Archive for the ‘gas’ Category
more on gas prices in Australia, sort of
Coal, oil and gas are called fossil fuels, because they are mostly made of the fossil remains of beings from long ago. The chemical energy within them is a kind of stored sunlight originally accumulated by ancient plants. Our civilization runs by burning the remains of humble creatures who inhabited the Earth hundreds of millions of years before the first humans came on the scene. Like some ghastly cannibal cult, we subsist on the dead bodies of our ancestors and distant relatives.
Carl Sagan
Canto: So during an English conversation group that I’m for the moment in charge of, at our local community centre, we got onto the topic of how Australia finances itself, trade and business-wise. I made the claim that manufacturing in Australia has largely died (based on the fact that I’ve worked in or for six factories in my youth and not-so-youth, – Simpson-Pope, ATCO Structures, Wilkins Servis, Tubemakers of Australia, Ellis Wireworks and Griffin Press – none of which still exist, at least not in the same locations). I also said that our economy is now based largely on the exporting of coal, gas and other mineral resources. As always, I wasn’t sure if I was talking out of my arse, so it’s time for research… But not just about that. I went on to say, apropos of our plentiful gas resources, that we export most of the gas, which is why we pay such a high price for gas domestically. This led a Chinese member of the group to ask – how come? According to him, gas, and energy bills generally, come to much less in China than they do here. So what gives? That’s what we’re going to take a look at today.
Jacinta: Yes we’ve written about this before, in November last year, but I’m happy to revisit the issue, perhaps more thoroughly.
Canto: Well, since that piece was written, there’s been little in the news about the issue, it seems. Except that, in December:
… the Australian government passed a law imposing a price cap on domestic natural gas for 12 months, with the possibility of the cap becoming permanent after that.
Which I suppose is quite important, though it was capped at a high price, presumably compared to Chinese domestic prices.
Jacinta: Well you’ve just quoted from a piece by a writer from the Baker Institute for Public Policy, based at Rice University, a private research institute based in Houston, Texas. Rather surprising to see such a piece dealing with the Australian domestic market, from the other side of the world, so to speak. And it goes into great detail about the economics of price capping, which the author, Kelly Neill, describes as ‘poor policy’, at least in this instance.
Canto: Could they have an ideological bent? What about the poor consumer? I mean the consumer who is poor.
Jacinta: I’ve just read Neill’s bio, and she’s based in Australia:
… at the University of Sydney School of Economics. Her research has focused on competition in natural gas markets, particularly in Australia. She has studied how electricity and gas markets interact, vertical integration of gas retailing and shipping, and the consequences of restricting exports of liquefied natural gas. She is also interested in electricity reliability.
Canto: Sounds impressive. In fact I feel quite intimidated now. I mean, ‘vertical integration of gas retailing and shipping’ – what could that possibly mean?
Jacinta: It’s the opposite of horizontal integration, obviously. Pay attention mate. Seriously, it’s ‘the combination in one firm of two or more stages of production normally operated by separate firms’. Presumably gas retailing and shipping in this case. And Neill’s argument is complex, it seems – it’s a long article, and its complexity is beyond our pay grade (which is zero of course). It’s the kind of economics article that’s designed to be read by other economists, and, after a quick run-through, I see little or no mention of windfall profits by gas companies, the cost to residential consumers, or renewable energy. It does discuss future investment, and she certainly appears to believe that increased development of our gas resources is a very good thing, as if she’s never heard of ‘the Big Switch’ to electricity developed from renewables.
Canto: Yes it’s odd – we’ve mentioned how Chinese newcomers to Australia are wondering why domestic energy costs are so much higher here than in China. Neill focusses, though, on the big consumers:
the intention of the natural gas price cap is to provide relief to industrial gas users
That was news to me – I thought the government wanted to provide relief to impoverished types like you and me. But perhaps they want both. And she also expresses concern that caps will reduce the incentive to produce more fossil fuels. So she certainly has a business as usual attitude to such production, while I’m trying my darnedest to get our Housing Association to put solar panels on our roofs, and to get our gas cooker and hot water system switched to electric. And, as a consumer of science mags and podcasts, all I hear from them is how we must wean ourselves from gas, oil and coal. It seems that economists think differently.
Jacinta: She also writes things that slightly surprise me:
Australians own the country’s natural resources (through their governments), and as such are entitled to benefit from their extraction.
Which sounds good, but I thought these natural resources were owned by the companies that extracted them, via mining and such. Sort of like manufacturing. General Motors makes money from cars, BP makes money from oil. And sometimes these companies receive subsidies from government, to help maintain them, because they’re good for the economy, not only because they provide relatively cheap cars, or oil, for the country, but because that business gets to export the surplus (helped in some way by government) in exchange for goods that we need but can’t easily supply ourselves.
Canto: Yeah we’re not really very good at understanding this are we? I suppose the globalisation of the economy is why we don’t do manufacturing any more. The labour costs too much? Better to use cheap overseas labour and then import? And ratchet up the gig economy so that everybody has just enough work to not count in the unemployment stats? I’m sure the coffee and croissants market is booming. But getting back to gas, my understanding is that coal is rated the worst of the fossil fuels – not only for carbon emissions but most dangerous working conditions. And then it’s oil and then gas. So maybe Neill is right to discount the negatives, at least for the foreseeable.
Jacinta: According to the IPCC, in 2018, 89% of global CO2 emissions came from ‘fossil fuels and industry’, which is kinda vague, tacking on ‘industry’ like that. I mean, can transportation be counted as industry? And according to ClientEarth, natural gas accounts for a fifth of the world’s carbon emissions. By no means insignificant.
Canto: But I’m interested in learning a bit about economic-speak, inter alia, through analysing Neill’s essay. And after all that, we’ll try to find out why Chinese people are paying less for their domestic energy than we are. So here’s a quote from early in the essay which seems to sum up her position:
Forcing companies to sell on the domestic market at a lower price reduces the value of Australia’s gas resources — an opportunity cost that ultimately does more harm than good. Instead, it would be better to maximize the value of the resource and then choose a tax policy that does not affect investment.
The term ‘opportunity cost’ is economics jargon, meaning ‘the loss of other alternatives when one alternative is chosen’, but this idea of maximising the value of the resource would surely be music to the ears of the multi-millionaire gas company owners. And clearly she’s in favour of investing in gas. If I found out that my super fund had been investing in gas I’d be effing furious.
Jacinta: I’m sure they are – it’s a transitional fuel dontcha know. And there’s no doubt that Neill is in favour of our exploiting this resource. Look at this key paragraph:
The influence of the export price in the domestic market has increased over time as gas supply in southern states has declined. State governments in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia share responsibility for this, with bans on new developments contributing to the decline in gas production. If produced, southern gas could be sold at a discount to the LNG export price, because southern gas would be further from the export plants and closer to demand centers. Indeed, if gas supply was large enough that LNG export plants were at capacity, the domestic price would again de-couple from the export price.
As a South Australian, taking pride in our leading the country in renewables, I’m somewhat nonplussed/gobsmacked at this slap. So I should read the whole piece to see if she has any interest in or knowledge about the existential global warming crisis that is currently enveloping us, and the contribution of LNG and other fossil fuels to this crisis. But I’m not hopeful.
Canto: So next she’s on about supply issues:
Global LNG supply is inherently inflexible, because increasing liquefaction capacity is costly and slow, and the market remains illiquid, particularly in Asia.[5] Investors know that small increases in demand can create large increases in price. (The converse is also true, small declines in demand create large price falls.)
Whatever that means.
Jacinta: Yes, I’m not sure if she means that the gas remains illiquid. Gas is gas after all, not liquid. But there’s also the term ‘liquid assets’ in economics…
Canto: Yes I hadn’t noticed that. ‘Liquid Natural Gas’ is essentially self-contradictory…
Jacinta: It’s liquified natural gas. And ‘liquefaction capacity’ means ‘the capacity of an LNG facility, measured in terajoules per day, to liquefy natural gas to produce LNG’. So Neill is pointing out, I think, that there’s a market inflexibility because it’s costly to liquify gas, especially in Asia. But saying that the market remains illiquid does create a bit of confusion. But I wonder what this economist thinks of Australia’s RenewEconomy. I notice they have an essay posted a few days ago from Giles Parkinson, an indefatigable RenewEconomy journalist, entitled ‘It’s time to get SwitchedOn and kick gas out of the system: Our future depends on it‘ – SwitchedOn referring to a series about electrification they’re publishing….
Canto: But I think, to be fair, Neill is clearly aware that our economy is currently highly reliant on our gas exports, just as Norway’s economy is highly reliant on its fossil fuel exports.
Jacinta: Good point. Could we kick gas out of the domestic system while exporting endless terajoules of the stuff? Isn’t that what Norway is doing? They get most of their domestic energy from hydro.
Canto: Seems a bit hypocritical I suppose, and here in South Australia we don’t have hydro, but we’ve worked hard to get more of our energy from renewables. We’re still reliant on gas for almost half our energy, but wind and solar together make up the rest – more than half. That’s only going to increase. I’ve now read the whole of Neill’s essay, and she’s made absolutely no mention of renewables. Maybe she’s been living under a rock for the past 30 years, but most likely it’s deliberate – which doesn’t mean she’s anti. She might just have decided to limit her focus on gas.
Jacinta: Well, maybe so, but she’s clearly in favour of more investment in gas, and encouraging more exploration of the stuff. That fact that she ‘blames’ South Australia and other states for not producing more of this fossil fuel, which the IPCC is insisting we should not be producing if we’re to avoid catastrophic global warming, is evidence enough of her contempt for the science, surely.
Canto: But I’ve seen her picture and she looks so cute…
Jacinta: […]
Canto: Anyway we didn’t get round to why energy costs more here, domestically, than in China. Next time perhaps.
References
https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/why-natural-gas-price-caps-australia-are-poor-policy
It’s time to get SwitchedOn and kick gas out of the system: Our future depends on it
a glut of greed – on high gas prices and who’s to blame
Crisis? What crisis….?
So Australia’s industry minister Ed Husic has come out with a claim that I’ve heard from renewable energy journalists more than once before in recent times – that the gas industry is pocketing record profits while households suffer from record power costs. So what exactly is happening and how can it be fixed?
Husic’s remarks were blunt enough: ‘This is not a shortage of supply problem; this is a glut of greed problem that has to be basically short circuited and common sense prevail.” As I reported before, gas companies are more interested in exporting their product overseas, at great profit, than selling it domestically. All the major news outlets are reporting much the same thing – the political right, under conservative leader Dutton, is blaming the overly-rapid shift to renewables (he wants to open up more gas fields), and gas companies are playing the victim role.
The ACCC has been complaining for some time that there isn’t an effective mechanism to prevent gas companies from selling to the highest bidder, at the expense of the local market. There are, of course, worldwide gas shortages, causing the value of the commodity to shoot to record highs. The Financial Review reported on the situation back in July:
The ACCC says prices for east coast domestic gas that will be delivered in 2023 have rocketed to an average of $16 per gigajoule from $8 per gigajoule. Exporters have also dramatically widened the spread of prices offered to domestic buyers from between $7 and $8, to between $7 and as much as $25. This is despite the fact that the estimated forward cost of production is steady at just over $5.
The government clearly has little control over gas exporters – ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ aren’t really cutting it, and domestic costs are affecting businesses as well as households, adding to the many woes of local manufacturing. So I’ve turned to the ever-reliable Renew Economy website in the hope of hearing about plausible solutions. Their journalist Bruce Robertson, of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, is arguing for a gas reservation policy:
Such a policy on new and existing gas fields means gas companies must sell a portion of their gas into the domestic market – rather than putting it all out for export – with an immediate downward effect on prices. Similar to the reservation policy in place for over a decade in Western Australia, the east coast gas reservation policy could be set at $7 a gigajoule (GJ), a price allowing gas companies to achieve a profit over and above a return on investment. In turn, energy consumers would see their electricity bills cut.
It sounds like magic – like, if it’s that easy why wasn’t it done ages ago? The reason Robertson appears to be putting forward is price-fixing and the unwillingness of east coast governments, and the federal government, to deal with it:
In Australia, gas prices are fixed by a cartel of producers on the east coast… – Shell, Origin, Santos, Woodside and Exxon. For decades they have set the price above international parity prices.
It does seem, well, a little unseemly, that Australia, the world’s largest LNG exporter, is having to pay such exorbitant prices for domestic usage – though, in fact, other countries are suffering more. Locally though, South Australia, where I live, is particularly hard hit. Unlike the eastern states, coal plays no part in our energy mix – it’s all gas and renewables, with wind and solar playing a substantial part, more so than in the eastern states. And yet… Sophie Horvath reported in Renew Economy back in May:
A draft report from the SA Productivity Commission finds that despite the state’s solar and wind delivering some of Australia’s lowest wholesale spot prices, prices faced by the state’s consumers were around 20% higher than consumers in New South Wales. And it warns that without the rapid implementation of market and policy reforms, the situation for consumers will only get worse as more and more renewable energy capacity is added.
This sounds, on the face of it, as if SA’s take-up of renewables has backfired, but the situation is rather more complex, as Horvath explains. One problem is variable demand, which ‘produces challenges for the grid’, and another, highlighted by the SA Productivity Commission, is the ‘various market flaws that are stopping the benefits of renewables being passed through to consumers’.
So what are these market flaws? And what are ‘wholesale spot prices’ and why are they so different from the costs to suckers like us? Here’s an excerpt from a ‘Fact Sheet’ from the Australian Energy Market Commission about how the spot market works:
The National Electricity Market (NEM) facilitates the exchange of electricity between generators and retailers. All electricity supplied to the market is sold at the ‘spot’ price…. The NEM operates as a market where generators are paid for the electricity they produce and retailers pay for the electricity their customers consume. The electricity market works as a ‘spot’ market, where power supply and demand is matched instantaneously. The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) co-ordinates this process.
The physical and financial markets for electricity are interlinked. Complex information technology systems underpin the operation of the NEM. The systems balance supply with demand in real time, select which generators are dispatched, determine the spot price, and in doing so, facilitate the financial settlement of the physical market. And all this is done to deliver electricity safely.
So far, this bureaucratic lingo doesn’t inspire confidence. Complex systems synchronise and balance everything, both financially and powerfully, ensuring our safety. Praise the lord. This Fact Sheet, from early in 2017, goes on for three and a bit pages, and I’m trying to understand it. Maybe Ed Kusic is too.
Meanwhile, back in South Australia, it was reported a few months ago that…
Tens of thousands of SA households are set to be hit with increased electricity bills after the energy industry watchdog made the ‘difficult decision’ to increase benchmark prices by hundreds of dollars a year.
So why indeed was this decision so ‘difficult’? The Australian Energy Regulator (AER – there are a headachy number of acronyms in this business), which sets the Default Market Offer (DMO) – a price cap on the charge to customers who, shockingly, don’t bother to shop around for a better deal – has increased the cap due to an 11.8% increase in wholesale electricity costs ‘driven by unplanned power plant outages and the ongoing war in Ukraine’. The fact that SA experienced massive power outages in the last 24 hours due to extreme weather conditions won’t help the situation. The Chair of the AER, Clare Savage, advises shopping around for cheaper deals rather than just accepting the DMO. The AEC (groan) also recommends shopping around, and even haggling for a better deal from retailers. The state government, in response to criticism from the opposition, emphasises focusing on the long-term and the ongoing shift to renewables. State energy minister Tom Koutsantonis expresses his faith – “Our government will reactivate investment in renewables as a hedge against price shocks on fossil fuels”.
Great – I can’t wait.
References
SA renewables surge bringing down energy prices, but consumers miss out
an interminable conversation 5: the RET, Mike Cannon-Brookes, and Big Gas issues
Jacinta: So I’ve heard of this thing called the Renewable Energy Target (RET) – in fact I first heard about it years ago but I’ve paid little attention. Tell me more.
Canto: There’s a government website, the Clean Energy Regulator site, which purports to explain everything. Here’s the briefest statement about it:
The Renewable Energy Target is an Australian Government scheme designed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in the electricity sector and encourage the additional generation of electricity from sustainable and renewable sources.
Of course they have much more to say, in positive-speak, about it all, but a wee footnote at the bottom caught my attention:
In June 2015, the Australian Parliament passed the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment Bill 2015. As part of the amendment bill, the Large-scale Renewable Energy Target was reduced from 41 000 GWh to 33 000 GWh in 2020 with interim and post-2020 targets adjusted accordingly.
I believe the ultra-conservative Tony Abbott was PM in 2015, and the Fossils were calling the shots, as Marian Wilkinson’s The Carbon Club relates. Anyway, it’s a certificate system based on megawatt hours of power generated, and the rather pathetic target was apparently reached, based on approvals of large solar and wind installations, in the second half of 2019.
Jacinta: That’s something perhaps, but the IPCC wasn’t particularly impressed. The Clean Energy Council’s website, Ecogeneration, has boosted the achievement, describing the RET as ‘the most successful emissions reduction policy of all time for Australia’s electricity system’. But it hasn’t had any competition! And ominously, Kane Thornton, CEO of the Clean Energy Council, is quoted as saying ‘the industry doesn’t need new subsidies, we just need certainty’, etc etc, which contradicts everything I’ve heard from Saul Griffith, Mike Cannon-Brookes and others… we’ve been subsidising the fossil fuel industry forever, haven’t we? It’s rebuilding our manufacturing base that needs subsidising. Renewable energy has already become the cheaper option, but we have no EV manufacturing here and only one PV manufacturer.
Canto: Interesting Mike Cannon-Brookes interview in the Financial Review, which introduces the term ESG to me. This stands for Environmental, Social and Governance, perhaps in that order, as factors to be considered in any investment. Which all sounds v positive. And he’s very positive about ESG, which is a positive thing.
Jacinta: Yeah, apparently he’s a billionaire. How the fuck do people become billionaires? Why is it ever allowed?
Canto: Yeah, obviously it’s not just about working hard, like the Congolese in the diamond mines, and various slave populations over the centuries, whose only reward was death. Nature just ain’t fair. Herr Cannon-Brookes is co-founder of a company called Atlassian, which I’ve never heard of. Nor have I heard of their major products, such as Jiro and Trello, which are used by ‘teams’, but I don’t think they play soccer.
Jacinta: Sounds like they’re in the business of business, which is certainly none of our business.
Canto: Yeah, it’s probably all about digital environments. We’re about 40 years out of date. We need to stop reading books, paper is so 20th century.
Jacinta: Anyway, getting back to renewable energy …
Canto: Well this interview with Cannon-Brookes, he sounds pretty sincere, for a billionaire. They’re just people I suppose. If a bit weird. He’s very positive about renewables, and running his business that way, and pretty honest about the issues – like offloading the problem onto others, as he admits to having done, and facing that issue squarely. You know, like Australia exports coal and gas, and doesn’t take responsibility for the emissions. Like Norway.
Jacinta: They don’t have to take responsibility, the way the current system works. Apparently, as of July 2020, Australia became the world’s biggest gas (LNG) exporter, overtaking Qatar. That’s from the Climate Council. It’s hard to keep track of all these organisations. Anyway, Australia was exporting about 80 million tonnes of LNG per year two years ago. According to the latest, it was 77.7 MT (in 20-21 financial year). The article said it has ‘retained its crown’ as the world’s largest exporter. Shouldn’t that be a dunce’s cap?
Canto: So many people are late in getting with the program. By the way, China has taken over from Japan as our number one LNG buyer – adding to our problems with that fascist government. In any case the argument would be – and I’ve heard it stated in a public forum – that we owe our wealth as a nation to these exports, and by extension, to our trading relation with China. .
Jacinta: Well, it’s interesting that the price of gas is rising domestically. Presumably this has something to do with so much of our gas going offshore? And renewables, though growing, are hardly ready to fill the domestic energy gap, right?
Canto: So this is all new stuff to get my head around, but a ‘Bloomberg Green’ video linked below has it that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has produced an interim gas report, a forecast for 2023. It predicts that the supply of gas for next year will fall short of demand by about 56 petajoules – 3% of total demand. This doesn’t sound like much, but with rising gas prices… Anyway the ACCC is recommending that the federal government bring into force the ‘Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism’, pressuring LNG exporters to reserve some of those earmarked exports (70 to 75 percent of production) for the domestic market. Now, some 11% of those exports aren’t covered by long-term contracts – they’re available for those as bids for them, and there might be a few countries bidding, considering the global situation.
Jacinta: Hmmm, sounds like a seller’s market, with impoverished buyers, including domestic ones. So the idea is that the government can intervene to force gas exporters to sell some of their stuff here, with reduced profits?
Canto: Yes, but whether they do is a question. The video goes on to talk about Australia’s new emissions reduction target of 43% on 2005 levels by 2030, with the aim of net zero emissions by 2050. Interestingly, the Bloomberg economist says that while it’s good news to get clear targets after years of nothing much, the targets are still a bit weak. Most notably, only 3% of passenger vehicles sold last year were EVs, and with no manufacturing here in the foreseeable future, the chances of EVs reaching 89% of sales by 2030 – Labor’s target – are surely minuscule.
Jacinta: Yes, but all the other cars purchases would be overseas-made vehicles, wouldn’t they?
Canto: Hmmm, so there might have to be legislation to favour EV imports, as well as plenty of infrastructure… And a turnaround in public attitudes, which I don’t presently see.
Jacinta: Returning to gas, the Australia Institute, which appears to be a left-leaning public policy think tank, has a critique of our gas exporters in another, very brief, video. It just advises turning our backs on gas tout de suite. Forget reserving gas for the domestic market – which might involve something more or less in the form of a bribe to the exporters. Instead, electrify everything, of course. More pronto than pronto, to make up for a lost decade of relative inaction. They describe it as a gas export crisis, in which domestic prices are soaring because so much of our gas is going offshore. A win-win for the gas companies.
Canto: So, is this the situation? Gas companies are in the business of profit. They sell gas overseas, even at the expense of the domestic market, because they can, because they’re owned by private individuals, they can sell to the highest bidder. And If this means gas is scarce domestically, and in high demand, because we’ve become dependent on gas, we haven’t been weaned off it, the gas companies can make another killing on the domestic market? They’re holding us to ransom, so to speak?
Jacinta: Oil and gas companies in the US as well as in Australia are making huge profits currently, due to scarcities caused by war, embargoes and such…
Canto: The Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism was designed to ensure sufficient domestic supply, but it’s not very efficient, and the domestic supply target is too low. Some state governments, notably Western Australia, have a higher domestic reserve, but of course what we need is to switch to renewable-based electric as quickly as possible, to get out from under the control of the fossil fuel barons.
Jacinta: Are gas companies subsidised here?
Canto: Do koalas shit in the trees? Renew Economy has a scathing article about this, posted today. It describes companies like Santos recording super-massive-record profits this year, and the term ‘war profiteering’ is mentioned. This has also been at the expense of the domestic market. Here’s a quote:
Santos categorically stated its project would not affect the domestic market because it would not buy gas out of the domestic market. But that is exactly what it has done. Santos bought large volumes of gas out of the domestic market in the first half of 2022, forcing domestic prices above export prices in the last six months. These actions have generated super profits, gouged from domestic gas consumer and forcing up domestic electricity prices to unaffordable levels. Santos has broken its approval conditions and IEEFA calls on the government to cancel their export licence.
The IEEFA, for our info, is the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Bruce Robertson, who wrote the Renew Economy article, has a similar piece on the IEEFA website. The thing is, the domestic reserve could be raised, and made non-negotiable (it isn’t at present) without having much of an effect on these windfall profits. As it is, gas companies are largely ignoring existing reserve requirements. The ACCC has the capacity to prosecute but apparently has no intention of doing so. They’re also doing nothing to tackle these companies’ collusion re price-fixing and tax avoidance. There’s something rotten about all this. Clearly we’re not going to wean ourselves from gas as quickly as we should, but we certainly shouldn’t be pumping up and sending off ever more of the stuff.
Jacinta: Well, yes, considering that the aim is to electrify everything, and people are starting to get on board with this, that means no new gas fields, so what are these companies going to do with these massive extra profits, other than line the pockets of CEOs and their immediate underlings?
Canto: Well, there will still be offshore markets for the foreseeable, so keep on despairing. Two months ago, the Sydney Morning Herald ran an opinion piece by Tony Wood of the Grattan Institute, arguing for a ‘windfall profit tax’ considering that some importers are paying ‘more than four and up to 10 times the contract prices’. The Federal Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, isn’t interested. And so the rich get richer, for the time being….
References
https://www.cleanenergyregulator.gov.au/RET/About-the-Renewable-Energy-Target
Marian Wilkinson, The Carbon Club, 2020
What the frack? Australia overtakes Qatar as world’s largest gas exporter
Santos windfall: Australia is swimming in subsidised gas and we’re giving it away
https://ieefa.org/resources/why-government-must-break-eastern-australias-gas-cartel
about ozone, its production and depletion
People will remember the ‘hole in the ozone’ issue that came up in the eighties I think, and investigators found that it was all down to CFCs, which were quite quickly banned, and then everything was hunky dory….
Or that’s how I vaguely recall it. Time to take a much closer look.
I take my cue from ‘An ancient ozone catastrophe?’, chapter 4 of David Beerling’s The emerald planet, in which he looks at the evidence for a previous ozone disaster and its possible relation to the great Permian extinction of 252 millions years ago. I’ll probe into that matter in another post. In this post I’ll try to answer some more basic questions – what is ozone, where is the ozone layer and why does it have a hole in it?
Ozone is also known as trioxygen, which gives a handy clue to its structure. Oxygen can exist in different allotropes or molecular structures which are more or less stable. O3, ozone, is much less stable than O2 and has a very pungent chlorine-like odour and a pale blue colour. It’s present in minute quantities throughout the atmosphere but is most concentrated in the lower part of the stratosphere, 20 to 30 kilometres above the Earth’s surface. This region is called the ozone layer, or ozone shield, though it’s still not particularly dense with ozone, and that density varies geographically and seasonally. Ozone’s instability means that it doesn’t last long, and has to be replenished continually.
In 1928 chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were developed as a seemingly safe form of refrigerant, which, under patent as Freon, came to be used in air-conditioners, fridges, hair-sprays and a variety of other products. As it turned out, these CFCs aren’t so harmless when they reach the upper atmosphere, where the chlorine reacts with ozone to form chlorine monoxide (ClO), and regular O2. This reaction is activated by ultraviolet radiation, which then breaks up the unstable ClO, leaving the chlorine to react with more ozone in a continuing cycle.
By the eighties, it had become clear that something was going wrong with the ozone layer. Studies revealed that a gigantic hole in the layer had opened up over Antarctica, and without going into detail, CFCs were found to be largely responsible. There was the usual fight with vested business interests, but in 1987 the Montreal protocol against the use of ozone-depleting substances (ODS) was drawn up, a landmark agreement which has been successful in starting off the long and far from completed process of repair of the ozone shield.
As a very effective oxidant, ozone has many commercial applications, but the same oxidising property makes it a danger to plant and animal tissue. Much better for us to keep most of it up above the troposphere, where its ability to absorb UV radiation has made it virtually essential for maintaining healthy life on Earth’s surface.
So here are some questions. Why does ozone proliferate particularly at the top of the troposphere, in the lower stratosphere? If it’s so reactive, how does it maintain itself at a particular rate? Has the thinning or reduction of that layer seriously influenced life on Earth in the past? From my reading, mainly of Beerling, I think I can answer the first two questions. The third question, which Beerling explores in the above-mentioned chapter of his book, is more speculative, and more interesting.
Sidney Chapman, a brilliant geophysicist and mathematician of the early twentieth century, essentially answered the first question. He realised that ozone was both formed and destroyed by the action of sunlight, specifically UV radiation, on atmospheric oxygen. He calculated that this action would reduce and finally stop at a point approximately 15 km above sea level, because the reactions which had produced the ozone higher up had absorbed the UV radiation in the process. No activation energy to produce any more ozone. That explained the lower limit of ozone. The upper limit was explained by the lack of oxygen in the upper stratosphere to produce a stable layer – for production to exceed destruction. This was interesting confirmation of observations made earlier by the meteorologist and balloonist Léon-Phillippe Teisserenc de Bort, who noted that, contrary to his expectations, the air temperature didn’t fall gradually with altitude but reached a point of stabilisation where the air even seemed to become warmer. He named this upper layer of air the stratosphere, and the cooler more turbulent layer below he called the troposphere. It’s now known that this upper-air warming is caused by the absorption of UV radiation by ozone.
Our picture of ozone still had some holes in it, however, as it seemed there was a lot less of it around than the calculations of Chapman suggested. To quote from Beerling’s book:
… there had to be some as-yet unappreciated means by which ozone was being destroyed. The fundamental leap required to solve the problem was taken comparatively recently, in 1970, by a then young scientist called Paul Crutzen. Crutzen showed that, remarkably, the oxides of nitrogen, produced by soil microbes, catalysed the destruction of ozone many kilometres up in the stratosphere. Few people appreciate the marvellous fact that the cycling of nitrogen by the biosphere exerts an influence on the global ozone layer: life on Earth reaches out to the chemistry of the stratosphere.
Now to explain why the hole in the ozone shield occurred above the Antarctic. My understanding and explanation starts with reading Beerling and ends with this post from the USA’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory (NOAA/ESRL).
The ozone hole over Antarctica varies in size, and is largest in the months of winter and early spring. During these months, due to the large and mountainous land mass there, average minimum temperatures can reach as low as −90°C, which is on average 10°C lower than Arctic winter minimums (Arctic temperatures are generally more variable than in the Antarctic). When winter minimums fall below around −78°C at the poles, polar stratospheric clouds are formed, and this happens far more often in the Antarctic – for about five months in the year. Chemical reactions between halogen gases and these clouds produce the highly reactive gases chlorine monoxide (ClO) and bromine monoxide (BrO), which are destructive to ozone.
Most ozone is produced in the tropical stratosphere, in reactions driven by sunlight, but a slow movement of stratospheric air, known as the Brewer-Dobson circulation, transports it over time to the poles, so that ozone ends up being more sparse in the tropics. Interestingly, although most ozone-depleting substances – mainly halogen gases – are produced in the more humanly-populated northern hemisphere, complex tropospheric convection patterns distribute the gases more or less evenly throughout the lower atmosphere. Once in the stratosphere and distributed to the poles, the air carrying the halogen-gas products becomes isolated due to strong circumpolar winds, which are at their height during winter and early spring. This isolation preserves ozone depletion reactions for many weeks or months. The polar vortex at the Antarctic, being stronger than in the Arctic, is more effective in reducing the flow of ozone from tropical regions.
So – I’ve looked here briefly at what ozone is, where it is, and how it’s produced and destroyed, but I haven’t really touched on its importance for protecting life here on Earth. So that, and whether its depletion may have had catastrophic consequences 250 million years ago, will be the focus of my next post.
References
The Emerald Planet, by David Beerling, Oxford Landmark Science, 2009
the ACCC, coal, renewables, arguments, and the future
Well as I watch my readership reduce to almost zero in its usual ups and downs I wonder whether to write just for myself or to attract a readership, so I’ll just go ahead and write, but I was amused to listen to Senator Matt Canavan, our Minister for Resources and a member of the Nationals, responding to the ACCC’s recommendations for bringing energy prices down. At one point he remarked ‘who cares where we get our fuel from?’, and compared the different fuel varieties to different types of ice-cream in a sweet shop. Presumably he was referring to encouraging an energy mix, but for someone who presumably knows something about resources, since he holds that portfolio (though that’s hardly ever proof of expertise in government), it struck me as bizarre. Who cares where we get our fuel from or what type it is? The Chinese government cares, for one. It has worked hard in recent years to combat pollution in Beijing, largely in response to adverse publicity. China’s capital, ranked as the fifth most polluted city in China in 2011, has since dropped out of the top twenty, largely due to the adoption of cleaner, greener energy and technology. Unfortunately, many other cities in China’s highly populated and industrialised north-western region still suffer from an environment which has reduced life expectancy there by some 5.5 years, according to a joint study by Chinese and American university teams in 2013. This sadly suggests that the Chinese government appears to be more concerned with its international image than with protecting its own citizens from hazardous emissions. On the bright side, Beijing’s improvement indicates what can be done to improve environments when governments and industry get their act together.
Just as oils aint oils, fuels aren’t just fuels. Remember kerosene? I remember huddling over a kerosene heater in the seventies, along with student housemates. But in other parts, kero isn’t a past-tense energy source. In many of the poorest countries, particularly in Africa, it’s used for lighting, even though it’s toxic, causes frequent burns and fires, and produces inferior light. It has proved difficult to wean consumers from kerosene in these countries, even though there are potentially cheaper options available. There’s an interesting article about the problems and possible solutions here.
But really, since energy generation (i.e. using x,y, or z as fuel) is the number one cause of air pollution and global warming emissions, it’s not like comparing caramel praline with black raspberry crunch. Coal is of course the worst in terms of emissions. As of 2016, some 44% of US electricity comes from coal, but it accounts for 80% of that country’s power plant carbon emissions. Australia has great reserves of coal, but it exports much of it to China and, more recently, South-East Asia. In fact Australia has experienced a recent boom in coal exports, earning a record $56.5 billion in 2017. Unsurprisingly many conservative pollies are clamouring for more coal mines and more local use of the resource as a solution to our seemingly ever-rising energy costs. Maybe we too can pull out of the Paris Agreement? Of course, our massive coal exports do tend to undermine that agreement, while the government can congratulate itself on keeping domestic use within more or less acceptable limits (see graph above). Currently, we’re the largest coal exporter and the third largest exporter of carbon pollution in the world, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. But of course it’s not our fault that other countries want to pollute with our resources, is it? We just take the money and keep our country clean (as do Norway, Denmark and Indonesia).
So considering our dubious status in terms of global emissions (but, as many experts point out, it’s a little arrogant to expect developing and transitioning countries like China, our biggest coal customer, to rapidly abandon a fuel that the developed world has used for so long, thereby gaining ascendancy), it’s interesting to note that AGL, Australia’s largest owner of coal fired power stations and biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, is continuing its push away from coal in spite of government pressure. Of course the government itself is divided on this, with Turnbull and Frydenberg largely at odds with the Nationals on the question of transition, but looking into the future, it seems inevitable that demand for coal will decline – the only question is the rate of that decline, which of course depends on how quickly other nations move away from coal. All of those nations have signed the Paris Agreement. Already, coal ports such as Newcastle, and Australia’s mining regions, are looking to diversify, and energy experts are debating the pursuance of a coal tax to support the industry as it transitions.
But Canavan and the Nationals are having none of this. They point to the above-mentioned boom and a currently accelerating demand, though Canavan is realistic enough to admit that future forecasts are reliably unreliable. Much will depend on cost declines and advancing technology in renewables, as well as various political scenarios.
Naturally the renewable energy sector is looking critically at what one of its experts calls the ‘series of scattershot proposals’ by the ACCC on reducing our electricity costs. The ACCC’s recommendation that the small-scale renewable energy scheme (SRES), a subsidy which mainly applies to rooftop solar, should be wound down, is seen as unfair if not counter-productive by the sector. The SRES is already slated to be wound down by 2030, and its earlier abolition (by 2021, according to ACCC recommendations) would mainly affect low-income and rental householders. There’s currently a new boom in rooftop solar, with rising energy costs being the main cause. So penalising future adopters of rooftop solar seems an odd way to reduce the problems they’re adopting solar to avoid. As to the possibility of new gas- or coal-fired power plants, a dream of the Nationals and renegade ultra-conservative Tony Abbott, that’s unlikely, considering changing public attitudes and the reasonable likelihood of a change of federal government by next year. The good thing about the ACCC’s analysis is that the behaviour of retailers, and the phenomenon of price gouging, have finally been criticised, and the idea of states writing down the value of their networks has been floated. Consumers shouldn’t have to bear the burden of extra energy infrastructure and errors in predicting future energy demand.
There have been many interesting responses to the report, to say the least. Danny Price, a leading analyst of the national energy market over three decades, regards the report as overly political in that it shies away from criticising the lack of a much-needed bipartisan approach to energy policy. Confusion and ideological squabbling over carbon pricing – the disastrous scrapping by the Abbott government of a carefully formulated carbon tax being the low point – has been a disincentive to major investment, and banks here are refusing to finance new coal-fired power stations, which would only be built via massive government subsidies. Consequently we’ve seen an upsurge in interest in renewables from consumers and business, which also reflects worldwide growth, with major oil companies like BP joining the fray.
Of course the problem of reliable back-up power remains, and analyst Ian Verrender has criticised the ACCC report for omitting his best solution – gas. Gas turbines are more flexible than coal generators as well as producing fewer emissions. Australia is a major exporter of gas, but our companies have been providing little for domestic consumption, a situation which was only partly remedied by recent federal intervention. Yet the Nationals are more interested in coal than gas, in spite of its many problems, and its inefficiencies in providing precise back-up supply. Gas, hydro and batteries are far more efficient in this respect.
A recent study by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has also backed renewables (though apparently the current federal government isn’t listening). It has released its Integrated Systems Plan, reported on here by Giles Parkinson:
Based on its “neutral” scenario, which comprises existing federal and state government policies, the lowest cost replacement [for retiring coal-fired suppliers] will be solar (28GW), wind (10.5GW) and storage (17GW and 90GWh). Just 500MW of flexible gas plant will be needed, and no new coal. It says this portfolio in total can produce 90TWh (net) of energy per annum, more than offsetting the energy lost from retiring coal fired generation.
AEMO has also highlighted the need for new transmission infrastructure, as transformative and disruptive energy developments continue around the country. The need for forward planning should be obvious and governments – especially the federal government – ignore this at their peril. A change of federal government may be the answer, but only if the incoming government has a thorough-going plan to integrate and manage this clear and obvious national move away from fossil fuels. Such plans are already being drawn up – we just need the will, and some bipartisan support, to implement them.
