Councillor Chris Harris

The technology now exists to allow us to massively cut our greenhouse gas emissions, as I hope has become apparent from my many previous posts on this topic.  Renewable and low emissions energy technology has advanced so much in the last few years that the barriers against their widespread uptake, and against the replacement of dirty and inefficient coal fired power, are no longer technological but political.

One only need look at the pathetic attempts by both the Labor and Liberal parties over recent months to pass off a 5% reduction in emissions as meaningful action on climate change to know that the political will is nowhere to be seen in the major parties.

It has therefore fallen upon individuals to take responsibility for this most pressing of issues and next week I will attempt to use my role as a councillor to make it easier for indivduals to markedly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

I will be moving a motion that Council call for expressions of interest from providers of low emissions power production systems, such as solar or trigeneration technology.  Council will assess the technologies on offer from the providers and promote those deemed most appropriate to the City’s rate base and possibly offer a rate rebate (at the provider’s expense) to residents who install the chosen systems.

It’s a win win situation.  Residents get cheaper access to low emissions technologies which have been assessed as being reliable by the City.  The provider gets significant promotion of their product for free, which will likely more than offset their losses from providing a rebate.  The City gets to reduce emissions produced within the Local Government Area which will help it reach it’s 2030 environmental performance targets and ultimately we all win through inhabiting a slightly cleaner, greener planet.

This motion will be going to Council on the 26th of July and I hope the other Councillors will be able to act where state and federal governments have failed and support this important endeavour. 

Update:  My motion was enthusiastically seconded by Lord Mayor Clover Moore and supported unanimously by the Council.

Opponents of renewable energy love to trot out the tired old line that it can’t provide baseload power.  This statement has been incorrect for many years and as technology continues to develop (despite the pathetic investment made in this area by both state and Federal governments) the ability of renewables to meet all our power needs continues to grow.

One of the most exciting areas of development is in the field of solar thermal electricity generation, which I have previously discussed here.  Very briefly, solar thermal power captures energy from the sun to produce heat to boil water which turns a turbine, in the same way as a conventional power station uses the heat from burning coal to turn a turbine.  The big advantage of solar thermal power over other forms of renewable energy generation, such as wind and solar photovoltaic (which generates electricity directly from sunlight via a chemical process) is that the energy produced can be easily stored.  Heat generated from sunlight can be contained in insulated storage units for several days, to be released to produce electricity when it is needed, including at night and on cloudy days.

Solar thermal electricity generation has already shown what it can do in large projects like the massive Andasol power plant in Spain.  Currently two thirds complete this plant already produces 100 MW of power for the local electricity grid and when completed in 2011 will save 450 000 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere per year.  Such projects make an enormous contribution to improving sustainability but require a significant investment from governments – an investment which state and Federal governments in Australia are sadly unprepared to make.

Is there some way that individuals or local councils can take advantage of this exciting new technology in the absence of government leadership?  

Very soon there will be.

Work by an Australian company, to be officially announced in coming weeks, will make solar thermal power generation accessible to individuals with small scale generators capable of being installed on homes.  Equipped with insulated water tanks able to store heat - and therefore electricity generating potential - for up to three days, these systems will be able to produce more than twice the average household’s electricity needs.  Any electricity produced beyond what is used can be sold back to the grid.

Such technologies show that the tired old arguments of those opposed to renewable energy because of their own vested interests no longer hold any water.  I will be working to encourage the City of Sydney to install solar thermal power systems, along with a number of other sustainable energy technologies, in council owned buildings so that their potential can be demonstrated and independently assessed.  Ultimately I would like to see the City partner with the producers of whichever systems are shown to be most effective at reducing emissions in order to facilitate a roll-out of these to as many homes in the city as possible.  I look forward to working with staff over the coming months to make this happen and contribute to helping prevent dangerous climate change in a way that our governments are failing to do.
 

A sad state of affairs has descended over Australian politics in recent months. What went from a mad rush by both the Labor and Liberal parties to prove their climate change credentials in the lead up to the 2007 Federal election has degenerated into a mass of inaction.  Prominent Liberals say that climate change is a left wing post-communist conspiracy to deindustrialise the world while Labor still talks tough on the “biggest moral challenge of our time” but is staunchly committed to doing nothing about it.  Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme, which paid polluters to continue polluting and only attempted to reduce emissions by a pathetic 5%, was bad enough but has now been replaced by a policy of doing nothing for at least three years, akin to hiding under the blankets and hoping all the problems will magically go away while you aren’t looking.

With so much shameful inaction by our supposed leaders it has come down to individuals, local Councils and companies to make up the shortfall of action on climate change.  City of Sydney, for example, is engaging in an ambitious program to use cogeneration and energy efficiency measures to cover 70% of its energy needs by 2030. In addition to this the City will be investing in renewable energy projects througout its facilities to generate another 25% of its power by diverting the $2 million currently spent of Green Power into a specific Renewable Energy Fund.  

Cogeneration is the production of multiple forms of useable energy via a single process.  The City’s plan is to use gas fired miniature power plants to produce electricity, heating and cooling.  While natural gas is still a fossil fuel and produces CO2 when burnt, producing power through small, locally situated cogeneration plants has several environmental and economic benefits over the huge coal fired power stations that currently produce the vast majority of electricity in NSW.

Firstly, cogeneration is a much more efficient process.  In a coal fired power station around two thirds of the energy that comes from the burning coal is lost straight away as heat that escapes up the massive chimneys of the power plant.  In cogeneration this heat is not lost but is channelled to where it is needed – the City plans to install it’s first cogeneration unit at Prince Alfred Park Pool and the “waste” heat will go into warming the pool, thus resulting in a significant energy saving.  Cogeneration units can also, counter-intuitively, use the excess heat to generate cooling by the adition of an adsorption chiller. These configurations are known as trigeneration units that produce electricity, heating and cooling simultaneously.

Additional energy savings are achieved by cogeneration through the elimination of “transmission losses”.When electricity is transmitted long distances from big coal fired power stations along high tension wires 8-10% is lost along the way.  When you add this loss to the loss of energy as heat at the power plant you end up with a total waste of 70-75% - only around 25% of the energy extracted from the coal ever gets used!  In an age where the effects of climate change are already starting to be felt it verges on criminally negligent that such an inefficient system remains our primary means of producing electricity.

While the City is focusing on installing medium sized cogeneration units, with outputs of 5-30 kilowatts (kW), in large public buildings and facilities such as swimming pools I am also working to encourage a second style of cogeneration – using smaller units (with outputs of around 2kW) to provide energy to private homes and social housing units.  I feel this application has a much broader scope for uptake as there are many more private homes than large public buildings in Sydney.  Using small units in individual homes has the benefit over using a large unit for many homes in that, while electricity is easy to transfer from place to place, heat is not, meaning that domestic generation can be much more efficient.

An Australian company called Ceramic Fuel Cells has created a 2kW cogeneration unit called the Bluegen that they plan to have on the market in 6-12 months.  Rather than burning natural gas the Bluegen is a fuel cell that converts the gas via an electrochemical reaction to produce electricity and heat.  The units are the size of a dishwasher and produce enough electricity to power two houses and enough heat to meet the hot water needs of one (water heating accounts for 27% of the average household’s energy usage).  The company estimates that the Bluegen will produce only around 25% of the greenhouse gas emissions of a coal fired power station in order to generate the same amount of energy and at around 60% of the price per kilowatt hour. 

The Victorian government agency for sustainable development, Vicurban, has recently purchased a Bluegen unit for use in the Aurora sustainable living community in outer Melbourne.  A further 30 have been purchased by the Victorian housing department to provide cheap, clean power to public housing developments throughout the state.  This month Council staff and myself will be meeting with representatives of Ceramic Fuel Cells to investigate the possibility of installing Bluegen units in a number of Council properties.

The work by City of Sydney and Ceramic Fuel Cells (which receives no government subsidies) are two examples of how of how Councils and private companies are working to fill the void in climate change action that has been left by our governments and oppositions, both state and federal.  My Greens colleagues at all levels of government will continue to push for effective action on this most important of issues but in the meantime it is up to us as individuals to act where our governments refuse to.

Disclaimer: Cr Chis Harris owns shares in Ceramic Fuel Cells, an Australian listed company, via his self managed superannuation fund.        

Climate change impacts become more obvious every day, meaning that any government that cares about the future of the planet should be looking at ways to replace existing coal fired power stations with renewable energy sources as soon as possible.  However Kristina Keneally’s NSW Labor Government has done the exact opposite of this by announcing concept approval for another two fossil fuel burning power stations to be built at Bayswater in the Hunter Valley and Mt Piper near Lithgow.  I find it shocking that the government can even consider a project like this, let alone approve it.  Building new pollution belching stacks is the last thing a government supposedly concerned about the future should be doing. The government’s actions are totally irresponsible, bordering on criminal negligence.

These two new plants, if powered by coal, will increase NSW greenhouse gas emissions by around 15% (the equivalent of doubling the number of cars on our roads), which means an increase in the emissions of Australia as a whole of just under 5%.  At the same time, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tells us he wants to decrease  Australia’s Greenhouse gas emissions by 5%, a very weak target far below what the science tells us is necessary to avoid a climate catastrophe.  However any small benefits that this pitiful target may have had will be completely wiped out by these two new power plants being built by Rudd’s mates in the NSW Labor party.

Planning Minister Tony Kelly has said that the plants may be powered by natural gas instead of coal.  Natural gas burns cleaner than coal which means the negative impacts of the project would be a little less severe.  However the Minister says the decision on whether to use coal or gas will be determined based on “the market”.  Given the distance of the Mt Piper site from the nearest gas pipeline and the proximity of the Bayswater site to the Hunter Valley’s many coal mines, it seems highly unlikely that these plants will be powered with gas. In any event gas is a fossil fuel and therefore non renewable and should only be considered for refitting existing coal fired plants to achieve a short term improvement whilst renewable technology is developing.

The NSW Government claims that these plants will be needed over the next decade to “keep the lights from going out” – to meet the state’s increasing demand for electricity. However this claim comes from the Owen Report – commissioned by former Premier Morris Iemma to justify his plans to sell the state’s electricity assets to private companies – which exaggerated shortfalls in electricity supply in order to build support for Iemma’s ambitions.  NSW is not running low on electricity generation capacity and if it was there are much better ways of solving the problem.

In his paper How to reduce CO2 emissions by 50% Dr Mark Diesendorf, lecturer in environmental studies at the University of NSW, explains how there are no technical or economic barriers to Australia adopting widespread renewable energy technology and that the only barrier is a lack of political will.  He points out that a combination of improved energy efficiency and greater reliance on renewables could see Australia reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in the next few decades, even with a population and an economy that continues to grow.  It is to these measures, rather than ones that lock us into decades more of coal dependence, that governments should be looking for the answers to our energy needs.

    
It is a sad state of affairs that in 2010 governments are still so in the thrall of the fossil fuel industries that they ignore the needs of the planet and the demands of the people for clean energy and green jobs.  My Greens colleagues and I will be doing all we can to make sure the government doesn’t get away with this, but we need your help.  Write to your local MP, whether government, opposition or crossbencher and ask them where they stand on these new power plants.  Tell them you won’t vote for anyone who is irresponsible enough to support new coal fired power stations, then spread the message to your community.  If governments won’t make the right decisions on their own, it’s up to us to force them to.  

For more information on solar energy, see my earlier post on this topic.

Recently, many of my Greens colleagues and myself have received an email that appears to be circulating widely which makes a number of arguments disputing the science of climate change.  The arguments are the same ones that climate change deniers have been using for many years and though they can be easily countered with basic scientific facts, the arguments keep coming.  In the interest of not shying away from debate, below is my response to these all too common but false arguments.  Most numerical data on climate change used here comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th assessment report (2007), available at http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.htm#1.

• False Argument “CO2 does not hold any more heat than any other gas”

The Truth - This is a statement that is flawed in a number of ways and can be countered with basic high school level chemistry.  A wide range of gases, liquids and solids absorb, re-emit and store heat in different amounts, depending on a wide range of properties. 

An easy to understand example of one of these properties is colour – place a black stone and a white stone in the sun and the black stone will very soon be hotter than the white one as black objects absorb more heat than white objects.  Although carbon dioxide is the same colour as other atmospheric gases, it has other properties not detectable with the naked eye that means it absorbs and holds large amounts of heat, unlike other gases such as oxygen and nitrogen (the main two gases in the earth’s atmosphere).  Skeptics will not be able to present any evidence to dispute this basic chemical fact.

With that bit of basic chemistry and the undisputed fact that human activities, primarily burning fossil fuels, are putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the reality of climate change falls very simply into place.

• False argument “CO2 is not a pollutant, it is essential to life”

The Truth- CO2 is both a pollutant and essential to life, the same as many other chemicals.  Iron is essential to humans, yet a person with the disease haemochromatosis builds up excess iron in their bodies and this has severe negative health effects.  On an even more fundamental level water is essential to life, yet no one argues that floods or tsunamis are not destructive because of this.  The argument that because CO2 is essential to life it can’t be harmful is just as ridiculous.

• False argument “CO2 makes up such a small percentage of the atmosphere so it can’t be harmful”

The Truth - while it is true that CO2 is only 0.0387% of the atmosphere by volume its effect is disproportionate to its quantity.  Like many other substances big increases in CO2 can induce large negative effects even if the overall increased amount is still a small proportion.  Another example of such a substance is fluoride. Fatal fluoride poisoning can occur in a person who only takes in an amount of fluoride salts equal to only 0.0125% of their body weight yet fluoride in the water supply in even smaller amounts has yielded improved dental health in the population.

• False argument “Atmospheric CO2 levels have been higher in the past”

The Truth - current atmospheric levels of CO2 are higher than they have been any time in at least the last 650 000 years, a period far longer than that in which human civilisation has existed.  It is true that millions of years ago CO2 concentrations were higher than they are now, but they had a dramatic effect on the world.  Living organisms thrived under these conditions because they were vastly different to the organisms alive today and had specific adaptations to deal with these conditions.  However organisms not adapted to live in those high CO2 conditions, such as humans and most other life of today, would have a much harder time of surviving because of massive climatic differences and other effects, just as a lion adapted to live in the African savannah would have a very hard time surviving in Antarctica.  Likewise penguins survive in Antarctic environments because of specific adaptations, but these adaptations leave them most unsuited to the African savannah.

• False argument “Ocean levels have only risen 30mm since 1870”

The Truth - this figure is way off.  According to the IPCC, sea levels have risen by over 80mm since the 1960s.  Since 1993 sea levels have risen on average 3.1mm/year representing an acceleration of the 1.8mm/year average rise since 1963.

• False argument “Ice caps are expanding”

The Truth - while there has been expansion of some Antarctic ice sheets in the last few decades, due to the reductions in ozone depleting gases in the atmosphere and changed weather patterns around the Southern Ocean, overall global ice coverage is shrinking.

• False argument “The planet is not warming, it is cooling”

The Truth - global temperatures on average have risen 0.74 degrees C since 1905.The image below, produced by NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, shows the changes in surface temperature in 2001 relative to the average for 1951-1980.  11 of the 12 years from 1995-2006 (inclusive) were among the warmest 12 years since records began in the 1850s (this data only goes to 2006 because it is from the IPCCs 2007 report, there has been nothing to indicate that the trend stopped in 2006).  It is often said that because 1998 was the warmest year on record the world has cooled since then.  However there has always been year to year variation, the same as there is day to day variation – one does not deny temperatures will be warmer in summer if the 15th of November is a few degrees cooler than the 14th.  The record of 1998 as warmest year ever will without doubt be broken soon.

•  False argument “Solar power cannot produce large amounts of energy”

The Truth - this argument is out of date, and becomes more out of date every year as technology advances.  Throughout the world solar thermal power plants, which produce steam that drives conventional turbines, with capacities measured in the hundreds of megawatts (MW) currently exist and plans for many more are on the drawing board.  Energy can be stored cheaply (eg in vats of molten salt) so that solar thermal plants can run overnight or at other times when the sun isn’t shining.  For a recent article on the state of this industry, see http://www.smh.com.au/business/handicapped-by-19thcentury-technology-20100202-nb3t.html. 

• False argument “The maximum size for a wind turbine is 3MW”

The Truth Wind turbines with outputs of up to 5MW currently exist.

• False argument “Climategate shows that the science of climate change is fraudulent”

The Truth – “Climategate” was not the falsifying of figures by the IPCC.  Rather it involved staff at a single British university who had their computer systems illegally hacked and a variety of emails taken out of context.  These emails were used to try to show that the researchers had been selective about what data they used in order to support their research on climate change.  Even if those allegations proved correct, this is one single isolated case – it does not invalidate the mass of other research (2500 scientists on the IPCC report alone) that has shown overwhelmingly that climate change is occurring.

• False argument “The IPCC admitted to lying about Himalayan glaciers”

The Truth - the IPCC have admitted that one paragraph in a 938 page report was inaccurate.  Most documents of that size, exposed to as much scrutiny as IPCC reports are, would come up with many more errors.

I hope this information might come in useful next time you need to counter uninformed statements denying the science of climate change. Feel free to send it on to your networks.  It is also worth remembering that there are many vested interests (by fossil fuel and mining companies amongst many others) in pretending that climate change isn’t real when it is.  On the other hand there are far fewer organisations, with far less resources, who have an interest in pretending climate change is real when it isn’t.  Some organisations, such as renewable energy companies, stand to make money as a result of action on climate change but these sort of enterprises only emerged after the science of climate change became well accepted.  To imply that climate change is a conspiracy, started decades ago to create a market for what was at the time fringe technology, is simply ludicrous.