A former Biden administration official has directly called out Australia’s renewed focus on building gas energy infrastructure, saying the country has all of the tools it needs to get to net zero, now.
Daniel Kammen, the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor on climate and energy at the Johns Hopkins University, and the former US science envoy, says he is also resigned to the fact that we’ve met the enemy – and it’s us.
“We have today everything we need to do a net zero transition that is good for social justice, good for the economy, et cetera. But does that mean we will do it?” he said at the Australian Energy Week conference in Melbourne.
“We’re all incredibly conservative on our own choices, and when we start to talk about the bigger and bigger energy-providing institutions, they are doubling and tripling down on gas.”
Kammen is a little astonished that renewables have succeeded at all, given the wall of money arrayed against the industry
He compared the almost $2 trillion invested into renewables globally last year, to the $5-8 trillion in subsidies paid out to fossil fuel interests.
“While China and the US are the biggest subsidisers, Australia is no small player in it, in the way that you subsidise fossil fuel exports, you send coal to India, you send gas at very low prices around the world,” he said.
“Everything we talk about innovation has to be in the context of, we are subsidising what we say we don’t want.
“It’s amazing renewables have done as well as they have, given that we literally ask the renewables world to fight this battle with one or two or three arms tied behind their back.”
Toe-to-toe
Kammen, who spectacularly resigned as the US envoy for science in 2017 in protest against Donald Trump’s refusal to condemn neo-Nazis, was willing to go toe-to-toe against two senior Australian energy executives on the same panel, who are full-throated supporters of building more gas generation.
EnergyAustralia managing director Mark Collette opened the panel discussion by saying a “weather dependent” energy system was reinforcing the role of gas for firming in winter.
Adam Watson, head of gas network APA Group, pitched the view that Australia will need at least 20-30 per cent gas in the grid without sufficient pumped hydro.
But Kammen is not convinced by the argument that more gas is needed – pointedly calling out governments and companies that are unwilling to embrace risk and more focused on “their bottom line down the road”.
“If we were willing to embrace what technology provides as a substrate, not the end use – this is not a world where Terminator runs things on cybernet – but if we took advantage of what you heard in the opening talk [by AEMO’s Daniel Westerman]… there’s a huge number of ways that we could leverage what we have now,” Kammen said.
“But consistently, and for reasons we justify with nice Powerpoints and nice fonts and slides, we’re afraid to make that transition, and it’s costing all of us.
“Any of us who either have kids or know of kids, recognise that we are poisoning their future by not embracing those much more quickly.”
The tenor on stage remained polite as Collette and Watson delicately defended their respective positions, of supporting gas and battery storage.
Watson asserted that APA does take on “enormous, enormous amounts of risk” when it comes to spending money and building infrastructure – the company owns renewable generation and transmission, alongside its core gas network business – and blamed regulatory and policy uncertainty for any delays in ambition.
But instead of embracing the can-doo attitude espoused by Kammen, Watson was keener to point out how difficult the pathway out of coal power will be.
“I think we all know that the 2030 ambition is going to be challenging at best and in fact, we’ve been supporting a group called Net Zero Australia… and they’re suggesting we can’t hit that target until 2040 and I think most of us would sit here and say that that’s probably more realistic,” Watson said.
“I think one of the challenges we’ve had in the past is we’ve demonised gas… we end up demonizing the technologies that actually can assist with the transition and move forward and propel by anchoring on hope.”
Colette pointed out that price signals aren’t working, as wholesale prices are lower than what it costs to build new generation – mainly wind – and transmission is very expensive.
He argued for greater use of distribution networks, smaller projects placed where there is grid capacity, and to “just avoid building expensive things,” to keep power bills, especially for industry, down.
Although he later admitted that some expensive things – wind – must be built, Energy Australia has also recently revived plans to build – and almost double the size of – a massive gas generator in New South Wales (NSW).
It is also building out batteries as a way to claw back some of the margins lost as renewables eat into coal revenue.
The company owns and runs the Yallourn brown coal generator in Victoria, and the Mt Piper coal-fired power station that could be the last to close in NSW, alongside battery projects including the 350 MW, 1,500 MWh Wooreen battery in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley.
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