’t support, or an ongoing role for coal. Well, actually, gas has a better role to play…
Should we have that serious conversation about what role coal has in the future? Yes. Do I think it should be providing alternative jobs in diversifying regional economies? Absolutely.
Mazengarb Bowen pitches Labor’s new gas-friendly climate platform, and an end to “toxic politics”. RenewEconomy 25 March 2021

He also made the usual attacks on the Greens, perhaps because they don’t pretend we can nanny the gas industry and achieve climate aims.

The Greens on our left, and the Liberals and Nationals on our right, have taken every opportunity to play identity politics, and it’s still that toxic politics in this country. And we won’t see real climate change action until that ends…
If you are asking for every coal-fired or gas-fired power station to be turned off tonight. I respectfully disagree. We are being powered by one tonight….
Will Australia stop coal exports tomorrow? No, we won’t. Is the international accounting mechanism, which says where those emissions will be counted written by me or the Labour Party or in Australia? No
Mazengarb Bowen pitches Labor’s new gas-friendly climate platform, and an end to “toxic politics”. RenewEconomy 25 March 2021

If I can find a press release from Bowen I will use that, but at the moment, he has not updated his website since last year.

He gives a great set of reasons not to put Labor first in the Senate or House of Reps, even if you have to put them ahead of the Coalition.

Lack of responsibility: It was not the Greens that mucked up Labor’s policies but the Labor party who refused to talk to the Greens about the first carbon price plan, and Labor attempts to wedge the Coalition and support Tony Abbott, who they thought was unelectable.

Straw-manning: Who precisely is “asking for every coal-fired or gas-fired power station to be turned off tonight”? and who is suggesting we stop coal exports “tomorrow”? No one. Phasing out is precisely not stopping “tonight” or “tomorrow”, but over time.

Support for coal: the knowing nod that coal exports don’t count to our emissions because of an accounting trick so export is ok. Let’s be clear here, climate change does not respect national boundaries. Emissions are emissions, and if we help emissions we are helping to make climate unstable. Not too hard to understand.

Then we have the line that implies that coal “should be providing alternative jobs in diversifying regional economies.” Maybe they have a truly clever plan to provide jobs in coal, without mining it and burning it, but that seems unlikely, given they are not mentioning it. The implication is that coal mining could be expanded, no doubt threatening water yet again, and being burnt and raising emissions.

Two way bets, or speaking with forked tongue: “To be honest, gas is not a low emissions fuel. It is not the answer to climate change. I don’t refer to it as a transition fuel either. But it is a very important part, nevertheless, of the transition, and will be for some time to come.” So gas is not a transition fuel but we have to use it to fuel transition.

I guess we hope there is a difference between the ALP and the Coalition, but its only a hope. When it comes to policy, there’s not much difference to see – especially given that there is evidence to suggest we may not hit our inadequate 2030 targets.

The Governmental Regime in Australia seems to be devoted to postponing transition or making it difficult.

***************

Added 20 March. I can’t find a transcript for Mr Bowen, so have to rely on other back sources….

In an interview dated 5 March 2021 Mr Bowen said

If you’re voting on the morality of climate change, you’re almost certainly voting left of centre. If you’re a climate-change denier, you’re almost certainly voting right of centre. But there’s a chunk of people in the middle who accept that climate change is an existential threat to the world, but losing their job is an existential threat to them. As a former treasurer and long-standing shadow treasurer, trained with an economics degree, I can bring a sensible economic case.
Law, Chris Bowen: ‘I could live my entire political career, never be leader and retire satisfied’. Sydney Morning Herald, 5 March 2021

The only problem here is that the Left of centre voter is probably talking about a “just transition” which means precisely, that workers are looked after, that new well-paying and secure jobs are provided, and that the transition does not disadvantage ordinary people. There are many on the right who claim to accept that climate change is a threat, but it is a lesser threat than the economic one. So this is all a bit of a strawman, a making a false centre, to try and sound reasonable. What we don’t know, is what a “sensible economic case” means to contemporary Labor. Does it mean more mines, tax payer support for emissions producing industries and so on? The excerpts from the later talk, imply that it does. “Sensible economics”, may well be a code word for not challenging powerful players invested in climate destruction.

Asked if 2050 is too late, which it might well be for restrained climate change. Bowen replies:

More than 120 countries around the world have adopted [the 2050 target]; you can’t turn it around overnight. The best time to start dealing with climate change was 25 years ago. The second best time is today.
Law, Chris Bowen: ‘I could live my entire political career, never be leader and retire satisfied’. Sydney Morning Herald, 5 March 2021

The idea being that we should not do more than other people. While it is true that it was better to have started 25 years ago, this does not make doing less now, somehow ok.

gas is an important provider of grid reliability as we transition to renewables, so we’re going to need some gas in the system. There are extremes to the argument: the government’s gas-led recovery at one end and the “Let’s get rid of all gas the day after tomorrow” position at the other. I don’t think either end of the spectrum is realistic.
Law, Chris Bowen: ‘I could live my entire political career, never be leader and retire satisfied’. Sydney Morning Herald, 5 March 2021

Again this is trying to make a false centre to make himself sound reasonable, and it is avoiding the questioner’s reference to Labor’s $1.5 billion plan to unlock more gas that will create more carbon emissions than Adani’s mine. Looking at the policy is not saying that much. And his comments at the talk imply he is ok with those emissions, just as he is ok with the emissions from burning the coal from the Adani mine. He is certainly not staking a position in opposition to making more emissions, or against doing more damage to country.

******************

Added, 4 April 2021

Richard Marles of the Labor Party, who is essentially the shadow minister for Recovery from Covid, or as he says “focusing on two priorities: jobs, and the future,” gave a talk at the National Press Club, which almost confirms the worries here. His talk on the recovery, although filled with talk about science, did not mention climate change or climate, temperature, weather, energy, renewables, emissions, pollution, ecology or environmental concerns. Not once.

This has to be thought a somewhat deficient view of the future, or a suppressed view of the future, and does not bode well for an ALP government that they cannot talk about any of these subjects.

Since that time the ALP has released its platform, some comments on that here.

Tags: politics, renewable energy
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Australian Solar Traffic Jams?????

March 25, 2021

Charged for providing solar power

The Australian Energy Market Commission is recommending new rules which allow people with rooftop solar to be charged for exporting energy to the grid.

This official reasons for this appear to be because:

a) the grid is struggling to cope with the increase in solar energy,
b) the grid was not configured for two way traffic, and
c) 20% of all customers now partly meet their needs through rooftop solar.

This level of solar can, sometimes during the day, mean that the minimum demand for corporately supplied electricity approaches zero. This pushes fossil fuel production into unprofitable regions – although this factor may not be being mentioned.

Switching solar off in South Australia

Once in South Australia, the whole State was powered by solar panels, as about 280,000, or 35% of households in South Australia have solar installed. At that time Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) chief executive Audrey Zibelman said:

Never before has a jurisdiction the size of South Australia been completely run by solar power, with consumers’ rooftop solar systems contributing 77 per cent.
Davies All of South Australia’s power comes from solar panels in world first for major jurisdiction. ABC News 25 October 2020

This event was greeted by the announcement that new inverters must have software installed that allows them to be controlled remotely by the power company.

This appears to mean that a person’s own solar panels can be switched off by that power company, and they have to consume energy from the grid. The first such mass switch off occurred in March 2021, five months after the announcement.

with South Australia experiencing “near-record minimum demand levels for electricity from the grid” during a planned outage of circuits feeding the Heywood interconnector which links the state’s grid with Victoria… AEMO instructed transmission company ElectraNet to “maintain grid demand above 400 megawatts” for one hour during the afternoon [by switching people’s solar off].
Keane et al Solar panels switched off by energy authorities to stabilise South Australian electricity grid. ABC News 17 March 2021

Which is great for a centralised power system that does not face any export charges.

Climate Justice and the social good of charging solar owners

As we might expect there is an attempt to justify this imposition of charges on exports by encouraging rivalry.

The AEMC said the recommendation was not designed to create mandatory export charges, but to create more flexibility and pricing options.
“Introducing this flexibility should benefit the 80 per cent of consumers who don’t have solar PV (photovoltaic) on their roof,” Mr Barr said.
“We’ve modelled that there’s a small reduction in their bills if this comes in.”
Mr Barr said households across Australia could see a reduction of up to $25 a year on their energy bills.
Eacot Australians with rooftop solar panels could soon be charged for exporting power into the grid, under proposed changes ABC News 25 March 2021

The ABC quotes a person in a family of four celebrating the charges, saying

“I looked into getting [solar power] because our electricity bill is around $1,300 a quarter, that’s for two adults and two kids,…
“I kind of think, ‘Well, you’re lucky because you might have to pay an extra minimal amount per year but the amount you’re saving is a lot more than what we are saving because we don’t get any savings at all,'” she said.
“I’d swap any day.
Low-income families back proposed solar export fees in hope of reducing power bills. ABC News 26 March 2021

I suspect that this is inaccurate as one source implies the average annual home electricity bill in NSW is $1,421. If the $1300 a quarter bill is accurate, then some kind of energy efficiency, power-saving scheme, finding out where that consumption was going, would probably be far more effective in reducing the family bill than charging people with solar. Especially given that the new rules might mean “Australian households could save up to $25 on their bills each year.” This seems to be of trivial advantage (less than 2% reduction) for most people who can afford to pay electricity bills.

On the other hand people with solar panels would see a reduction in their earnings. Solar Citizens argued

It is inequitable to charge solar owners when generators in the transmission network are not charged for accessing the network
Eacot Australians with rooftop solar panels could soon be charged for exporting power into the grid, under proposed changes ABC News 25 March 2021 .

The AEMC is essentially making a ‘climate justice’ argument – people who cannot afford solar are supposed to suffer from solar, so to be fair we should continue to use fossil fuels, and charge people using solar. It could also be argued that solar panels provide cheap energy, and that this reduces everyone’s electricity bills. Over-supply is supposed to make a product cheaper. Restricting that supply is supposed to make the product more expensive, especially with ‘necessary products’ as opposed to voluntary consumables. On the other hand if people decide to respond by storing power and going off grid, to avoid being turned off when convenient for power companies (or if the grid collapses) then use of the grid could become less economic, and real problems start.

Some also say that the evidence is that:

proportionately, rooftop solar uptake is the highest in middle and lowest socio-economic areas and the lowest in the highest socio-economic areas. Where then, is the supposed transfer from the rich to poor that needs to be righted?
Mountain, Where is proof that rooftop solar is being subsidised by non-solar households? RenewEconomy, 26 March 2021

At this moment, I do not know whether this is true or not in general, but it is true that there is more solar in Lismore, as a percentage of rooftops, than there is in Annandale in Sydney.

The same author comments:

Snowy Hydro will pay nothing towards the (at least) $3 billion of to-be-built “shared network” to get their electricity to market. Instead, electricity consumers in New South Wales and Victoria will pick up the tab at around $560 per connection.
While Snowy Hydro gets away scot-free, the typical household in NSW or Victoria that has solar panels on its roof should, according to the AEMC, be charged around $100 per year to use the grid to export the circa 2,200kWh that we estimate the typical household with rooftop solar exports each year.
Mountain, Where is proof that rooftop solar is being subsidised by non-solar households? RenewEconomy, 26 March 2021

I guess Justice issues do not apply to corporations.

Official optimism about power corporations

The AEMC seems to be claiming, that companies will undoubtedly provide different services so people need not fear loss, while others have suggested the charges will provide investment funds to encourage the building of a better grid. It also, for reasons which are not clear, expects this to allow more Australians to install solar.

According to its draft report, the AEMC started its journey with three potential scenarios for consumers in Australia’s booming rooftop solar market: [1] Do nothing to upgrade the grid, pass on no costs, but nobble distributed solar investment and returns in the process; [2] upgrade the grid and spread the costs over all customers; [3] upgrade the grid and recover costs through export charges on solar customers only.
Having summarily ruled out scenario one, the Commission said its analysis of total revenue recovered under the remaining scenarios indicated that the fairest distribution of costs was made under scenario 3; as opposed to scenario 2, where all customers – solar and non-solar – would pay an estimated $14 a year to cover the cost of solar exports.
Vorath Modelling: How the proposed rooftop solar tax will affect solar households. RenewEconomy 25 March 2021

Energy Networks Australia [“the peak industry association for energy networks“] chief Andrew Dillon supported the charges:

“The AEMC’s draft decision will help networks support the increasing number of customers who want to connect solar and export their energy into the grid.
“Without changes to how DER (Distributed Energy Resources) is managed, the ongoing growth in solar means networks would increasingly need to restrict power exports or even block solar connections to prevent voltage spikes and even local black outs…
“This rule change will incentivise networks to invest in a smarter grid that can better support a two-way flow of electricity as more customers both consume and export electricity
AEMC move to support more solar welcomed Energy Networks Australia 25 March 2021

Despite this kind of claim there is no guarantee that companies will use the money to upgrade the grid, as this would lower their profit, and possibly benefit their competitors. If they improved the grid the companies could not justify getting the extra income from the regulation (?). Able to charge, rather than pay, people for solar exports they would appear to have more incentive to keep a bad grid, and not upgrade it.

The current recommended cost is

2c/kWh for exports in the middle of the day. This would cost up to $100 a year, but it is not recommending a flat or compulsory tariff and wants consumers and networks to negotiate flexible outcomes.
Parkinson Solar tax: Networks able to charge households to export solar power to grid . RenewEconomy 25 March 2021

The AEMC modelling suggested that the charges would not significantly reduce solar take-up of systems less than 6-8 Kw. The AEMC announcement of charging people for export:

was promptly labelled a “sun tax” by community interest group Solar Citizens, which called on state energy ministers to “protect solar owners from this discriminatory charge”.
But electricity distribution companies said the proposed reforms would allow more rooftop solar systems and batteries, collectively known as distributed energy resources or DER, to connect on to the grid and provide networks with the incentive to invest in “smarter” management systems for the network.
McDonald-Smith ‘Sun tax’ riles solar users Australian Financial Review 25 March 2021

It is not clear why. After all if people are paying to export, then the companies either make money, or people decide not to export, and thus make more use for fossil fuel back up, and remove the cheaper exports.

Also batteries are reasonably expensive. Choice comments:

Batteries are still relatively expensive and the payback time will often be longer than the warranty period (typically 10 years) of the battery.
Choice. How to buy the best solar battery storage. ND.

This goes against the climate justice argument of penalising the wealthy for having solar. Only the wealthy will afford batteries, as well as the costs of installation. So the wealthy benefit rather than ordinary users.

The Tasmanian Renewable Energy Alliance remarked:

It is also discriminatory. Large power stations are not charged to use the network to export power, neither should solar owners…
There are many positive ways of encouraging consumers to invest in new technology and change their behaviour in ways that benefit all consumers. These include time-of-use tariffs, better feed-in tariffs and virtual power plants…
Vorath No biggie or bin job: Solar advocates react to export tax proposal. RenewEconomy 25 March 2021

As long as it penalises solar, and does not use it as an energy source

Currently it looks like we have two systems proposed. One in which solar panel users have to pay for grid electricity they don’t need because their panels are switched off, and a second in which people are charged for exporting electricity. We could have both. In both cases it would appear electricity companies are profiteering off solar generation. There is no proposal for a system in which supposed overloading leads to exports being switched off, or stored, so that people are not being charged extra for having solar panels. If we switched to people with solar, heating their water during the day, that would also reduce input into the grid. Another route would be to encourage the construction of decent grids, perhaps by public utilities, or perhaps all we need is better/redesigned transformers and substations – some of which are getting pretty old. Although, the Australian Energy Market Commission’s chief executive, Ben Barr, said fixing poles and wires would be “very expensive and end up on all our energy bills, whether we have solar or not”, which given the ‘gold plating scandals of a few years ago was not a concern when the sources of power were primarily fossil fuels. Indeed the previous incentives to improve networks were held to be a public good.

If you believe people are driven by profit then charging them extra at your whim, seems to be a way of discouraging uptake. Bruce Mountain, from the Victoria Energy Policy Centre said:

“It is like arguing that bicycles should be charged for using the roads…. The uptake of solar was the one big success we have had in the energy transition.”
Parkinson Solar tax: Networks able to charge households to export solar power to grid. RenewEconomy 25 March 2021

The point seems to be not to use solar constructively in a way that does not cause these ‘traffic jams’, but to penalise people with solar for some reason.

Conclusion: Do the claims match likelihood?

This is not the first time the AEMC has made this proposal for charging people for export, but it abandoned two previous attempts due to unpopularity from solar users. This time as well as using ‘Justice’ arguments it is also claiming that is is:

Changing distribution networks’ existing incentives to provide services that help people send power back into the grid…. We also propose recognising energy export as a service to the power system in the energy rules to give consumers more influence over what export services networks deliver and how efficiently they deliver them…
Gives networks pricing options they don’t have now, like rewarding solar and battery owners for sending power to the grid when its needed and charging for sending power when it’s too busy. New incentives will give customers more reason to buy batteries or consume the power they generate at busy times on the grid…
Allows each network to design a menu of price options to suit their capability, customer preferences and government policies. Customers could choose things like free export up to a limit or paid premium services that guarantee export during busy times.
New plan to make room on grid for more home solar and batteries, AEMC 25 March

None of these points seem to encourage people to export energy to the grid, or make it likely for companies to encourage export to the grid, or make more room on the grid for household solar, other than by stopping exports as opposed to fixing the grid problems.

While perhaps we can agree that “Customer preferences [should] drive network tariff design and the solar export services they get,” that we should “recognis[e] energy export as a service to the power system” and that “planning ahead will avoid costly over investment and crisis solutions down the track” (AEMC) This does not seem to be it. Neither do the results being aimed at seem to be likely to arise from the method being proposed.

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Endnote

There is some evidence that there are plans to expand the poles and wires, but whether these plans will be useful for connecting new renewable farms to the web, and solve the local grid wiring problems that make small scale export problematic, is difficult to say.

The new projects include:

the Marinus Link, between Tasmania and the Australian mainland, Project EnergyConnect, linking South Australia and New South Wales, HumeLink linking the Snowy 2.0 project with the grid in NSW, and VNI West between Victoria and NSW.
Vorath Wind farm commissioner role expands to tackle tricky transmission projects. RenewEconomy 26 March 2021

Another report adds that researchers from the University of NSW are going to investigate how distributed energy resources (such as small-scale energy devices, like rooftop solar and battery storage systems), behave during periods of sudden failures in the energy system (including failures of network infrastructure due to fire or lightning strikes or unscheduled outages at large thermal generators), in an effort to boost system resilience and maintain reliable supplies of power.

It is expected that there will be opportunities:

to harness rooftop solar capabilities to help restore power system security. Despite this growing role and potential impact, there is very little data showing how solar PV behaves in the field during such events
Mazengarb Can rooftop solar and household batteries keep grid stable when big generators fail? RenewEconomy 1 April 2021

ARENA says:

“Integrating renewables into the electricity system is a key priority for ARENA, so the tools being developed throughout the project will help to ensure that Australia’s record-breaking solar installations continue to be of benefit to the grid and in helping with system security.”
Mazengarb Can rooftop solar and household batteries keep grid stable when big generators fail? RenewEconomy 1 April 2021

This functionality may be changed by distributors charging for electricity export or shutting down solar panels…..

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Update

Giles Parkinson, founder of RenewEconomy, who is generally a reasonably reliable source, states:

State energy ministers are looking to adopt new protocols that will allow network operators to not just switch off rooftop solar when instructed, but also pool pumps, electric vehicle charging stations, hot water systems and even air conditioners….. the promise is that it will be used rarely – in terms of hours a year. But that remains to be seen.
Parkinson. Solar “switch-off” rule to extend to EV chargers, pool pumps and air con. RenewEconomy 13 April 2021

This is an extension of the idea that people with solar panels must be forced to buy power from the grid when it is convenient for those big operators selling power on the grid.

As Parkinson and others point out this is likely to get people to plug their EVs into the socket.

Another consequence is that rather than the householder being a ‘prosumer’ a producer and a consumer, the corporate aim seems to be to gain control of what happens ‘behind the meter’ so that the company puts its own advantage first, and makes the consumer a paying labourer or producer – an appendage and slave to the system, rather than the other way around….

Tags: disorder, politics, renewable energy
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Multiple Crises

Complexity and wicked problems

Social breakdown?

Conceptual steps

Practical steps

Old regulation

Climate Generosity

Environmental relating

The number one bad?

The problem of virtue – the prime dangers of renewables comes from companies not from renewables

Problems of Fantasy Tech

General Remarks

Australian Figures

World Figures

Concluding Remarks

The inevitable endnote….

Background

The Socio-Technical Problems

Some terminology

Changes in technological use and capacity

Renewables may supply stability if the system is configured correctly

Regulation

The preferred solution of the general public?

Endnote from a day or two later…

More Background

Another Endnote from April

Multiple crises

Existential Crisis

Complexity

Ordering practices can produce disorder and unconsciousness

Technology

Information mess

Thoughts and theories

Dadirri

Charged for providing solar power

Switching solar off in South Australia

Climate Justice and the social good of charging solar owners

Official optimism about power corporations

As long as it penalises solar, and does not use it as an energy source

Conclusion: Do the claims match likelihood?

Endnote

Update

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