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Wind power replaces coal in SA
Before the decision to shut-down the SA coal-fired power stations,
in March 2012, Adelaide-based energy economics group EnergyQuest chief
executive Dr Graeme Bethune produced a press release which stated, in part:
"... a massive 26% of South Australian electricity was generated [in 2011]
by wind, up from 18% in 2010 and less than 1% five years ago.
Since 2006-07 the share of gas in power generation has fallen from 58% to 49%
but the big change has been in coal, which has fallen from 42% to 25%.
Wind is effectively replacing coal."
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While most of Lloyd's efforts were directed at Victoria, he also criticised
South Australia's wind power, unsurprisingly not mentioning that,
largely because of SA's wind power, one coal-fired power station had been
entirely shut-down while the other would in future only run for six months
each year.
(See an article in Adelaide Now,
2012/04/18, by Miles Kemp and Cara Jenkin.)
Yet Cummings claims that he has established "that even with the continued
expansion of wind farms in South Australia, the Australian Energy Market
Operator's figures show the abatement has risen to only about 4 percent
of the installed capacity" of SA's wind power.
We are expected to believe this, with SA's two coal-fired power stations
shut down!
Quoting Lloyd's article "Cumming estimates the cost of greenhouse gas
abatement [in SA] at $1484 a tonne".
Generating a megawatt-hour of electricity in a coal-fired power station
results in around a tonne of carbon dioxide being released into the
atmosphere.
From the EnergyQuest report (box on the right above) we can see that 17% of
the coal-fired power in SA has been replaced by wind power.
17% of $1484 is $252, so if Cumming is right this $252/MWh cost of abatement
would have been passed on to consumers – increasing the retail price of
electricity by 25 cents per kWh.
As a South Australian I can assure the reader that our electricity price
has not gone up by anywhere near as much as 25 cents/kWh, and
in fact informed commentators involved in the energy industry have told
us that most of the price rise that there has been was due to infrastructure
costs.
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| Changes in electricity generation and emissions
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| Graph credit: Pitt & Sherry
This graph shows that since about 2009 greenhouse emissions have decoupled
from electricity generation; due largely to wind farms.
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The graph on the right, from
Pitt & Sherry's Carbon Emissions
Index (cedex),
shows that greenhouse gas emissions have quite definitely been falling,
and this began around the time that the biggest of our wind farms started
coming on-line.
Lloyd and Cumming may be right about one thing, Victoria's brown coal-fired
power stations may not be polluting any less.
This would be due to the fact that it is some of Australia's black-coal power
stations, in NSW and SA, that are being shut-down or 'throttled-back'.
Perhaps Lloyd and Cumming were not aware that all of the highly populated
areas of south-eastern Australia are on the same power grid.
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| Emissions intensity on the Australian NEM
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Graph credit – Professor Mike Sandiford, University of Melbourne;
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This graph, this time from Professor Mike Sandiford, University of
Melbourne, shows
emissions intensity (EI) from the four large states in the Australian
National Electricity Market (NEM) and the average for the whole of the NEM,
including Tasmania.
Tasmania's EI is off-scale at the bottom of this graph.
data from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).
Note that while emissions intensity if falling in all the states, the very
large decline is in South Australia.
It is very hard to attribute this to anything other than the introduction of
wind power.
South Australia, of course, has far more wind power than any other state.
Lloyd writes of a report being presented to The Netherlands
Parliament claiming that wind farms will not abate the greenhouse gasses
released in their construction "even across the total life of the wind
farm".
He does not mention, of course, the many other
reports that have shown full
abatement in about the first six months.
Is it surprising that by searching the Internet Lloyd or Cumming was able to
find one report that agreed with their preconception?
It is significant that Lloyd did not give the name of the report, or of its
authors, or say if or where it was published.
Lloyd prefers to accept Cumming's assertions that wind turbines are not
abating greenhouse gasses to the findings of various
consultants around the world, presumably because Cumming's figures
agree with Lloyd's preconceptions.
Wind power abates greenhouse gasses in the UK, why should we believe Lloyd
and Cumming's claims that, for some reason, it is not working in Australia.
See Beyond the bluster: Why wind power is an
effective technology by the UK Institute of Public Policy Research.
Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), an engineering and consulting firm, produced a
report in June 2012 that listed
the CO2 abatement from Australia's wind power installations.
In July 2006 consulting firm McLennan Magasanik Associates Pty Ldt produced
a report
which, in effect, stated that greenhouse CO2 emissions would be
reduced by about one tonne for every megawatt-hour of wind power generated.
'Forensic examination', 'forensic carbon audit'
Early in his article Lloyd writes about 'a forensic examination of publicly
available power-supply data' without indicating what crime was to be
investigated.
On the second page Lloyd quotes Cumming as asking for "a full forensic
carbon audit", again without any reference to the crime that is being
alleged.
Do Lloyd and Cumming know that 'forensic' relates to 'the application of
scientific methods and techniques to the investigation of crime'?
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