SMH (ASPO Australia's Garry Glazebrook) - Dig deep to reach the transport vision

THE Premier's announcement this week of a $12.5 billion metro line from Rouse Hill to the city is truly visionary. But is it a mirage?

The proposal sensibly confirms the earlier commitment to the north-west rail line by 2015, but adds a new connection between Epping and the CBD under Gladesville, Drummoyne, Rozelle, and Pyrmont, to be finished two years later. It promises a new metro-style operation and a new public transport operator that hopefully can bring Sydney's ailing rail system into this century. Additional metro lines to the south-eastern suburbs and between Parramatta and the CBD are proposed.

This is brave and exciting, and the Government and its planners should be congratulated on their vision. However, there are some technical and operational questions that need answering. Will the soon-to-be completed Epping-Chatswood line become a ghost line, when it is starved of feeder trains from the north-west? How can the overcrowding at Wynyard and Town Hall stations be relieved if the harbour rail link is deferred? Have the complex engineering challenges of crossing the harbour four times been properly thought through? Will the new metros be compatible with existing CityRail electrical systems, signalling, platform heights and loading gauges, and if not where will the 35 or more trains required for the new line be stabled? Will this project trigger compensation for the owners of the M2 motorway?

SMH - City catches fast-tracked metro

The NSW Government has promised to build a state-of-the-art underground metro to the city's north-west in just nine years, ushering in a long-awaited new era of commuter travel to Sydney. Yesterday the Premier, Morris Iemma, finally unveiled the $12 billion North West Metro, with high-frequency trains to Rouse Hill via Drummoyne, Gladesville and Ryde in a strategy foreshadowed by the Herald in September and revealed in detail in this paper last month.

The announcement means the Government's linchpin transport policy for the past three years - the $8 billion Metropolitan Rail Expansion Plan - has been dumped. The second harbour crossing and city centre link promised under the plan, seen as crucial to the troubled CityRail network, will not be built. Instead, the Government's new team of transport planners has been forced by Treasury to turn the North West Rail Link into an independent metro-style line that can be, at least in part, privately financed.

SMH - Dirty old Munmorah at risk in changing times

FEW coal-fired power plants are more vulnerable in the energy revolution than Munmorah on the Central Coast. The state-owned Munmorah has a reputation as the oldest and dirtiest coal generator in NSW. It emits more than a tonne of greenhouse pollution for every megawatt hour of electricity it generates. In 2006 it emitted about 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, one of the main greenhouse gases, according to figures provided by Hugh Saddler, managing director of Energy Strategies. That meant Munmorah was responsible for about 1 per cent of the state's total carbon dioxide emissions.

Under the emissions trading scheme outlined by Ross Garnaut, coal-fired power stations such as Munmorah would find their costs rising as they were forced to buy permits to emit carbon. Professor Garnaut argued in his report yesterday that coal-fired power generators should not be compensated with free permits to emit when the Rudd Government brings in the emissions trading scheme from 2010. He said there was no evidence that free permits would stop electricity price rises being passed on to consumers and could give super-profits to the generators.

SMH - Fast-track for seabed storage of emissions

AN AMBITIOUS plan to allow millions of tonnes of carbon emissions from coal-fired power stations to be stored under Australia's seabeds will go to federal cabinet within weeks despite environmental objections.

The federal Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson, said yesterday the plan was vital to making Australia a leading player in clean coal technology. "Coal will continue to make a major contribution to Australia's energy needs well into the future and therefore we need to urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired electricity generation," he told the Australian Energy Alliance conference in Sydney.

The plan will be pushed through Parliament this year so the Rudd Government can begin releasing acres of offshore sedimentary basins for companies to search for storage sites. The move would make Australia "one of the first countries in the world to establish a regulated carbon capture and storage regime", Mr Ferguson said. But he acknowledged that the question of who would accept legal liability for the long-term seabed storage had yet to be worked out.

SMH - Carbon permits promise rivers of cash

SELLING permits to businesses that wanted to emit greenhouse gases would raise large amounts of government revenue, the climate change review head, Ross Garnaut, said yesterday. "It's a big number," he told reporters, but he was reluctant to put a figure on it until Treasury modelling was completed later this year. The Climate Institute this week estimated that the money raised from permits could total as much as $20 billion by 2020 - more than the current annual defence budget - but Professor Garnaut said only: "There are going to be very large amounts of money."

SMH - Ross Garnaut, the green man

This week Garnaut presented his vision for an emissions trading scheme which the Federal Government is relying on to significantly drive down Australia's high level of emissions without devastating the economy. He will hand his final report to the Government in the second half of the year.

It is an Australian version of the 2006 report done by Sir Nicholas Stern for the British Treasury which found the cost of not acting to avert dangerous climate change would be comparable to the combined effects of both world wars and the Great Depression. Stern concluded it was no longer possible to arrest climate change developments over the next 20 to 30 years and instead opted for a strategy to reduce the impact. Stabilising the atmosphere would require cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of about 80 per cent on current levels, a figure supported by Garnaut in an interim report he released last month.

The analysis so far and the papers Garnaut has already produced have "put an H-bomb under the debate", says one person familiar with the review process. "He's been a bit hot and cold. At the beginning he was a bit wobbly, and interested in China and too many issues that were at the margin. But he's smart and he's challenging and he is outside the box. He doesn't take any crap."

SMH - Compo for green energy casualties

THE price of electricity and petrol will rise for all Australians under the Rudd Government's plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions, and poorer households will be hardest hit, its chief economic adviser on climate change warned yesterday. In a blunt report which puts him in conflict with the NSW Government and the nation's power industry, Ross Garnaut argues that coal-fired power generators should not be compensated with free permits to emit greenhouse gases when the federal emissions trading scheme is introduced in two years.

Money raised by selling the permits should be used to compensate the poor instead, and help Australians adjust to the new carbon-constrained economy. This could include making payments to households, supporting declining communities around the coal-fired generators, investments in clean energy technology, and public transport.

The Age - $33 million to help bush go solar

The Victorian Government will spend $33 million helping households in regional and rural Victoria switch to solar hot water. Eligible residents can claim a rebate of up to $2500 to install a hot water unit. State Minister for Environment and Climate Change Gavin Jennings said the rebate was part of a plan to help households shift from gas or electric hot water systems to solar hot water.

The National (PNG) - Geothermal power big winner for Lihir

Energy Current - Maari platform sails for New Zealand

The Australian - Oil Search to drop assets for PNG play

The Australian - Origin raises $1.5bn to fund growth

Smart Electric News - Excess Energy - what to do

A main criticism of renewable energy is that it is pulsating and unpredictable. There is certainly some truth in this although not as much as it appears at first glance. For instance, as solar panels become common all over the country, places in the sun will balance places with cloud cover. The same applies to wind power. As fronts move from South to North along New Zealand, a pulse of wind generated electricity moves with it to be distributed by our power grid. Hydro is the ideal power source to instantly balance any shortfalls and New Zealand is rich in Hydro resources. On top of this any system which store excess energy in times of high generation, as mentioned above, and makes it available in times of low generation is of value.

Here in New Zealand in our present (2008) la Nina climate an interesting fact has come to light. Our wind generation is somewhat lower than average while our sun hours are greater. At present, solar electric is insignificant as a power source but as more solar comes on line, it appears that solar will help to balance wind. This would not necessarily be the case in all countries.

In the end, as our fossil energy runs out, we may even have to take a look at our tendency to be control freaks and accept that we can not always have energy exactly when we want it. Where I live we have now being living with solar water heating for half a year and while we almost always have hot water, three completely cloudy days leaves the tank cold. We find we are now much more aware of the weather and we never leave the hot water running while we do the dishes. Perhaps living with renewable energy will make us all a little more aware of our environment and our impact on it.