Antony Funnell: I've got a plan! And I want to tell you about it.

Hello, Antony Funnell here and welcome as always to the program.

Oh, perhaps I should mention up front that it's not my plan. It was put together by others, but when I saw a public presentation of it recently, it seemed the sort of thing I should share.

It's called The Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Stationary Energy Plan, and the body behind it is a not-for-profit organisation called Beyond Zero Emissions.

Now we don't endorse it, because that's not our role. Our role is to bring things to your attention. But it's an interesting plan, a detailed plan, and it's largely slipped below the mainstream media's radar.

Promo video Australia has a decision to make: whether to continue with 19th century fossil fuel technologies. Or become part of the 21st century, global renewable energy boom. The boldness and ambition of this plan has attracted over 100 volunteer engineers and scientists to work on it for free. They're smart, dedicated people, with the right practical experience and know-how.

Antony Funnell: Now the important message here, just in case you missed it, was that the plan was put together by volunteers and professionals, giving their time pro-bono. In essence, it aims to replace the existing network of coal-fired power stations across Australia with a web of solar-thermal and wind-powered stations. And to do it in just ten years.

If you go to our website you'll find a link to the plan.

Beyond Zero Emissions has been touring the country in recent months holding public presentations. And among those who've either praised it, or given it their support, or both, are Malcolm Turnbull, Tim Flannery, Ian Lowe and Sir Gustav Nossal.

So let's hear first from the Executive Director of Beyond Zero Emissions, Matthew Wright, and also John Daley, the CEO of the Grattan Institute, a public policy think-tank.

Well Matthew and John, welcome.

Both: Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.

Antony Funnell: Matthew Wright, let's get straight to the sales pitch, I guess. I mean why should we be interested in your plan?

Matthew Wright: Because we put together a comprehensive plan to get on with the job and address the climate crisis that we've been hearing so much about, we've been hearing endless chatter about endless chit-chat, debate, just ad infinitum, goes on and on, but no-one actually gets on with doing a job, and what we've done is we've put together a comprehensive plan that shows that you can take the Australian economy 200% renewable energy, and that's the largest sector of emissions in the economy, so it's really going straight for the jugular and getting on with the job, and we've done that. In our research project using commercially available now technology that's off-the-shelf, and large corporations around the world will actually sell that to you.

Antony Funnell: And that's important, isn't it, that this technology, the technology you're using, is commercially available.

Matthew Wright: Absolutely. It's very important because a lot of the time we get stuck in sort of a case of stagnation because we're waiting for some future blue sky technology to come off, like clean coal carbon capture and storage, or hot rocks geothermal, or something that's actually not here right now available off the shelf. So we delay, delay, delay. So first there was denial, followed by delay. What we're doing is saying you can jump right over the top of that and we can just implement what's available now, it's ready to go and it's at a cost that society can afford.

Antony Funnell: And because of that, you focus on solar thermal and also wind, as a supplementary source of power.

Matthew Wright: Yes, absolutely. The key to that though, is it's solar thermal combined with molten salt storage, so it's 24 hour solar power. It's solar power around the clock, solar power all though the night. It's solar power that's dispatchable. So whenever you need power, you run water past a big tank of molten salt, which is stored up from a day of collection of the heat energy, and steam is generated and it drives a conventional turbine, the same turbine that's in a coal, gas, or a nuclear power plant.

Antony Funnell: Just briefly, tell us about the work that's gone into this plan. Who's been involved in putting it together, and also I guess the overseas experience that you've drawn upon.

Matthew Wright: Basically it's been put together by Beyond Zero Emissions, that's our not-for-profit research group, in conjunction with the University of Melbourne's Energy Research Institute. So we worked on that collaboratively and to develop the report, we took advantage of the huge interest out there in getting the job done from the people who are already working the existing energy industries, so we've got people who work in the fossil fuel sector, people who work in the grid operator, we've got engineers, chemists, physicists, all kinds of -

Antony Funnell: And they gave their time, pro-bono? And the overseas experience?

Matthew Wright: Well the overseas experience and to really top it off, we've done a number of tours; we've been to Spain, to Germany, to Belgium, we've actually seen the massive $20-billion rollout in Spain of the solar thermal storage plants, they're the ones that are running around the clock. We've been to Belgium and seen the world's biggest wind turbines and how efficient they are in generating power with the least amount of man-hours to develop the wind farm and commodity components and things like that. So we've seen the best wind turbines in operation and we specified that we put that together as part of our plan. And the thing is that this stuff is a reality, it's working overseas, it's just ready to roll out here.

Antony Funnell: John Daley from the Grattan Institute, I know you find much in this plan that you like, but you're an economist by training, is it genuinely achievable on the figures that they provided?

John Daley: Well it's a price tag on the figures that they provided, around $370-billion, which when you say it quickly doesn't sound like much, but it is a very big number. And it's around 27-billion a year for ten years. So that's a big number. On the other hand, when you look at it, it's about double what we spend on defence, about half of what we spend on health care. It would, without doubt, be a significant shift in how Australian budgets are run and in terms of how Australian governments spend their money. But it's not an unimaginable change, it's a change that you could look at and say, 'Look, a few things will change, we'll alter a little bit, the emphasis of how we spend our money, but it's not going to be the end of Australian civilisation as we know it.'

Antony Funnell: And I presume you have to also take into account that the cost of producing energy the traditional way, is not going to stay static, is it, it's going to become more expensive over time.

John Daley: Absolutely. I mean indeed on the industry's own forecasts, the price of electricity in Australia is roughly speaking known to double in real terms over the next five years. And there's a combination of reasons that lie behind that. It's partly that we are going to see Australian gas prices rise as Australian gas essentially reaches parity pricing with the rest of the world; it's partly that we need a significant number of transmission investments, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland. Most people don't realise that about half of their electricity bill is actually the cost of the wires, it's not generating electricity at all, it's the wires that transmit the electricity. And because peak demand for electricity is going up very rapidly, particularly as a result of people buying air conditioners in New South Wales and Queensland, we're seeing very substantial investments going to the transmission wires, so they can handle that peak load. So yes, we are going to see electricity prices go up quite substantially over the next five or six years, and actually most of that's got nothing to do with carbon pricing, or responding to climate at all.

Antony Funnell: The 10 year time frame for implementing this, that Beyond Zero Emissions has put on this plan, is that achievable?

John Daley: It's achievable, but without doubt, going that fast imposes a whole series of costs. We've just seen things like the building and education revolution roll out school halls. If you try and build a lot of stuff in a hurry, then it can often cost you more than if you did it in a bit less of a hurry. I guess the point about the zero carbon plan is that it provides a context, it provides, if you like, a benchmark. It says, Well if you really wanted to do it, this is, roughly speaking, the kind of cost it would be. And therefore, by putting on a number that we look at and go, 'Well gee, it's a big number, but it's manageable', it then provides a challenge that says, 'OK, well how could we do even better than that? Maybe if we took a little bit longer, but nevertheless got started; maybe if we found a couple of better ways of doing it as we went along, we'd come up with a smaller cost of implementation, but nevertheless it's a cost that you look at and say, 'It will be a shift in how Australians live their lives, but not an unimaginable shift.'

Antony Funnell: But I take it from what you're saying there that you see value in this as a document that says, 'Look, it is possible to actually start thinking this way; to get away from the inertia of the current system'?

John Daley: That's absolutely right, and I think that the enormous value of this report is it provides a series of very practical steps. This is exactly the kind of transmission lines you need to build, this is exactly where you need to build them from and to, this is the kind of technology we'd implement; here's examples of that technology operating in practice. So it makes the whole thing very concrete. And I suspect a lot of the inaction on carbon pricing and dealing with shifts in our electricity production in Australia has been a result of people saying, 'Oh, it's just all too hard and I couldn't imagine a different future.' And I guess what this report does is provide a very concrete view of what that future might look like.

Antony Funnell: Matthew Wright from Beyond Zero Emissions, talk to me about the power and wealth of the traditional resource sector. I mean how big a hurdle is the resource sector going to be, and are politicians going to be?

Matthew Wright: The resource sector, a lot of the value that comes to it is in export markets, but I think there's probably a bit of paranoia there, that if things shift in Australia, it could be like a domino effect, it would be a signal to our international customers. So I think that sectors within the resource sectors, I'm talking where just the extractive industries related to energy, probably really want to hold the line, and don't want Australia shifting. There's also some energy-intensive industries in Australia and they very strongly don't want the status quo mucked about with because they've organised themselves around the sort of tariffs that they have today, and then they're concerned about any of those changes and how it will impact their bottom line.

But effectively the way it could be seen is that this is a great big hedge. It's going to guarantee, it's going to guarantee the price of energy for Australian families and industry. It'll be a bit higher than it is today but it'll be fixed, whereas if we go down Business as Usual, looking at all these international price party, that's where our markets are linked to foreign markets, with coal, with natural gas, and prices are up and down, we see that every day at the petrol bowser, the price is up and down. Now we haven't seen that when we flick the light switch on, but imagine that, that what happens at the petrol bower comes to the light switch; that's the real concern. So what we've done with the University of Melbourne's Energy Research Institute and the Zero Carbon Australia plan, is we've shown that we can fix the price so that Australian industry and Australian families can plan their futures. And I think that's really important.

Antony Funnell: And the politics?

Matthew Wright: Well we had a lot of good words from various sides, all sides of politics, you know, the Greens, Malcolm Turnbull's been very positive about the project, even Anna Bligh had some reserved, but encouraging words at our Brisbane launch. So there's interest there, but obviously in say New South Wales and Queensland, we're talking billions of dollars of coal rort has helped those States deliver their services, so there's a bit of a lock-in there with the way governments operate. So I'd be concerned about where those commodities may not be wanted by external partners in the future. So places like Japan that's going for 25% reductions in emissions. Well the first cab off the rank is to not import Australian steaming coal, and that's really important to know, because that means that our international markets for these commodities could actually dive, especially if climate change is taken seriously, and it seems to be taken a lot more seriously in other countries than in Australia.

Antony Funnell: John Daley, from the Grattan Institute, picking up on that political point, Anna Bligh attended the Brisbane launch as Matthew indicated, the other day and she did say nice things about the report but she very quickly got to the stage of defending the coal industry and talking about consumers not wanting higher energy costs. In fact, got heckled at one point there. This plan's going to be a hard sell, politically, isn't it?

John Daley: There's no doubt that increasing the price of an essential service like electricity is always going to be tough. Effectively this is money that households are forced to spend, and you can see already the political sensitivity in the country as electricity prices go up, as I said, for reasons that have actually got nothing to do with carbon pricing at all. So yes, it's going to be a hard sell, but I guess that's why this is ultimately a question of will. Are we, as an electorate, ultimately determined to do something about carbon emissions, or are we happy to see essentially significant climate change? And I guess what this plan does is say 'Look, here's the price tag. It's big, but it's not unimaginable.' And I guess it ties into some work the Grattan Institute has done as well, in terms of looking at the impact of various carbon prices on the Australian economy. And the first thing that you notice is the vast majority of the Australian economy, and indeed for the vast majority of Australian households, energy costs are not that big a deal in the scheme of things. You know, most industries, most households are spending somewhere between 1% and 2% of what they spend on energy. And so even if you double the price of energy, you don't radically shift what they do. It's not going to be an easy sell, but by and large it's going to be something that people can accommodate, and they're not going to see radical shifts in their lives.

Antony Funnell: Well Matthew Wright, Executive Director of Beyond Zero Emissions, and John Daley, the CEO of the Grattan Institute, thank you for joining us.

John Daley: It's been a pleasure, thank you.

Matthew Wright: Pleasure, thank you.

Antony Funnell: Now out of interest, the Beyond Zero touring road-show is in Hobart tonight, that's 11th November, and they're also yet to do Perth, Adelaide and some regional centres.

Incidentally, a revised version of the plan is already underway I'm informed, and will be completed within the year.

John Bell: I think the most worthwhile thing is that it's actually proposing some concrete ideas about how we can generate electricity without having to burn coal. That's really positive, it's trying to get away from the notion that you can't do this with renewable, and so that's the most important single thing about this plan.

Antony Funnell: And the problems, as you see them.

John Bell: I don't think the plan as it's proposed, is implementable. I think there are going to be lots and lots of issues with that, partly around just the construction time frame for the sorts of plants that we're dealing with. So far there haven't been any plants of the sort of scale that they're talking about in the plan, solar thermal plants, being constructed. The largest one in the world is in design at the moment, one of the solar flagships in Australia, is going to be the largest solar thermal plant in the world, and that's only at 150 megawatt scale, rather than the much larger scale that's been talked about in this plan.

Antony Funnell: Professor John Bell is the Assistant Dean Research in the Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering at the Queensland University of Technology.

So not implementable, but there is still value in actually putting this plan together, in terms of the overfall debate within our community about our energy needs and how we're going to meet them.

John Bell: To say not implementable at all is probably going to too far. Not implementable on the time scale that's been talked about. The value is we know we can do it, because there is sufficient resource available, and I mean solar resource, steel, concrete, people, to actually make the plan happen, I just don't think it can happen on the timescale that's been talked about, and therefore what this does is, it takes away from the argument that you cannot do this, using renewable energy, you cannot provide our energy using renewables. Well this plan shows that with an appropriate distribution of very large-scale plants, you can produce that energy.

Antony Funnell: One of the attractive things about this plan, for many people I guess, would be that in a sense it replicates the existing system. So instead of having coal-fired power plants in a grid, if you like, around the country, it's replaced by wind and solar thermal. But is that necessarily the right way to go? To try and replicate what we've had in the past?

John Bell: I think it's not the right way to go. I think it's a strategy which basically emerged in the 19th century and our electricity network grew up around it. I think it's fairly clear to many people that the way of the future will be a much more distributed energy generation and storage system, certainly distributed energy in the form of photovoltaics or local energy generation can't provide all of the energy that we need, and we will need some large power plants, centrally located and providing energy to the grid. But I think it's much clearer that we'll have probably maybe it's 50-50 between distributed generation and central generation, sometime in the future.

Antony Funnell: And by distributed generation, just to be clear, I mean you're talking about the sort of solar systems that go on domestic houses, on domestic buildings?

John Bell: That's one component of it. Certainly that's the very small scale distributed energy. You can also get much larger-scale photovoltaic installations on the roof of a large factory, large roof, large amount of energy generation, whether it's photovoltaics or something else. But we also can have things like fuel cells in buildings. We can have co-generation systems in buildings, providing heat as well as generating electricity. So there are lots of different components of distributed generation, and I think all of those need to be taken into account.

Antony Funnell: And is there a society benefit in terms of having a distributed system. In terms of people being able to participate, people being part of the energy production process themselves, rather than assuming that all of their energy needs are going to come from big suppliers, big providers.

John Bell: I think that's absolutely the case. We need to understand as a society, as individuals within that society, the role that energy plays, and unless you actually start to understand where it comes from, it doesn't just come from a socket on the wall, then you don't understand the benefits that's providing. And I think the other thing is we don't just want to use energy. I don't actually particularly want to use energy, I want my food to stay cold in the refrigerator. How I make that food stay cold shouldn't be an issue, I want the cold, and if someone can provide that cold for me without actually having to generate electricity and convert it into cold, then I should be happy. So I think we need to get people much more involved with understanding their energy use, understanding what they really want from their energy use. But I think there are other societal benefits as well, which are security of energy supply. Clearly if you've got a distributed energy system, then a single fault caused for example by a lightning strike on a major transmission line is not going to plunge as many people into darkness. We've got a much greater back-up for our electricity system.

You might still not be able to provide all the energy, but you've certainly got more local sources of energy that won't be affected in a situation like that.

CSIRO solar video: Today welcome to CSIRO pod, I'm Glenn Paul. Many current solar fields require water for steam generation to produce electricity from the sun. This technology therefore has huge implications for arid areas that receive minimal rainfall. But now CSIRO researchers, in collaboration with the Australian National University are developing an operational solar power tower that will pave the way for solar fields of the future. Solar fields that only require ...

Antony Funnell: As Professor Bell mentioned, there is already a solar tower under construction in Australia, of the sort focused on in the Beyond Zero Emissions Plan. It's being built near Newcastle in New South Wales, and will have over 450 mirrors or heliostats as they're called, directing solar energy to a 30-metre high tower. The CSIRO scientist with responsibility for the project is Dr Alex Wonhas.

Alex Wonhas: We have just started to install the first mirrors in what's ultimately going to become the world's largest solar brayton system. Solar brayton system means it's a solar thermal system that firstly generates heat from the energy of the sun, and then converts that energy into electric energy using a jet turbine. When it's operational it will produce about enough energy to power about 100 homes, and it's a very novel technology that does not use any water, that is capable of being linked to thermal storage which is a very cost effective way of storing energy, which allows us to coal-fire it with gas, which means we can produce electricity when the sun is actually not shining. And ultimately we hope it will have a very competitive cost.

Antony Funnell: And the fact that you won't be using water, that's very important, isn't it, in terms of its applicability for replication, if you like, in other parts of Australia, in particularly the dry parts of Australia.

Alex Wonhas: That's absolutely right, Antony. We believe water is potentially our major limiter for solar thermal power stations, and that's why we've focused on developing a power station that does not need any water, and our vision is that these types of power stations will be highly applicable for regional and remote Australian applications, where this kind of technology would already be cost-competitive at today's electricity prices.

Antony Funnell: Now I presume if you're building this state-of-the-art power plant, you're not just building it as an experiment.

Alex Wonhas: It is obviously an experiment because it helps us to refine and improve this technology, but we are actually working very closely with a commercial partner to really develop a system that is ultimately ready for the commercial market, so that customers in Australia and frankly all over world where these types of systems are applicable, can buy it. We have a lot of commercial interest in this project. On the development and design side we are already very actively working with a world leading Japanese turbine manufacturer to develop this technology, but we also have very strong interest in actually deploying this technology. For example, we have been speaking to a mining company operating in Western Australia for whom this type of technology would be highly applicable.

Antony Funnell: So you believe this type of solar thermal technology that these towers, these power plants could one day begin to replace our conventional coal power plants across Australia do you?

Alex Wonhas: Ultimately that is certainly what we hope we can achieve, yes.

Antony Funnell: Now you'd be aware that that's also the dream of the people behind the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 stationary energy plan. Have you had a chance to look at that plan and do you have any perspectives on it?

Alex Wonhas: I certainly had a look at this plan. I think it's a very useful contribution to the energy debate in Australia. It obviously represents a relatively aggressive scenario in terms of carbon reduction and reducing our reliance on fossil fuel. I would compare it a little bit with the option of potentially buying a zero emission house that we as individuals could choose to do. While it will cost probably significant amounts of money upfront, it can help us relatively quickly to reduce our carbon footprint.

Antony Funnell: Dr Alex Wonhas from the CSIRO.

Whether you're talking solar thermal technology, or wind power, or distributed solar, or even geo-thermal, the one thing that is clear in the Australian context, is that the proponents of renewable energy are likely to face a future of perpetual justification as long as coal remains relatively cheap and plentiful.

Australia has vast amounts of the stuff, and it's not going to run out any time soon.

Well, at least part of that last statement is true. We do have lots of coal, particularly the much sought-after black variety, but are we using it up at such a rate that supplies could run out within a couple of decades?

Late last year, researchers at the University of Newcastle, using a mathematical model and taking into account hundreds of variables, predicted that world coal production would soon peak, even taking into account new mines coming online.

And just a few weeks ago Australian blogger, Sean Carmody, who gives under the name of 'Stubborn Mule' came out with a similar dire prediction about Australia's viable reserves of coal.

You see, earlier this year, ABARE, the Australian government's own economic research agency, released a report which stated:

'At the 2008 rate of production of around 490 megatonnes per year, the EDR are adequate to support about 90 years of production.'

Now EDR stands for 'Economic Demonstrated Resources' which in this case means all the black coal that's economically worth digging up.

So 90 years is ABARE's estimate for the life of Australia's supply of black coal, but Sean Carmody calculates the actual time at which supplies will be depleted could be half that.

Mr Carmody says it's standard practice to quote future supply figures for commodities on current production levels, that is, current at the time of the prediction. But according to Sean Carmody that fails to take into account the fact that coal production has been increasing dramatically since 1961.

Sean Carmody: The last 40, 50 years or so, production of coal has been growing at a constant rate. So it's been growing exponentially, and if you take into account that growth, and assume that those reserve figures are about right, then rather than lasting 98 years is more like about 45 years.

Antony Funnell: Because of that exponential growth, because the amount of coal we've been digging up each year has grown?

Sean Carmody: That's right. There's a little back-of-the-envelope calculation you can do if you've got a constant growth, take the number 70 and divide it by that growth rate it tells you how long it takes for production to double. So over the last 50 years they've been growing production about 5% per annum, which will mean that every 14 years we double our production levels. So for example, I was talking to someone who remembered a figure from the 1970s that the black coal was enough to last us more than 400 years, but since the 1970s, our production of coal has grown by a factor of about 4-1/2, which is why you get the 90 figure now.

Antony Funnell: Now somebody out there listening to this is going to say, 'That's all well and fine, but what about the possibility of us actually uncovering new deposits of coal? How do you factor that in?

Sean Carmody: That's an important point because that calculation is based on assuming that the current estimates of reserves is pretty much constant. But an interesting graph also from the same government bureau shows that over the last 30 years or so, our estimates of coal reserve, black and brown, haven't really changed all that much. If you compare it to things like uranium and gas, we have made quite a lot of new discoveries and our estimates of those reserves have jumped up quite significantly. So it's certainly possible that we've got our estimates wrong, and that they might grow, and that would obviously be good news for the coal industry, but looking at the last 30-odd years or so you wouldn't be too confident betting on that. And interestingly, a number of countries in recent years around the world have actually revised their estimated coal reserves downwards, not upwards.

Antony Funnell: You've made the point on your blog, haven't you, that there are coal mines in the UK that closed down simply because the supply of economically beneficial coal simply dwindled.

Sean Carmody: That's right. I mean there is a point at which the cost effectiveness of pulling these reserves out drops. Now the figure that the government agencies reported, but that they use for their 90 years, doesn't look at economic demonstrated resources, so they're resources that we think are economic to pull up, and the figures, the less economic ones, do give a bit of an extra buffer, and technology is likely to improve. And again, even if you assume double the amount of reserves, or quadruple the amount of reserves, that actually doesn't buy you all that much extra time.

Antony Funnell: Sean Carmody, who blogs as 'Stubborn Mule'.

And that's the program for another week.

Thanks to co-producer, Andrew Davies and to Costa Zouliou for technical assistance.

I'm Antony Funnell, and this has been a Radio National production.