Australia Revisited

I recently saw this news article concerning Australia's renewable sector and its recent growth. In October, 21.7% of electricity came from renewable energy sources in the country. This is in comparison to the 2016 average for Australia, which sits at 14.7% renewable electricity. This is a positive sign and it shows that change is occurring (perhaps they saw my blog post!). 

The effects of this movement to renewable sources are unlikely to be felt by the public, where electricity production prices have remained stable in the transition from coal to renewables. This means any price increases have not resulted from the increased use of renewable energy.

In a week of renewable instability from the US election, this is a welcome sign of changes that are occurring for the better. With much of the world ratifying its agreement to the COP21 climate agreements, this is a crucial time for the future of renewable energy

Weekly Conversations - The US Election

The shockwave released from the results of the US election has been all-encompassing, and impossible to escape. From conversations with fellow geographers and family, there is a clear worry about the future state of renewable energy, particularly in the US. The future president of the United States, is by and large, a climate change denier. Now Donald Trump has made a great deal of his 'beliefs' known over the last year or so, but this one is particularly damaging. For such an influential figurehead to disregard climate change is to disregard any efforts to mitigate it. This leads to two main paths of destruction. On one path, US renewable energy is sure to suffer. He has pledged to cut spending on clean energy and pull out of the recently agreed COP21 agreements in Paris. This will reverse the progress towards sustainable energy that America has made, and prevent further growth of the sector. 

The other path, perhaps the less direct one, is the influence on the global renewable sector. With a major player in politics and the global economy making such a high profile decision, any countries looking up to the US may follow suit. This could cause a snowball effect leading to a total collapse of global partnership in climate change mitigation. Similarly, such a large polluter not following global agreements makes the agreements far less valuable, as the US emissions will remain the same (or perhaps increase). 

There are very few ways in which this decision (if it goes ahead) could benefit renewable energy. This is obviously a troubling position to be in, and the next few months will quite possibly determine the future of renewable energy.

Case Study - Australia

It became quickly apparent during my last blog post that summing up the economic viability of renewables is simply not possible in the space of a single blog post. Therefore, this week, I had a look at different case studies of renewable energy, in order to get a better idea of what is being done and what can be achieved in the future.

Firstly, an interesting case that arose during my research was Australia. Australia has an energy mix dominated by fossil fuels (ease off on the BBQs maybe?), due to a low price driven by large reserves within the country. This would suggest that it would be extremely difficult for the country to migrate to renewable energy. However, reliance on fossil fuels has a secondary effect of making Australia more susceptible to fuel price fluctuations. As supplies dwindle, fossil fuel price will increase, meaning eventually renewable energy will become the more cost effective method. This point will be reached quicker due to their large reliance on carbon intensive energy and may drive a boom in renewable energy.

From a resource and implementation standpoint, Australia has one of the best positions in the move to renewable energy. There is high solar radiation, facilitating the use of solar photovoltaics in electricity production, alongside an excess of space due to low population density, providing ample room to put wind or solar power plants. The low population density also helps to overcome a common barrier to renewables – the social pressures. Wind farms particularly often face a backlash due to their obstruction of the landscape and noise. With a low population density, this is no longer an issue, as there is enough room to put these farms away from large populations and provide transmission lines to cities. Furthermore, Australia stands as a highly developed nation with enough capital to invest in a large scale movement to renewable energy.

On the implementation side, many studies have assessed the current price and future price of various renewables and found that the most cost effective method of renewable energy provision in Australia is a combination of wind and solar, with lesser contributions from biofuels and hydroelectricity to minimise costs. Solar would be more dominant if the price reduced dramatically but (as seen in my previous blog post) it is currently too expensive to be used on a mass scale. Other renewables such as geothermal power, whilst available in Australia, are not needed to provide large scale renewable energy.

Personally, I believe it is countries such as Australia which should be at the forefront of renewable development and application. Developed nations have both responsibility for past emissions, and the capital to invest in renewable energy. However, past records of energy consumption for Australia have shown little to reinforce this statement, with renewables growing at a lower rate than fossil fuel consumption (see figure 1).

Figure 1 – Australian energy consumption, 1973-2014

Similarly, whilst the reliance of the country on fossil fuels is beneficial in some forms for swapping energy sources, the sheer amount of money and investment into infrastructure needed to swap to 100% renewables all but eliminates the possibility of it happening in the short term. Perhaps rising carbon taxes and accountability for the negative effects of fossil fuel burning will force this change more effectively, but without the economic incentive, it is hard to see why Australia would make such a drastic change.

Economic Viability of Renewable Energy

Renewable energy has attracted a great deal of attention over the past decade, alongside climate change debates and decreased fossil fuel security. Indeed, renewables now account for over half of the net additions to global energy production. However, this has still not led to the majority of our energy mix coming from renewables, due to the relative difficulty of changing away from fossil fuels, with economic, spatial and social barriers to overcome. As of 2010, only 13% of our global electricity came from renewable energy sources. A focus will be drawn therefore on these barriers to wide scale energy source changes, taking a particular emphasis on the economic issues surrounding renewable energy at the moment and going into the future.

Whilst there is a wide variation of different renewable energy sources, major debates concerning renewable energy usually concern photovoltaics (PV) and wind power. The former due to its direct generation of electricity, and the latter due to its position as a mature renewable resource. Wind power has been harnessed in many forms for centuries, and our modern application of wind to generate electricity has also been widely popular in many developed nations. However, social pressures in areas such as the UK lead to opposition of wind farms in many areas due to their audiovisual disturbances – which has in turn led to the development of off-shore wind farms. These turbines are more efficient as wind speeds tend to be higher over oceans, giving higher energy yields. However, the economics of off-shore turbines is contested, with maintenance costs, as well as infrastructure costs of transporting generated electricity to demand areas leading to overall higher costs compared to on-shore farms. This begins to describe the complexity of the renewable energy arena, with high cost and supply uncertainties.

However, there are a number of positive outcomes of the recent years’ energy debates and movements. Efficiencies of wind energy are increasing, with larger turbines capable of production up to 5MW. In the same vein, prices in nearly all renewable energy sources are decreasing (Figure 1).

Renewable Energy Source	Price (€ct/kWh)
Wind (offshore)	5 (18)
Photovoltaics	20
Hydro	4-19 depending on site
Tidal	10
Geothermal	7-15

Figure 1 - Price of renewable energy

Figure 1 shows the current prices of major renewable sources. A consequence of this price drop is that renewables have become increasingly feasible as a primary energy source, leading to a valuation of the renewable export market at £6.1bn. Nevertheless, this market is difficult to access for a great number of nations. Renewables usually require a high capital investment, even in countries with established renewable sectors. This alienates much of the developing world in producing energy renewably. Investment has been suggested to be a product of policy stability, as well as a baseline of capital, that many developing nations cannot afford to achieve. As a counter to this, a number of studies have suggested the need for a global ‘supergrid’, which allows for global provision of renewable energy based on connected hotspots of each renewable resource – for example, solar power from the Middle East and wind power from Northern Europe. This would allow for an efficient infrastructure of renewables not limited to wealthy or resource rich nations. However, it relies on a global communication and cooperation that has not been possible before, and a level of global trust. Also, countries such as the UK have moved to a greater renewable focus partially to reduce reliance on other nations, and a supergrid would combat this priority. Perhaps in the future, such an agreement will not seem so ambitious, but for the moment it seems that renewables will remain open only to those who can obtain sufficient investment and have the correct natural resources.

This brings the focus to the future of renewable energy. With the constant pressure of climate change, many expect the renewable industry to continue to grow exponentially over the coming decade. High profile studies, such as those conducted by Stern highlight the need to adopt renewable energy methods as soon as possible. The premise of the argument is that a small (1%) contribution of global GDP will allow for the establishment of a primarily renewable society that is able to minimise the impacts of global warming, in comparison to a ‘Business-as-usual’ model, or adopting renewables too far into the future. Failure to swap to renewables in the short term will mean greater losses of GDP in the future to accommodate for climate change induced losses. As a result, it is expected that renewables will show a clear superiority over fossil fuels by 2020, due to high investment over the coming years, and further technological advances. However, there are a number of developments needed to complement this economic advantage of renewables. Renewable energy incurs significant costs transporting the generated electricity to areas of demand. Avoiding these costs will require the movement of energy-intensive industries to the areas around power plants, thus reducing the amount of transmission lines and infrastructure needed. Furthermore, whilst PV panels have received increased traction, with government grants in some European countries, in order for them to become a fully-fledged energy source, a method of energy storage is required – such that energy can be provided throughout periods of low solar radiation e.g. at night. Alongside technological developments, social pressures impact the viability of renewable energy in the present. Societal growth demands an annual increase of energy demands by 1.8% to enable greater equality and development of poorer nations. Renewable skeptics do not see this able to be achieved using purely renewable energy. However, given our current rate of technological innovation, this could be achieved through increased efficiency of consumption, such as a movement to LED lights, which are around 5 times as efficient as traditional tungsten lights.

It has been found that we are capable of achieving a 100% renewable society. However, in order to reach this point, innovations into storage and transport methods must occur, which will facilitate the adoption of renewables on a global scale. Renewables are limited in their ability to supply all our energy needs, but based on real world data and future trends, it is possible that we can become a renewable society in an economically sound manner.

Future renewable technology - floating solar arrays

I am constantly on the lookout for new applications of renewable energy, and this particular article caught my attention. The basic idea is that floating solar panels can be put on top of waterbodies in order to expand the area we can put solar arrays on. This is particularly useful for countries with high population densities, such as the UK, as the issue of a lack of space becomes less critical.

These innovations, combined with the rapidly reducing price of renewable energy projects - the cost of solar panels is quoted to have diminished by 9 times over the last 5 years, offer a positive future for renewables. Combined with new production methods, from companies such as Rayton Solar, who claim to produce much less wasteful silicon for use in solar panels, making it cheaper, solar power could easily start heating up.

Weekly conversations: Renewable energy in the UK - Energy Providers

Every week, I am going to try to post one interesting conversation I have had over the week which involves renewable energy. 

This week I was talking to a friend about renewable energy companies. We recently swapped to a renewable energy provider (Green Star) for our gas and electricity and were surprised by how little we had heard about them beforehand. You would expect a company providing 99% of its electricity renewably would want to brag about it but they don't seem to, at least to the general public. 

This made me think about the customer side of renewable energy in the UK. In some ways, the ease of swapping from a traditional energy provider to a renewable one seems to facilitate the renewable drive in UK society at the moment. However, having changed to a renewable provider, we feel no different. No fireworks, no overwhelming feeling of pride, nor has it made us any more inclined to pursue a renewable way of life elsewhere. If anything, we use more energy! We no longer feel bad about burning up the planet by leaving a single TV standby light on. 

In fact, I don't think we would have chosen to swap if it wasn't going to make our utilities bill cheaper. The effect of changing just seems like, nothing. London still looks like daylight at 2am with all the streetlights and car headlights. Our small student flat buying their energy from a renewable supplier just seems so minute in comparison.

Perhaps then this is one reason why renewable energy hasnt taken over in the UK yet. Renewable energy companies don't get themselves known to the public in the same way as suppliers like British Gas. Even then, changing to a renewable supplier has such a small impact on the consumer that people must think (we know we have) - why bother? The electricity still goes through the same cables and grids, and still comes from the same place. Perhaps until changing to a renewable supplier gives direct benefits to consumers (such as a lower price, as we found), the renewable industry just won't gain enough consumer support to start competing with traditional, fossil fuel based energy providers. 

But maybe we're just cynical students.

Setting the Scene - Common Knowledge and Misinformation

Hi, welcome to my blog on renewable energy. In our modern world, it is hard to escape from the looming pressure of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change. Newspapers and websites are full of reminders that we are consuming to excess, and causing global changes to our planet. Fossil fuels are seen as the weapon of destruction, pumping harmful greenhouse gases into our ever warming planet, and are widely regarded as, in Douglas Adams’ words, A bad move. Renewable energy on the other hand seemingly offers a beacon of hope in this world of destruction. Renewable energy sources, as the name implies, are highly sustainable over extremely long periods of time, and don’t rely on the burning of fossil fuels.

Great! Let’s swap to renewables then!

Not so fast.

You see, renewable energy is much better for the environment, but it relies on typically high commitments by governments to actually produce a significant portion of the country’s energy mix through renewables. This leads to the rather depressing current proportion of energy produced renewably. 

This is where opinion and fact start to blur. A range of different actors, from oil firms to green movements, each have a stake in the renewable sector. This produces a lot of bias concerning public information. Greenpeace’s website offers an example of this:

Whilst the statistics presented are all true, they are not the entire truth. The 6 myths of renewable energy are posed as the main issues of changing our energy source. This is a drastic understatement. Whilst an effective marketing campaign, solving socio-economic issues by focusing on single examples e.g. Wind power being cost effective in India, does not mean the issues no longer exist. Moreover, it demonstrates an oversight of the campaign to expect that every country is homogenous and will respond to renewable energy in the exact same way.

This is not to say Greenpeace are incorrect, or that they should abandon this marketing. However, it does start to highlight fact selection within the renewable sphere. Greenpeace partially acknowledge this with ‘Myth 6: Greenpeace wants to turn off all coal and nuclear power plants today’. This is a recognition of the gravity of the task to produce all of our energy renewably and offers a (albeit oversimplified again) 3 step method of switching to renewables.

In this increasingly confusing topic, the aim of this blog is to take a more balanced and complete look at how viable renewable energy is going into the future. I intend to focus on the socio-economic issues that need to be overcome in order for renewables to be feasible, which will be achieved by looking at specific renewable energy sources and specific countries and their respective merits and drawbacks. This aims to then produce a detailed overview of which energy sources can be used, and in which different contexts they are best applied.