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Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Stationary Energy Plan
15 de febrero de 2010
Beyond Zero Emissions' Zero Carbon Australia 2020 (ZCA2020) Stationary Energy Plan is a detailed, costed blueprint demonstrating how Australia can reach zero emissions electricity by 2020 using existing technology.
Beyond Zero Emissions' Zero Carbon Australia 2020 (ZCA2020) Stationary Energy Plan is a detailed, costed blueprint demonstrating how Australia can reach zero emissions electricity by 2020 using existing commercialised technology.
The Stationary Energy Sector Report concludes that there are no technological impediments to transforming Australia’s stationary energy sector to zero emissions over the next ten years.
The costs of transformation are adequately offset by savings made from shifting away from the business as usual scenario. No resource constraints were identified. With adequate societal and political commitment and regulatory support, the goal of an efficient and competitive zero-emissions stationary energy sector is well within Australia’s reach.
Beyond Zero Emissions will be presenting the results of our ZCA2020 Stationary Energy Plan at the Sustainable Living Festival on the 21st of February and our Monthly Discussion Group on 1 March.
Incorporating only proven and commercialised technologies, requiring an estimated capital investment equivalent to only 3-3.5% of gross domestic product over ten years, the ZCA2020 Project outlines how Australia can transition to 100% renewable energy production by 2020.
Australia has the best solar resource of any developed country. This is Australia’s primary strategic advantage in the new zero-carbon economy. The backbone technology for Australia’s 2020 electricity generation system is therefore concentrating solar thermal (CST) power-towers with molten salt heat storage. This technology is already being installed in Spain and the USA. Residential and commercial photovoltaic systems (solar panels) will still be used to reduce demand on the electricity grid during sunny periods.
With a dozen geographically diverse plant sites, CST provides readily available (dispatchable) electricity 24 hours a day. These 24-hour baseload solar plants use mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a receiver, then store the generated heat in hot molten salt at 565-650ºC. The heat stored in this molten salt is used to boil water, creating steam to drive conventional turbines, and is available day or night. When the turbine is idle, heat is taken off the “cold” 290ºC salt storage tank to keep the turbine seals warm, allowing fast starting as seen in the best hydroelectricity and gas plants, making them amongst the highest value electricity plants. This capacity for both baseload and fast-start dispatchable power generation allows CST plants to address and profit from demand peaks.
CST power-towers with molten salt heat storage are able to operate at 60 – 100% of maximum turbine output for up to 90% of the hours each year with very low maintenance shutdown requirements. Air-cooling of the power cycle reduces water requirements to less than 12% of a conventional thermal power plant (such as conventional coal plants). Australia is well-positioned to supply the requisite concrete, steel, glass and expertise for the construction of these plants across the country creating many jobs in the process.
Twelve sites around Australia have been chosen for CST installations, accounting for transmission availability and quality of resource (Figure 5 and 6 – yellow squares). Each site will have a capacity of approximately 3500 Megawatts electrical (MWe), giving a total of 42 Gigawatts electrical (GWe). Each site installation consists of around 20 power tower modules, allowing for these to be scaled up from 50MWe in early installations to 217MWe in later models. Each CST module consists of a molten salt power tower system with
steam turbine, and enough mirror field to provide thermal heat for both daytime power generation, and stored energy for night-time generation. The molten salt storage is sufficient for up to 17 hours generation at full power. A particular emphasis was placed on sites with high winter-time solar incidence, as this will be the critical system supply period. Site-by-site solar resource data is publicly available through Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology and NASA.
Twenty per cent of the nation’s CST system will be installed in 4 years (from 2011 - 2014). This equates to an installed capacity of 8,700MWe, operating for an average 17 hours per day including storage to provide 55TWh/yr. This is 17% of the projected total 2020 national stationary energy demand. As production capacity increases, the remaining CST plants will be constructed from 2015-2020.
Costings of CST are based on the U.S. Department of Energy and Sargent & Lundy Consulting LLC projections. Cost projections were developed through investigating industrial learning curves and the impact of economies of scale. Sargent & Lundy determined that once 8.7 GW of molten salt power tower capacity has been installed globally, solar thermal power will provide electricity at a cost competitive with conventional coal power (~ 5 cents/kWh). These are the projections ZCA2020 has used in calculating the CST component of the transition to a zero emissions stationary energy sector, taking into account the higher costs of the first CST plants to be built.
Consistent, dispersed wind power generation
World-class on-shore wind energy resources are Australia’s second strategic advantage in renewable energy. Wind power is the cheapest of all clean energy sources available in Australia and is technologically mature. ZCA2020 couples wind with CST with molten salt storage to provide reliable, dispatchable, lowest-cost, and emissions-free electricity. Wind power is dispatched to the grid whenever it is available, and power generated from the CST molten salt storage makes up the difference to meet demand at all times.
Approximately 48 GWe of installed wind turbine capacity (~ 8,000 x 6 MWe wind turbines) is proposed in addition to Australia’s current 1.5 GWe, running at an average annual capacity factor of 30%. ZCA2020 demonstrates that 40% of Australia’s annual electricity demand, 130TWh/year, will be generated by wind farms.
Biomass and Hydro for backup
Biomass combustion and hydroelectricity (using only existing hydro capacity) are used for system backup during extended periods of winter-time cloud cover that coincides at more than one solar plant location. Just 12% of Australia’s annual crop residual wheat straw resource would provide 10 full days back-up, equivalent to running 50% of the CST plants at 100% capacity for the period. Combustion in simple burners annexed to the molten salt storage at CST plants allows the use of existing electricity generation and transmission infrastructure, minimising the additional cost. Pelletisation increases the energy density of wheat straw biomass and reduces the cost of transporting it to CST power stations. Thereby the ZCA2020 system is able to ensure reliable supply of electricity year-round.
Biogas, produced by fermentation of organic waste streams, can provide a renewable form of combustible gas to supply current demand for natural gas that cannot be electrified. Methane produced in bioreactors is a viable feedstock for industrial processes currently reliant on natural gas for carbon-based chemical reactions. The ZCA2020 Sector Report: Land Use and Agriculture will also detail how biomass energy generation is coupled with bio-char carbon draw-down and sequestration to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Electricity Transmission Upgrades
Transmission upgrades are necessary to deliver the CST and wind power to demand centres (such as cities and industrial sites), and achieve stability in the electric grid by allowing greater and more flexible transport of electricity around Australia. ZCA2020 costings include the construction of these electrical transmission lines. A 500 kilovolt (kV) alternating current transmission system will connect new power stations located near populated regions. High-voltage direct current (HVDC) is to be used for low-loss long-distance transmission from remote areas to demand centres increasing supply security and decreasing transmission losses.
Transport Revolution
Australia currently spends approximately AU$30 billion per year on liquid transport fuels, and the cost of these imports increases year on year as domestic oil production sources decline. According to the CSIRO, this annual burden could increase up to 6 times by 2018. ZCA2020 identifies avoidance of the high future costs of liquid fuels as a major economic offset to the costs of transforming Australia’s energy supply infrastructure. Thus, improving access to public transport and converting the vehicle fleet to electricity (and where necessary range-extending hybrid electric vehicles) is needed for climate as well as economic and energy security. Detail on the transition to a zero carbon transport sector will be outlined in the ZCA2020 sector report on transport and preliminary results have been used in the final energy supply scenario in the ZCA2020 stationary energy report.
Elimination of Natural Gas
In Australia, more end-user energy is supplied by natural gas than by any other commercial energy source. A major use of natural gas in residential, commercial, and industrial situations is space heating, along with industrial furnaces in manufacturing and mining. ZCA2020 acknowledges that the elimination of natural gas as an energy source is a challenge.
Nevertheless, a shift away from fossil gas is achievable and can be done by improving building energy efficiency (by an average of 20%), switching to electrical sources of energy (such as high efficiency heat-pumps and induction cook-tops), while in industrial settings using electrically delivered heat and even direct solar co-generation where appropriate. Further detail on eliminating fossil fuel natural gas from use in the Australian economy will be given in the Buildings and Industrial Processes ZCA2020 sector plans.
Levelling Demand Peaks
The present Australian electricity supply system experiences very large differences between demand peaks and troughs. For much of the year, energy supply systems operate far below their maximum capacity, while at peak demand times, the system is stressed, sometimes to the point of failure.
Under ZCA2020, electricity demand will peak in winter, due to the requirements of electrical heat pumps which will offset existing inefficient gas-fired space heating. For optimal system efficiency, a demand profile much flatter than the present will be achieved via the use of a “smart-grid” to schedule off-peak vehicle battery charging, off-peak heat-pump solar hot water boosting and off-peak heating, cooling and refrigeration. This smart grid technology will help shift energy use from peak times to off-peak times, thereby stabilising electricity demand.
Investing in the transition
The ZCA2020 Stationary Energy Sector Report has found that AU$35-40 billion per year must be invested over a 10 year period in order to transition to a 100% renewable stationary energy sector. A full cost breakdown is given in the full report, detailing the investment needed to put in place the energy supply infrastructure – wind energy, solar, biomass installations and associated electrical transmission upgrades. Later reports will look at the costs of demand-side investment –i.e. the Industrial Processes Sector Report will detail the costs associated with large-scale conversion of industrial gas to electrical heating and the Transport Sector Report will look at electric vehicle and public transport investments required.
beyondzeroemissions.org/
The Stationary Energy Sector Report concludes that there are no technological impediments to transforming Australia’s stationary energy sector to zero emissions over the next ten years.
The costs of transformation are adequately offset by savings made from shifting away from the business as usual scenario. No resource constraints were identified. With adequate societal and political commitment and regulatory support, the goal of an efficient and competitive zero-emissions stationary energy sector is well within Australia’s reach.
Beyond Zero Emissions will be presenting the results of our ZCA2020 Stationary Energy Plan at the Sustainable Living Festival on the 21st of February and our Monthly Discussion Group on 1 March.
Incorporating only proven and commercialised technologies, requiring an estimated capital investment equivalent to only 3-3.5% of gross domestic product over ten years, the ZCA2020 Project outlines how Australia can transition to 100% renewable energy production by 2020.
Australia has the best solar resource of any developed country. This is Australia’s primary strategic advantage in the new zero-carbon economy. The backbone technology for Australia’s 2020 electricity generation system is therefore concentrating solar thermal (CST) power-towers with molten salt heat storage. This technology is already being installed in Spain and the USA. Residential and commercial photovoltaic systems (solar panels) will still be used to reduce demand on the electricity grid during sunny periods.
With a dozen geographically diverse plant sites, CST provides readily available (dispatchable) electricity 24 hours a day. These 24-hour baseload solar plants use mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a receiver, then store the generated heat in hot molten salt at 565-650ºC. The heat stored in this molten salt is used to boil water, creating steam to drive conventional turbines, and is available day or night. When the turbine is idle, heat is taken off the “cold” 290ºC salt storage tank to keep the turbine seals warm, allowing fast starting as seen in the best hydroelectricity and gas plants, making them amongst the highest value electricity plants. This capacity for both baseload and fast-start dispatchable power generation allows CST plants to address and profit from demand peaks.
CST power-towers with molten salt heat storage are able to operate at 60 – 100% of maximum turbine output for up to 90% of the hours each year with very low maintenance shutdown requirements. Air-cooling of the power cycle reduces water requirements to less than 12% of a conventional thermal power plant (such as conventional coal plants). Australia is well-positioned to supply the requisite concrete, steel, glass and expertise for the construction of these plants across the country creating many jobs in the process.
Twelve sites around Australia have been chosen for CST installations, accounting for transmission availability and quality of resource (Figure 5 and 6 – yellow squares). Each site will have a capacity of approximately 3500 Megawatts electrical (MWe), giving a total of 42 Gigawatts electrical (GWe). Each site installation consists of around 20 power tower modules, allowing for these to be scaled up from 50MWe in early installations to 217MWe in later models. Each CST module consists of a molten salt power tower system with
steam turbine, and enough mirror field to provide thermal heat for both daytime power generation, and stored energy for night-time generation. The molten salt storage is sufficient for up to 17 hours generation at full power. A particular emphasis was placed on sites with high winter-time solar incidence, as this will be the critical system supply period. Site-by-site solar resource data is publicly available through Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology and NASA.
Twenty per cent of the nation’s CST system will be installed in 4 years (from 2011 - 2014). This equates to an installed capacity of 8,700MWe, operating for an average 17 hours per day including storage to provide 55TWh/yr. This is 17% of the projected total 2020 national stationary energy demand. As production capacity increases, the remaining CST plants will be constructed from 2015-2020.
Costings of CST are based on the U.S. Department of Energy and Sargent & Lundy Consulting LLC projections. Cost projections were developed through investigating industrial learning curves and the impact of economies of scale. Sargent & Lundy determined that once 8.7 GW of molten salt power tower capacity has been installed globally, solar thermal power will provide electricity at a cost competitive with conventional coal power (~ 5 cents/kWh). These are the projections ZCA2020 has used in calculating the CST component of the transition to a zero emissions stationary energy sector, taking into account the higher costs of the first CST plants to be built.
Consistent, dispersed wind power generation
World-class on-shore wind energy resources are Australia’s second strategic advantage in renewable energy. Wind power is the cheapest of all clean energy sources available in Australia and is technologically mature. ZCA2020 couples wind with CST with molten salt storage to provide reliable, dispatchable, lowest-cost, and emissions-free electricity. Wind power is dispatched to the grid whenever it is available, and power generated from the CST molten salt storage makes up the difference to meet demand at all times.
Approximately 48 GWe of installed wind turbine capacity (~ 8,000 x 6 MWe wind turbines) is proposed in addition to Australia’s current 1.5 GWe, running at an average annual capacity factor of 30%. ZCA2020 demonstrates that 40% of Australia’s annual electricity demand, 130TWh/year, will be generated by wind farms.
Biomass and Hydro for backup
Biomass combustion and hydroelectricity (using only existing hydro capacity) are used for system backup during extended periods of winter-time cloud cover that coincides at more than one solar plant location. Just 12% of Australia’s annual crop residual wheat straw resource would provide 10 full days back-up, equivalent to running 50% of the CST plants at 100% capacity for the period. Combustion in simple burners annexed to the molten salt storage at CST plants allows the use of existing electricity generation and transmission infrastructure, minimising the additional cost. Pelletisation increases the energy density of wheat straw biomass and reduces the cost of transporting it to CST power stations. Thereby the ZCA2020 system is able to ensure reliable supply of electricity year-round.
Biogas, produced by fermentation of organic waste streams, can provide a renewable form of combustible gas to supply current demand for natural gas that cannot be electrified. Methane produced in bioreactors is a viable feedstock for industrial processes currently reliant on natural gas for carbon-based chemical reactions. The ZCA2020 Sector Report: Land Use and Agriculture will also detail how biomass energy generation is coupled with bio-char carbon draw-down and sequestration to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Electricity Transmission Upgrades
Transmission upgrades are necessary to deliver the CST and wind power to demand centres (such as cities and industrial sites), and achieve stability in the electric grid by allowing greater and more flexible transport of electricity around Australia. ZCA2020 costings include the construction of these electrical transmission lines. A 500 kilovolt (kV) alternating current transmission system will connect new power stations located near populated regions. High-voltage direct current (HVDC) is to be used for low-loss long-distance transmission from remote areas to demand centres increasing supply security and decreasing transmission losses.
Transport Revolution
Australia currently spends approximately AU$30 billion per year on liquid transport fuels, and the cost of these imports increases year on year as domestic oil production sources decline. According to the CSIRO, this annual burden could increase up to 6 times by 2018. ZCA2020 identifies avoidance of the high future costs of liquid fuels as a major economic offset to the costs of transforming Australia’s energy supply infrastructure. Thus, improving access to public transport and converting the vehicle fleet to electricity (and where necessary range-extending hybrid electric vehicles) is needed for climate as well as economic and energy security. Detail on the transition to a zero carbon transport sector will be outlined in the ZCA2020 sector report on transport and preliminary results have been used in the final energy supply scenario in the ZCA2020 stationary energy report.
Elimination of Natural Gas
In Australia, more end-user energy is supplied by natural gas than by any other commercial energy source. A major use of natural gas in residential, commercial, and industrial situations is space heating, along with industrial furnaces in manufacturing and mining. ZCA2020 acknowledges that the elimination of natural gas as an energy source is a challenge.
Nevertheless, a shift away from fossil gas is achievable and can be done by improving building energy efficiency (by an average of 20%), switching to electrical sources of energy (such as high efficiency heat-pumps and induction cook-tops), while in industrial settings using electrically delivered heat and even direct solar co-generation where appropriate. Further detail on eliminating fossil fuel natural gas from use in the Australian economy will be given in the Buildings and Industrial Processes ZCA2020 sector plans.
Levelling Demand Peaks
The present Australian electricity supply system experiences very large differences between demand peaks and troughs. For much of the year, energy supply systems operate far below their maximum capacity, while at peak demand times, the system is stressed, sometimes to the point of failure.
Under ZCA2020, electricity demand will peak in winter, due to the requirements of electrical heat pumps which will offset existing inefficient gas-fired space heating. For optimal system efficiency, a demand profile much flatter than the present will be achieved via the use of a “smart-grid” to schedule off-peak vehicle battery charging, off-peak heat-pump solar hot water boosting and off-peak heating, cooling and refrigeration. This smart grid technology will help shift energy use from peak times to off-peak times, thereby stabilising electricity demand.
Investing in the transition
The ZCA2020 Stationary Energy Sector Report has found that AU$35-40 billion per year must be invested over a 10 year period in order to transition to a 100% renewable stationary energy sector. A full cost breakdown is given in the full report, detailing the investment needed to put in place the energy supply infrastructure – wind energy, solar, biomass installations and associated electrical transmission upgrades. Later reports will look at the costs of demand-side investment –i.e. the Industrial Processes Sector Report will detail the costs associated with large-scale conversion of industrial gas to electrical heating and the Transport Sector Report will look at electric vehicle and public transport investments required.
beyondzeroemissions.org/
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Strategic Action Plan for Energy and Climate Change
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