Net Zero Australia 'Mobilisation'
Maybe there's a better way to 'decarbonise' for a lot less than AUD 9 Trillion
Introduction
I recently found the Net Zero Australia Project website. A study has been undertaken as outlined below.
My immediate objection is that the study is NOT technology-neutral as it has ruled out nuclear generation. It instead implicitly assumes that Australia must lock in astronomically-expensive intermittent 'renewable' sources of electricity plus immense quantities of (currently doesn't exist) electrical storage capacity. That may currently reflect the boundaries of the debate in Australia. I wonder how that debate may change as we go forward.
The study was published in July 2023 as a 'Mobilisation' report. This is based on summaries of the modelling published earlier in 2023.
The project summary
The website portal for the "Mobilisation" report is refreshingly honest in saying that costs will rise for every energy consumer in a 'Net Zero' future. In the UK, by contrast, HM Gov has insisted ad nauseam that 'green' energy will be cheap. That seems highly unlikely: the data tells me that intermittent Wind plus invariably-absent-every-night Solar cannot power modern societies without a parallel reliable dispatchable fleet of generators with total capacity great enough to keep the lights on.
Reading the 'Mobilisation' report some things jumped out at me.
Estimated cost: nearly AUD 9 Trillion (GBP 4.7 Trillion)
The above chart is from page 12. Ok, by 2050 the total cost is ‘only’ AUD 6½ Trillion. But, where's the cost of the immense electrical energy storage for "firming"? (see later)
AUD 9 Trillion is about GBP 4.7 Trillion:
Why so much?
The sheer immensity of the task
It looks like domestic emissions 1990 to 2020 (left chart) have stayed broadly constant. The only item that has trended downwards is 'LULUCF' = Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry. About which the report states there is considerable uncertainty. Thus between 2020 and 2050, 'Mobilisation' calls for domestic emissions to drop like a lead brick.
Note also that Aussie coal and gas exports have been sky-rocketing over the last 30 years. This both keeps the lights on in other countries, and keeps Australians in the manner to which they've become accustomed. The 'Mobilisation' calls for that to rapidly disappear, to be replaced by exports of 'green hydrogen' and other 'green' products made with 'green hydrogen' by 2060. Never mind that Australia has not yet found locations suitable for bulk hydrogen storage. Or that no-one has yet solved the extreme difficulties of making 'green hydrogen' in bulk.
Electrical energy storage (2035)
The 'Accelerate deployment of electricity storage' on page 24 has completely different scales on the two charts. Just make the green charts on the left 3½ times smaller! And that deep purple for the E+ column on the right, I don't believe that is truly "Operational".
Poor charting aside, more subsidies! Accelerate! Support! Battery duration to an average of 7 hours by 2050? Does that fully address the Solar PV conundrum in sunny Australia?
Electrical energy "firming" (2050)
Page 13 is headed "The net zero transition will be among the largest and fastest economic transformations in history" and has the chart above. I've added the measurements: by 2050, stored electrical energy amounts to over 50% of the "firming" required.
If that 67 GW of power *capacity* has to have duration of 7 hours, that’s about 470,000 MWh of storage. The 450 MWh “Big Battery” in Victoria? Yeah, another thousand of those please. Or some very large herds of unicorns.
My thoughts
AUD 9 Trillion is a lot of money. It would buy many low-CO2 nuclear power stations which could be sited at / near locations currently occupied by coal-fired power stations. Doing so would largely re-use the existing grid and power distribution infrastructure. Doing so would also leave most of the Australian environment as-is to the population and native wildlife. While achieving greatly reduced CO2 emissions and maintaining high standards of living.
In the meantime, if Australia truly wants to transition to exports of ‘green’ hydrogen, ammonia, steel, cement etc. then not using ‘renewable’ power domestically would leave the ‘green’ power for an exports transition.
Why is nuclear excluded as an option? Because it's a 'climate emergency' and there just isn't time? This 'mobilisation' plan runs through 2050 & 2060 and the transition it outlines is truly monumental. Consider that the UAE took about ten years to build the Barakh Nuclear Plant with its four 1,400 MWe reactors, it can be done.
I suspect that Aussies broadly support the idea of 'Net Zero', as they reportedly do in the UK, because it seems like 'the right thing to do'. But if all the arguments for and against together with the costs and benefits are presented in clear terms to the electorate then I suspect that realities would begin to bite and the 'Yes' side (i.e. for continuing with this 'mobilisation' plan) would have a battle on their hands.
Australia is fiercely egalitarian and has a politically astute population. The country has mandatory voting for state and federal elections, so the entire electorate is used to having the final say. For a non-constitutional issue with such far-reaching affects and immense costs as 'Net Zero', this might take the form of holding a plebiscite.
Then, I think, things would get interesting. Would Aussies vote to go through all that? What at the end of the day would be the impact on Climate if they did?
It would certainly be a discussion I would follow with great interest.
Western governments are driving their economies and populations over a cliff into the social abyss of energy poverty with rocketing prices. It seems sanity will not return until the headlong rush to net zero is seen for the chimera it most certainly is.
What is this project? From your extracts it looks about as rigorous and professional as some of the design projects I did as a first year engineering student (in Australia).