As Mark points out Tasmania is an extraordinary case having had only hydro and gas peak power in 2005 and now a third imported power in April 2008. The HVDC cable emerges from Bass Strait in Gippsland so I presume Vic brown coal is a major contributor. Does that count as Vic emissions?
I also wonder if offsets contribute to the high green percentages. In other words the customer pays extra $$$ for green power and the utility spends 20c of that on sustainable basket weaving in Peru. Because the State govt lets them I suspect.
Another criterion is 'vulnerability' in both water and energy. Being an ex-Adelaide homeboy I think they are living on a knife edge. 60% of their water cames from the Murray, an 'exotic' stream. Their fossil generation comes from Leigh Ck coal ('flammable dirt') with maybe 30 years reserves and from Cooper Basin gas (10 years?) and the spur line from the Otway Basin (also 10 years?). I have a photo to prove their big Wattle Pt wind farm contributed almost no electrons to the ACs at full tilt during the March heat wave.
I concede this extra data is probably not available.
GreenPower is a federal programme, so what the States do is irrelevant to it; it's only for electricity got from generation of which at least half is built since 1997 (or some similar year, I forget which). There are no carbon offsets involved. It's strictly a programme for renewable electricity generation.
Of course electricity and natural gas retailers are free to sell carbon offsets, but those aren't GreenPower. So the figures I gave don't reflect nonsense like people paying for some busybody to take some Indian farmer's diesel water pump off her and give her a treadle pump instead.
As Mark points out Tasmania is an extraordinary case having had only hydro and gas peak power in 2005 and now a third imported power in April 2008. The HVDC cable emerges from Bass Strait in Gippsland so I presume Vic brown coal is a major contributor. Does that count as Vic emissions?
I also wonder if offsets contribute to the high green percentages. In other words the customer pays extra $$$ for green power and the utility spends 20c of that on sustainable basket weaving in Peru. Because the State govt lets them I suspect.
Another criterion is 'vulnerability' in both water and energy. Being an ex-Adelaide homeboy I think they are living on a knife edge. 60% of their water cames from the Murray, an 'exotic' stream. Their fossil generation comes from Leigh Ck coal ('flammable dirt') with maybe 30 years reserves and from Cooper Basin gas (10 years?) and the spur line from the Otway Basin (also 10 years?). I have a photo to prove their big Wattle Pt wind farm contributed almost no electrons to the ACs at full tilt during the March heat wave.
I concede this extra data is probably not available.
GreenPower is a federal programme, so what the States do is irrelevant to it; it's only for electricity got from generation of which at least half is built since 1997 (or some similar year, I forget which). There are no carbon offsets involved. It's strictly a programme for renewable electricity generation.
Of course electricity and natural gas retailers are free to sell carbon offsets, but those aren't GreenPower. So the figures I gave don't reflect nonsense like people paying for some busybody to take some Indian farmer's diesel water pump off her and give her a treadle pump instead.