There’s a buzz about BZE. In fact, the team of engineers, scientists and experts from several other fields, working pro bono for this grassroots climate action group, are as busy as, er . . . BZEs.
BZE, stands for Beyond Zero Emissions, and is an organisation that has been going since 2006 and is committed to providing a real, comprehensive, technically and financially feasible blueprint for Australia to slash its carbon emissions to zero by 2020.
They believe their 10-year target is attainable and it has meant coming up with a plan to transition Australia to 100 per cent renewable energy sources using existing proven technologies. It’s a plan that promises to ensure the nation’s future energy security.
Already, BZE, led by its driving force Matthew Wright, 31, has come up with the first stage. With the help of post graduate students from the University of Melbourne Energy Research Institute they have this year launched the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Stationary Energy Plan.
It’s a comprehensive, detailed plan, documented in 170 pages of reasoned argument, heaps of facts and figures, graphs, charts and photographs. And it is very persuasive – already endorsed by enlightened politicians, leading conservationists and environmentalists.
“Not only do politicians support the Zero Carbon Australia initiative, but so do leading academics, energy experts, business people, and community leaders,” said Matthew, the executive director and founder of BZE.
Solar Power towers -- set to create zero-emission, baseload-solar electricity in Australia.
“I found that I just couldn’t stand by as climate action progressed at such a glacial pace – I soon got addicted to the momentum we were building.”
It has taken four years to assemble the team, do the research, come up with some solutions to this massive planetary dilemma of carbon emissions and climate change, and then compile the first report. And now the momentum is with them to take the project to the next stage in 2011. So what is the Zero Carbon Australia plan?
The BZE researchers say they propose a 60/40 mix of large-scale solar thermal power plants with storage and wind farms to provide the bulk of Australia’s energy needs as part of a national energy grid.
“It will allow for geographically dispersed solar and wind power installations, with our existing hydroelectric capacity and small amount of biomass used for back-up generation,” said BZE’s 24-year-old technical director, Patrick Hearps, a chemical engineer and co-author of the ZCA plan.
Patrick will be attending the Woodford Folk Festival (December 27 – January 1 inclusive) as a speaker at the Greenhouse venue. There, he will present the plan and tell of the organisation’s incredible journey to develop and promote the plan, including a trip to Europe, touring solar thermal storage and wind power plants and attending an international solar conference.
Patrick says a combination of wide-spread large-scale concentrated solar thermal plants with molten salt storage (otherwise known as ‘baseload solar’) and wind farms can power Australia 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
Concentrating solar thermal plants use mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a receiver ZCA2020 proposes the use of ‘solar power towers’. The sunlight heats molten salt. The hot molten salt is safely stored in insulated tanks. At any time of day or night, the hot molten salt is used to generate steam for the turbine, creating zero-emission, baseload-solar electricity.
According to US Department of Energy projections, solar thermal will soon be cost-competitive with coal and gas power, as the solar thermal industry scales up to an installed capacity in the thousands of megawatts around the world. The ZCA2020 Plan has 12 solar regions across the country, consisting of 3500MW of power tower units. These would supply 60 per cent of Australia’s electricity in 2020.
The other 40 per cent of Australia’s electricity would come from wind ? 6400 gearless Enercon 7.5 MW turbines would be distributed across 23 sites around the country.
“We’ve completed the research that no Australian government or organisation has been prepared to investigate,” said Matthew, who was voted ‘Australia’s Young Environmentalist of the Year’ at the 2010 Banksia awards.
“We really seek to debunk the myth that renewables can’t cover baseload power needs and dispel concerns that it’s going to be too expensive.
“The projected investment is around 3 per cent of GDP over 10 years, or $370 billion. This is about as much as we spend on insurance over the same time.
“For an average household this would mean an increase to their electricity bill of $8 per week, which isn’t bad when you consider Australians spend over $30 billion on imported new cars each year. And after the initial decade of set-up costs, we should remember that the fuel is free from the sun to help pay for upgrades and maintenance.”
So, now it’s into the next phase.
“After the success of the Stationary Energy plan and new volunteers on board, we will develop transition plans for buildings, transport, steel, cement and other industrial sectors,” said Matthew.
The expected publication date for the ZCA2020 Buildings Plan is August 2011. Potential contributors to the buildings and transport plans can help provide content for the research database by getting in touch with BZE.
The projects already involve expert contributions in many areas relating to BZE’s specific calculations and forecasting, but they say more help is needed and that there are many different roles on offer.
“Though we first set up BZE back in 2006 it feels like we’ve only just begun,” said Matthew as he rolled up his sleeves for the next round.
But while he rolls up his sleeves he will also need to tighten his belt. For Matthew must continue to work part-time in radio to help him survive life in the penny-pinching world of an unfunded not-for-profit organisation.
However, it’s all worth it, he says. And the donors are starting to dig into their pockets and bank accounts to fund this massive project. The two front men, Patrick and Matthew, and their growing team of expert volunteers have shown that no other initiative has generated such excitement in Australia’s quest to address climate change or provided such a practical, scientifically-based solution to transition Australia to a zero carbon economy.
“The growing wave of support is at times overwhelming. Every week, our in-boxes are filled with messages of support and requests to join the Beyond Zero Emissions team and address climate change, so we wonder if the average Aussie knows just how strong this force of grassroots action is becoming,” said Matthew.
At Woodford they will be able to spread the word even further and, hopefully, attract some strong support. This time, it’s Patrick’s turn to deliver the message. He will be telling many Queenslanders that while their state might be leading the world on carbon emissions per capita at the present time, all of that could be reversed within a decade.
And that will be an easy job compared to his tough task of overseeing the growing team of pro bono engineers and scientists now involved with BZE. But neither of this dynamic duo ever really switch off message. Matt uses his previous experience and skills from working in the provision of financial information and news to corporates, energy and commodity markets, banks and other financial institutions, to lead the development of further ZCA plans across a range of priority areas.
Their diligence and brilliance has resulted in plaudits and encouragement across the spectrum. The various launches around the nation of the first part of the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 plan has drawn packed audiences over the past several months.
These launches have not only seen Australians turn out in their thousands, but have also featured endorsements from politicians as diverse as the past Premier of NSW Bob Carr, independent MP Senator Nick Xenophon, Australian Greens deputy leader Senator Christine Milne, and Federal Shadow Minister for Communications, Malcolm Turnbull.
In Brisbane, the forum of speakers even included Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, who recommended the plan. However, she did turn up late, leave early and gave a plug for the coal industry while she was at it.
But the attention given to BZE is not just from within Australia’s shores. There has been considerable international interest shown such as from luminaries at the International Energy Agency and the director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University, USA.
At home, there has been a welter of encouragement including that from leading conservationist and former Australian of the Year, Tim Flannery, who described the plan as “an ambitious, technically feasible plan that should be looked at seriously”.
The Woodford Greenhouse crew and hundreds of festivalgoers are looking forward to Patrick’s sessions.
“We at the Greenhouse are enormously excited and feel honoured to host this young, resourceful visionary from Beyond Zero Emissions to our festival. His team’s cutting-edge research is inspiring and fills us with optimism and hope that a carbon-free future is truly possible,” said Greenhouse programmer and coordinator Jillian Rossiter.
“At last, Australia has an energy plan that demonstrates that renewables CAN provide baseload power; so no longer are there valid arguments for mining our farmland for fossil fuels or nuclear energy power plants.
“Let society lead our governments towards the Transition!”
Patrick Hearps will be at the Woodford Folk Festival Greenhouse venue on Wednesday, December 29 at 4.30pm, Thursday, December, 30 at 4pm for his BZE sessions, Friday, December 31 at 2pm with ‘Green Mythbusters and at 4pm with ‘Green Innovators’.
To learn more or donate visit Beyond Zero Emissions.
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As someone who actually works in the solar industry, and for a long time believed in much of what is written here, I now find myself very pessimistic about the ideas BZE have been expressing.
I’m very much a big picture person. That we need to do something to tackle Climate Change is undeniable, but we are facing a trio of challenges: Peak Oil, Peak Debt, and Resource depletion. Plus of course Climate Change too!
The problem with the BZE challenge is that it is trying to continue Business as Usual (BAU) with renewables, in the face of this being impossible to achieve, not even with the remaining fossil fuels. The current civilisational system was built one brick at a time, as and when it was needed. It was done with an ever increasing amount of cheap fossil energy, the most important one being oil. Modern industrial society is based on a triad of hydrocarbons, metals, and electricity. The three are intricately connected; each is accessible only if the other two are present. Electricity, for example, can be generated on a global scale only with hydrocarbons. The same dependence on hydrocarbons is true of metals; in fact the better types of ore are now becoming depleted, while those that remain can be processed only with modern machinery and require more hydrocarbons for smelting. In turn, without metals and electricity there would be no means of extracting and processing hydrocarbons. Of the three members of the triad, electricity is the most fragile, and its failure serves as an early warning of trouble with the other two. How do we build a brand new infrastructure with shrinking energy availability, and an economy so saddled with debt it is on the verge of collapse?
A Renewable Energy Engineer I have met over the internet and who created the Association for the Study of Energy Resources (AEREN) in Spain, a non profit organization, aimed to raise awareness on the fossil energy depletion at global level and its consequences for mankind, has said the following:
9,000 MW of new wind capacity, for example, was installed during 2009, taking the total to 140,000 MW worldwide. Meanwhile, around 5,000 MW of photovoltaic solar capacity was installed in 2009, bringing the total to approximately 18,000 MW. Based on the expected average performance of these systems, this equates to additional generating capacity of around 25 TWh/year in 2009 being provided by renewable energies, against a total of 300 TWh/year from these sources of energy.
The problem is that this record renewable capacity installed in 2009 only equates to 0.12% of the total world electricity demand in 2008 of 20,000 TWh. The renewable capacity installed in 2009 only covered 8% of the increase in global electricity demand recorded between 2007 and 2008. Figures show that global electricity demand based on fossil fuels is growing some 30 to 100 times more quickly than renewable capacity is being installed.
Here’s something else Pedro has said…… to just build enough wind turbines to meet 20% of electricity production by 2020 would require the world to double the production of steel, all of the concrete made globally, half the coal, half the copper, and thirty times (yes 3000%!) increase in fibreglass production. Which begs the question, what else would we do while we manufacture all those turbines..?
As usual, “Humanity’s greatest shortcoming is its inability to understand the exponential function”. Pr Albert Bartlett.
But of course BAU has no chance of continuing… what the world really needs is to powerdown. But nobody ever rioted for austerity, did they…….
Further investigation has raised the following data: to build ONE of the 7.5MW Enercon wind turbines requires 1400 m3 of concrete and 120 T of steel. This means that to build 6400 of them requires 22.4 MT of concrete, and 768,000 T of steel.
Australia manufactures 24 MT of concrete per annum, and 7.86 MT of steel, 97% of which is considered “domestic consumption”, leaving just 240,000 tonnes of “spare” capacity per annum
Consuming 10% of Australia’s concrete every year for ten years is possible, at a cost to all other industries requiring concrete, but it must also be remembered that this huge amount of concrete is not made anywhere near where the turbines will be erected.
There are no figures available for the demand on resources required to build the solar thermal plants, but that they too will make substantial impact on our production is undeniable, and they represent 60% of the total energy package. Will the turbines be built here, or will they be totally imported?
Ted Trainer’s comments:
http://ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/ZCAcrit.html
When I asked BZE about their ERoEI numbers they sent me a diagram which can be used to calculate ERoEI of various technologies for an undeclared set of system boundaries. The figures were outrageously high, but the lack of system boundaries means it is impossible to directly compare them to other peoples’ figures.
For example for Solar PV BZE have 8.5 – 29.5
while ISA(Sydney Uni) have 1.5 – 6.0
For wind turbine BZE have 72 – 180
while ISA have 8.3 – 24.4
So when they come to build it and have to get the Energy Input Up Front they will find it hard (and expensive) to actually power the construction.
The financial and technical side was discussed in a VERY LONG thread at http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/07/14/zca2020/ and http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/12/zca2020-critique/ (by very pro-nuclear people). A lot of the claims about “this is all proven technology” are completely wrong,
and the idea that you can start with a $12 billion solar tower plant
without any previous pilot plant experience and at a scale many times anything ever built anywhere, is totally unrealistic.
And then they don’t have a financial backer, I wonder why ?