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Renewable Energy 100% electricity and transport by 2050

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Australia : We CAN get 100% renewable electricity by 2030! But do our political parties have the will?

The Homegrown Power Plan, a joint project between GetUp! and Solar Citizens, shows how we can repower the country with 100% renewable electricity by 2030.

How? By rebooting our failing electricity system, removing the roadblocks holding us back, and investing in the renewables boom.

A move to 100% renewable energy is practical, achievable, economically sound and overwhelmingly popular. Governments are being left behind by citizens voting with their feet (or their rooftops). It’s time they caught up.

The Homegrown Power Plan shows that 100% of our electricity can be renewable by 2030, and that 40% of our transport energy can be renewable by 2035, and 100% of both our electricity and transport energy can be renewable by 2050.

https://www.getup.org.au/campaigns/renewable-energy/homegrown-power-plan/homegrown-power-plan

homegrown photo

Renewable Energy Jobs: Future Growth in Australia

Projections of the escalating risks of climate change under a business as usual, high emissions scenario are becoming more certain and more disturbing.  Electricity generation accounts for about 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The Australian Capital Territory and South Australia, are already leading the way in renewables aiming for 100% renewable.

Currently only 14.6% of Australia’s electricity is coming from renewable energy (Clean Energy Council 2016). At the same time, research suggests that Australia would need to source a minimum of 50% of its power from renewable sources by 2030 to achieve emissions reductions consistent with a 2°C pathway (ClimateWorks 2014).

Australia has the potential to generate a much higher proportion of our electricity and transport needs from renewable energy.   Our renewable energy resources are potentially capable of providing 500 times the amount of electricity we currently use (AEMO 2013; Commonwealth of Australia 2014).

A 50% Renewable Electricity scenario in 2030 will lead to over 28,000 new jobs, nearly 50% more employment than a business as usual scenario.

Job losses in the shift from coal fired electricity generation must be planned early with the community and industry involved.   As in other economic and technology shifts, jobs will be lost and new jobs will be created.  Some jobs will be easy to replace, while others may require re-training, up-skilling or relocation, or may disappear.  But 50% renewable electricity in 2030 will lead to nearly 50% more employment from electricity generation than business as usual.

Renewable Energy Jobs: Future Growth in Australia by Ernst & Young and the Climate Council of Australia.

http://www.climatecouncil.org.au/uploads/9bbeec4336c0f87f7e04205516b3cfa7.pdf

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(Photo from Mount Gambier)

We ask what renewable energy targets are being put forward by our political leaders?

  • Australian Labor is aiming for 50% renewable energy by 2030.
  • Liberal Party is aiming for 23% renewable energy by 2020. (Projected estimate is 34% by 2030)
  • The Greens are aiming for 90% renewable energy by 2030.
  • Nick Xenophon Team supports maintaining RET at 23% by 2020. And is investigating 100% renewable by 2030.
  • Family First have no renewable energy policy.

Solar panels generate 5 times as many jobs per megawatt as coal or gas

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In 2014, more than 12,000 Australians worked in rooftop solar installation, larger by far than the coal-fired power station workforce. This should not surprise us.

Solar PV generates five times as any jobs in operation and maintenance per megawatt as coal or gas.

Solar thermal has four times the number of jobs per megawatt, and wind twice the number.

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Solar Panels in Mount Gambier. Photo courtesy of Gambier Electronics.

Rutovitz, J. et al (2015) ‘Calculating global energy sector jobs: 2015 methodology update’, prepared for Greenpeace International, by the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney.

Australia 100% renewable electricity by 2030

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The Homegrown Power Plan, a joint project between GetUp! and Solar Citizens, shows how we can repower the country with renewable energy, reboot our failing electricity system and remove the roadblocks holding back the renewables boom.

Read the report here.

Get involved here https://yes2renewables.org/get-involved/

We must:

  • Reboot the system, rewiring our laws to deliver affordable, 100% renewable electricity.
  • Repower the country, turbocharging our existing renewable energy policies and adding some missing parts.
  • Remove the roadblocks, ensuring new renewables aren’t held back by the legacy of a bygone era.

A move to 100% renewable power is practical, achievable, economically sound and overwhelmingly popular.

We can do this:

  • By 2030 we can power all of Australia’s homes and businesses with 100% renewable electricity.
  • By 2035 we can meet around 40% of our transport needs with renewable energy as well.
  • By 2050 the whole energy system can be completely fossil fuel free.  Everything we do, from driving a car to hauling freight, from manufacturing to heating to taking a flight, can run on clean, affordable energy generated from the wind, sun, and other renewable sources.

Costs:  Decarbonising our entire energy system by 2050 means Australia gets a $800 billion slice of the global renewables investment boom, and all the jobs that come with it. Investing more in renewable means spending less on fuel. Between now and 2050, the shift to renewables and increased energy efficiency delivers enough fuel cost savings to cover 110% of the bill for building 100% renewable power.

Australia would save, on average: $9 billion a year on power sector fuel costs, $11 billion a year on transport fuel costs.

On the path to a clean energy future, our investment in fossil fuel free electricity starts paying itself off in lower prices as early as 2025, and by 2040 at the latest.

ps on sun

WA to reduce state fossil fuel use for power.

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WA to reduce state fossil fuel generation 

By Giles Parkinson on 8 April 2016, excerpts

The conservative West Australian state government has taken the lead over the rest of the country and instructed its state-owned utility to shut down 380MW of fossil fuel capacity in the next two years. It seems certain that much of this will be ageing coal-fired generation.

The Treasurer, Mark Nahan, a former head of the arch-conservative Institute of Public Affairs, praised the role of rooftop solar and the likely benefits of battery storage in helping deliver the reforms announced on Thursday, following a two-year review of the state’s energy markets.

The first decision will be to require Synergy, the state-owned generator and retailer, to shut 380MW of excess capacity

The second decision is to slash the return on so-called demand-side management. DSM, as it is known, offers returns to users who agree to turn down demand when supply is short. It is mostly considered a good thing, but the way it was structured in WA meant that $430 million had been handed out to providers, even though their services has been used for a total of just 106 hours on eight occasions – including testing – in the past decade.

The third decision is to gradually ramp down the scale of “capacity payments”, which saw a fleet of gas-fired or diesel-fired peaking power plants built, but rarely if ever used. Instead they received payments merely for being on standby, and in WA those payments were around $120,000 for each MW of capacity per year.

Nahan said that his measures and the removal of excess capacity would save around $130 million a year over the next seven years.

Nahan, who in his time at the IPA was an avowed skeptic of climate science and renewable energy, was full of praise for the role that solar has taken in “completely revolutionising” the WA energy industry.

On this remarkable web page, “More power to you”, Nahan tells the story of how WA’s energy woes began with uncontrolled blackouts in WA (the fault of a dodgy grid and unreliable gas), and how market “reforms” led to an unsustainable energy market.

Nahan says solar has given the government the tools to repair it

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/wa-takes-lead-and-tells-utility-to-close-down-fossil-fuel-generation-42982

ACT 100% Renewable by 2020

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RenewEconomy, May 2, 2016, excerpts

In May, the ACT environment minister Simon Corbell stood up at the Local Energy and Micro-Grids conference in Sydney to announce that the ACT was going to accelerate its push to renewable energy, and would supply 100 per cent of its electricity needs from renewable energy by 2020, almost all of it from wind and solar.

The contrast between the ACT government policies with what is happening on the federal political landscape, could not be any more stark, or any more depressing.

In the same week that the Coalition had trumpeted a $50 billion spend on French submarines as “economy building,” it attacked Labor’s $48 billion spend on renewables as jobs-destroying. Defence jobs good, green jobs bad.

So, how did we get to this, and how to get out of it? The Coalition appears to have forgotten that it was the Party that signed the Paris agreement that aims to limit warming to between 1.5°C and 2.0°C.

Corbell: “We are looking at an energy future that is going to be supplied by wind and solar and battery storage, with 100,000 Canberra homes supported to improve energy efficiency and reduce their demand. “These sound like big targets, but all of them – all of them – have been achieved using the existing policy measures and state and federal powers.

“We are demonstrating through these policies that not only is a transition to a renewable energy future achievable, it is affordable and it is creating jobs. The incumbents will try to protect their position, it is up to governments to push through.”

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/act-lifts-2020-target-to-100-renewable-energy-as-australia-stalls-86177

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-29/act-to-be-powered-by-100-per-cent-renewable-energy-by-2020/7369004?WT.mc_id=newsmail

Renewable Energy Choices for Communities

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Energy

Community Choices in Energy Futures for Mount Gambier & Limestone Coast

Renewables & Energy Efficiency at home and work

Presenter Philippa Rowland

When: Thursday, 28th May, at 7.30pm (Doors open 7pm)

Where: Dress Circle, Main Corner, 1 Bay Rd, Mt Gambier

All Welcome

Cost $5Poster Philippa Rowland 150528 (3)

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