The ALP has come up with a new policy: net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. It’s been encouraged by public opinion. It had to come up with something, what with its pro-coal stance on Adani and the challenge of comprehending the bushfires.
On the surface this sounds promising. However, the promise is a tactic, inconsistent with the science, for a number of reasons. Here are two:
1. By 2050, at the current CO₂ rise rate of about 2.5 parts per million per year, CO₂ levels will be far in excess of 500ppm, or 600ppm CO₂-equivalent when methane and nitrous oxide are taken into account. This would push global temperatures to 2 degrees and higher.
2. Australia’s current coal export is more than four times the domestic combustion. However, according to ALP frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon, Labor will not harm the coal industry to meet its 2050 net zero target. Than means large-scale coal mining would continue.
Let me expand.
Both the government and the opposition claim they are listening to the science but, whether combusted in Australia or exported, the greenhouse gases all go into the same worldwide atmosphere.
Temperature-rise projections already suggest that the supposed 1.5 degrees (above mean pre-industrial temperatures) bar defined in Madrid will be exceeded, while the uppermost threshold of 2 degrees would be calamitous.
Once atmospheric concentration thresholds are exceeded, the atmosphere generates amplifying feedbacks from the land and ocean. These include the replacement of sea ice, land ice and snow surfaces by open water surfaces, methane release from permafrost (and now from coal seam gas drilling), desiccated vegetation, extensive fires on several continents, and reduced CO₂ absorption by warming oceans.
Given the long atmospheric residence time of CO₂, the rise in concentration of greenhouse gases becomes irreversible and so is the rise in global temperatures.
According to NASA, the consequences of current global warming include:
1. “Extreme heatwaves will become widespread at 1.5 degrees warming. Most land regions will see more hot days, especially in the tropics.”
2. “At 1.5 degrees about 14% of Earth’s population will be exposed to severe heatwaves at least once every five years, while at 2 degrees warming that number jumps to 37%.”
3. “Risks from forest fires, extreme weather events and invasive species are higher at 2 degrees warming than at 1.5 degrees warming.”
4. “Ocean warming, acidification and more intense storms will cause coral reefs to decline by 70-90% at 1.5 degrees warming, becoming all but non-existent at 2 degrees warming.”
If global warming is to be arrested, a sharp reduction in fossil fuel combustion is essential and attempts at CO₂ drawdown are required.
Carbon sequestration in soil (the biochar method) has significant potential — applying pyrolysis of residues of crops, forestry and animal waste. Biochar helps soil retain nutrients and fertilisers, reducing release of greenhouse gases such as N₂O.
Replacing slash-and-burn agriculture with a slash-and-char method and the use of agricultural and forestry wastes for biochar production could provide a CO₂ drawdown of approximately 8ppm or more in half a century.
However, in itself, the biochar method may not be capable of constraining atmospheric CO₂ rise, currently at about 2.57ppm per year (the fastest rate recorded for the last 56 million years).
Apart from abrupt reductions in emissions, additional methods are required.
This would include streaming of air through serpentine and basalt, to arrest CO₂ as carbonates as done in Iceland; sequestration of CO₂ by seaweeds as done in South Korea; and other methods.
Every potentially effective method needs to be urgently applied on a global scale before temperatures rise irreversibly to 2 degrees and higher.
Contrary to their claims, neither the Coalition nor the Labor Party are listening to the science. I guess, at this point, that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Andrew Glikson is a visiting fellow in the Research School of Earth Sciences at the ANU College of Science.
I assume that zero carbon emissions means shutting down the steel industry here, as coal needs to be coked for the smelting process.
Can Albanese explain how he will achieve that?
Not necessarily. As Ross Garnaut has pointed out, steel manufacture needs carbon to act as a reducing agent for the ore (oxide); such reduction can be carried out using other agents: natural gas or (better, of course) hydrogen, with renewable electricity as the energy source. The carbon component of carbon steel can be supplied from biomass. Garnaut’s argument, if I’ve understood him correctly, is that adoption of these technologies could actually strengthen the steel industry, allowing export of a carbon-neutral, value-added product.
Or, as I could have said if I’d read further before commenting, see Rolly’s comment below (if a little hefty with the crack about the 20th Century 😉 ).
There are additional possible benefits: a large, energy-hungry resource like a smelter can evidently be used as a buffer to even out fluctuations in the supply/demand relationship for the electricity network: it’s apparently relatively easy to turn off current to a smelter and release generating capacity to the rest of the network at times of high demand, and then start it up again when things settle down. Also, the distribution networks taking power out from current coal-fired power stations can be run to bring it in from other sources to industries situated at the site of the previous power station.
For a vastly better informed and articulate treatment of the issue, see Garnaut’s recent book, Super Power. (And no, I’m not an associate of Prof Garnaut or his publisher!)
I assume that zero carbon emissions means shutting down the steel industry here, as coal needs to be coked for the smelting process.
Can Albanese explain how he will achieve that?
Iron can be manufactured from mined ore using mostly Hydrogen as a reducer: Alloying small amounts of other minerals and carbon turns it into steel.
Tasmania (a Liberal government) is already planning to produce hydrogen from seawater using electrolysis with the energy created from renewable sources.
Is your technological knowledge stuck in the 20th century?
Fossil fuels are mortally wounded and writhing in their death throes. It just requires someone with the stomach and good grace to fire the coup de grâce putting it and us out of our misery. Then we can grieve, recover, focus on the way forward and keep the species alive. Unfortunately, in Australia, I don’t see any pollie with the fortitude, good grace and moral courage to level the pistol and take the shot.
Are you kidding? China and India are building coal fired powerstations like mad. Coal still provides Australia with about three quarters of its electricity. The US is benefiting from a huge gas boom. Fossil fuels look to be in a very good state of health. And any pollie with the moral courage to take the shot, as you say, will be putting us into misery, not out of it.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/analysis-global-coal-power-set-for-record-fall-in-2019/
The vast majority of Australia’s coal fired power plants are reaching the end of their commercial life.
They will need to be replaced in the next 10 or 15 years.
Wind and solar generation with storage is the cheapest option.
Gas has the benefit of being able to perform peaking operations, but the cost of gas makes the operational cost high.
New coal fired power plants are expensive. Nuclear power plants are even more so.
China cancelled or stopped constructing over a hundred coal power plants a few years ago.
Worldwide I believe it was shown that there are more coal powerplants than ever, but they are burning less coal than in previous years.
Let me respond to your assertion about the costs of coal versus renewables with some evidence based on recent history.
Here in SA Jay Weatherill refused to underwrite a less than $30 million loan to Alinta to keep the Port Augusta coal powerstation going in the face of all the subsidised renewables. Not long after, in September 2016, there was a disastrous statewide blackout caused principally by having too many renewables in the system, which, in the event, could not maintain the frequency when a fault occurred. Now in a panic, the Labor government spent towards $800 million of taxpayers’s money responding to the crisis with diesel generators, batteries and other measures. Four years later the new liberal government is still spending with their subsidies to set up a virtual powerstation. It’s likely that the total cost to taxpayers now tops a billion.. all for the want of $30 million back in 2015. And this figure doesn’t include the cost to the community from the blackout, the world record electricity prices or the increased cost of electricity and frequency control ancillary services (e.g. $90 million just this February alone thanks to a lost interconnector).
The lessons from this history could not be clearer. Renewables are not cheaper than fossil fuels. In fact it’s looking like they might be orders of magnitude more expensive. So where’s the benefit? How much climate change are we buying with this massive investment?
Here’s a challenge for you – if you really believe that renewables are cheaper than coal, then why the mandatory renewable energy targets and all the other carrots and sticks in the government’s bag of tricks to make them happen? Not necessary, according to you. So switch them off, wouldn’t you agree? But this will never happen because we all know the truth, which is that as soon as the government stops supporting renewables, investment will tank.
Port August was 30 years old when it closed. It was not economically viable because of renewable energy, and was not operating all year around anyway.
There was at least one gas fired power station that could have provided energy to South Australia during that storm. But the owners did not start it.
South Australia’s record power prices are, at least, a function of the cost of gas supply. Gas power stations providing about half South Australia’s electricity.
Why the RET? When John Howard introduced the RET in 2001 renewables were not cheaper than fossil fuel power plants. In the past 4 or 5 years large scale solar and wind power have become much cheaper than NEW fossil fuel plants and their operating costs are cheaper than EXISTING fossil fuel plants.
And remember that new renewable generators were competing with EXISTING fossil fuel plants, many of which had been operating since the 1960s and 1970s.
The other reason for the RET was to achieve a goal of reduced emissions.
Investment has tanked for renewables in recent times, but it is not as if there has been large investments in fossil fuel plants in the last 20 or so years.
Wayne, I take it from your post that you acknowledge that the only reason wind and solar is competitive is because the government has made it so. Is this fair?
I accept that this is all being done for a reason. However, with coal still providing around 75% of Australia’s electricity supply, we still have a very long way to go. The problem we face is that even the relatively minor uptake of renewables has been a bad experience for consumers. You can talk all you like about low running costs and so forth, but our bills don’t lie. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that, so far, renewables have made the system as a whole more unreliable and much more expensive.
Given this context, the hard questions have to be asked. Would nuclear be a more cost-effective solution to the problem than wind, solar and storage? And, at the end of the day, do the benefits of decarbonisation really outweigh the costs?
“Wayne, I take it from your post that you acknowledge that the only reason wind and solar is competitive is because the government has made it so. Is this fair?”
No, not really.
10 years ago renewables were only competitive with EXISTING generators because of the subsidies. It may have also been the case compared to new fossil fuel generators.
Now renewable energy, in the form of large scale wind and solar, is definitely cheaper than NEW fossil fuel generators and also cheaper than EXISTING generators, which are old and in need of replacement over the next 10 or 15 years.
” The problem we face is that even the relatively minor uptake of renewables has been a bad experience for consumers. You can talk all you like about low running costs and so forth, but our bills don’t lie. ”
Much of the cost increases in power bills have nothing to do with renewable energy systems.
A large proportion of the power bill is the cost of transmission.
In South Australia the cost of natural gas has impacted the price to consumers more than the uptake of renewable energy.
Another problem is the energy market system, which has allowed generators to charge prices up to $14,000/kWh in periods of high demand.
The wholesale price of electricity has reduced in the past couple of years because of increased renewable energy inputs.
” It is impossible to escape the conclusion that, so far, renewables have made the system as a whole more unreliable and much more expensive.”
There are many more factors at play, so that conclusion is faulty.
As for reliability, in the heatwave of a couple of summers ago it was South Australia’s renewable generators and batteries that propped up the Victorian market as a few of the coal generators failed due to the heat.
“Given this context, the hard questions have to be asked. Would nuclear be a more cost-effective solution to the problem than wind, solar and storage?”
No, not a chance.
In terms of cost per joule of electricity delivered, wind and solar are cheaper than pretty well anything, including nuclear. However the consumer is not interested in the happenstance of where this or that joule came from, they want electricity on demand in all circumstances of weather or climate. In the absence of indefinitely large storage, generating electricity on demand requires a supply of fuel – on demand.
If there really were sufficient storage, such as batteries, in South Australia, they would be supplying a hungry grid before demand forced prices up as high as $14,000/MWh. Clearly there is no such storage. The future grid must have fuel, non-carbon fuel. Nuclear, in other words.
Nuclear power station would not be good for on-demand situations.
There is also the possibility that if storage is full that wind turbines can be turned off during low demand and on for high demand. Or turned to another task during low demand, such as producing hydrogen.
Also, we need indefinite storage now?
Didn’t we get some figures a little while ago that suggested that we required less than a day’s storage?
Wind and solar provide intermittent power and there is no storage big enough to smooth it out over the weather and seasons. The ALP will only be able to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 if they include nuclear in the mix. It would have to be mass produced plug-and-play nuclear, too, as the big ones are not capable of such rapid expansion. Persuading the public would require leadership.
Anyone proposing sequestration to achieve the “net” in “net zero” should be exposed immediately as promising false hope from incomplete science. A little more science and a lot of arithmetic show that pipedreams such as biochar are nonsense. The only way to add negative emissions to the account would be to recycle atmospheric CO2 into hydrocarbon fuels – and then export them. However any replacement we could create for diesel fuels would be quickly snaffled up by our own primary industries.
” A little more science and a lot of arithmetic…”
Judding by this comment, you are a bit deficient in these departments yourself.
Dunning-Kruger writ large.
Rolly, your accusation lacks any arithmetic or science, so it is nothing more than abuse. The article lacks it too, as if the author assumes that his readers are too ignorant to call him out. In lieu of any other science or arithmetic, let me prove it wrong…
Arithmetic? The world’s largest battery cost $90 million and stores only 129 MWh. That comes out to $700,000 per MWh. Do some more arithmetic to see that battery storage for all of Australia is not feasible. Science? When charred, wood produces pyrolysis acids that are toxic to all soil biota. Biochar is the last thing that farmers want in their soil. It leaves behind filamentous charcoal that soon washes away and eventually oxidises. Any sequestration is temporary.
Your recycling CO2 into hydrocarbon is in defiance of the laws of thermodynamics. It is very hard to break stable bonds like Carbon Oxygen.
Yes, recycling requires energy inputs. Recycling atmospheric CO2 back into synthetic hydrocarbons requires at least as much energy as the thermal value of the product. Current technology as used by SASOL (and the Luftwaffe in WW2) relies on an excess of hydrogen. However there may be more efficient ways to use electrolysis, such as the removal of oxygen from a wet carbonaceous (CO2 or biomass) raw material.
Synthetic fuel sourced from the atmosphere can be distinguished from mineral fuel by the presence of C-14 isotope.
Roger, synthetic fuels used by Germany in WW2 converted coal, not CO2.
Side products of the process included synthetic rubber and ingredients for explosives.
SASOL converted coal into fuel as well, and also natural gas.
Wayne, Fischer–Tropsch fuel synthesis starts with CO and H2, regardless of whether the gas mixture was obtained from coal, natural gas, biomass or atmospheric capture and electricity. The syngas is passed over catalysts that daisychain the carbon atoms into light hydrocarbons clean of ash, sulphur or nitrogen.
Starts with CO (Carbon Monoxide), not CO2 (Carbon Dioxide).
Has anyone used the process to convert CO2 to fuel successfully?
From a quick search I have found that the conversion of CO2 to CO has been difficult and has poor efficiency.
Though researchers are working on the problem.
I believe that synthetic fuels cost rather more than crude oil based fuels at present.
There is much potential to smooth out peaks and troughs in demand to more closely match supply.
The more diverse sources of wind and solar power there are are the smoother the supply.
At last, someone I can agree with. Yes, the fact that Labor is not promoting nuclear in their plan means that it is not serious about addressing climate change. It is the only way of decarbonising the Australian economy within a reasonable timeframe and cost.
By the time that one nuclear plant is built most of the fossil fuel capacity could be replaced by renewables and storage.
And more cheaply.
“2. Australia’s current coal export is more than four times the domestic combustion. However, according to ALP frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon, Labor will not harm the coal industry to meet its 2050 net zero target. Than means large-scale coal mining would continue.”
It remains to be seen if a viable coal export market will exist by 2050.
India, for example, will ban coal imports from 2022 or 2023.
The demand in China may also fall.
At some point the demand for coal will be much less than the supply, so the price will drop and it will become less viable to mine it.