The British Acoustics Bulletin has just published what is now the 10th independent review of the evidence on wind farms causing annoyance and ill health in people. And for the 10th time it has emphasised that
annoyance has far more to do with social and psychological factors in those complaining than any direct effect from sound or inaudible infrasound emanating from wind turbines.

Two factors repeatedly stand out: a) being able to see wind turbines increases annoyance, particularly in those who dislike or fear them and b) people derive income from hosting turbines, which miraculously appears to be a highly effective antidote to feelings of annoyance and symptoms.  Wind companies don’t publicise what they pay landowners each year to host turbines, as it varies with topographical conditions and the amount of energy that can be generated. So each price is negotiated. Amounts from $7,000 to $18,000 – depending on the landowners topography and accessible windy ridges – can drought-proof the farm by turning generally useless land into a major earner requiring zero labour and investment.

Neighbours with unfavourable topography look on with envy and worry about the relative re-sale value of their land. Some apparently worry themselves sick. Anti-wind farm groups argue that there are many angry turbine hosts who have signed gag clauses preventing them from speaking out. However, blank contract forms from Australian companies have no such clauses and no contract would indemnify any person being harmed from a claim of negligence, so the silence is telling. Other indications of the sociogenic nature of “wind turbine syndrome” are the recency and the anglophone nature of the complaints. There are an estimated 120,000-plus turbines globally, with major construction now occurring in India and China. In France, turbines can be seen in many parts of the country.

A tourist recently asked public health colleagues and neighbours and were given a blank look when asked about negative public opinion or health problems; the same goes for Spain. The surprising thing is complaints about wind farms appears confined largely to parts of Australia, Canada, the US, Britain and New Zealand and these complaints have accelerated in the past five years, despite turbines having been operational in many locations for more than 20 years.

In Australia, the leading opponents are the Waubra Foundation and the Australian Landscape Guardians, which share a post office box with a mining investment company, Lowell Resources. Australian Landscape Guardians has been totally silent on any other intrusion on the landscape, apparently unperturbed by mining, highway construction or suburban encroachment, not to mention the invasive CSG industry.

So why would anyone be against wind farms? Is it the noise … aesthetics … ecology (they have been known for birds strikes, but what of migratory birds that land where water once was that is now as car-park or major road-way. Is it the competition?  The coal industry didn’t complain about nuclear power stations did it?

So, who is it? The fossil fuel industry is pushing the line that more renewable energy undermines their business model, and thus “puts the energy supply grid at risk”. How and why would climate sceptics spend good money opposing wind farms unless they are funded by the ‘business as usual’ coal, gas  and oil industries?

29/07/2011 – Anna Bligh said containing the Hendra virus is too important to allow political manoeuvring to influence the Government’s position; she said ‘there is a lot that we do not know about the Hendra disease but all the evidence we have points to the risk that moving on bats will spread the disease’.

Yet with CSG problems around the world, she and her government are happy to put tens of thousand Queenslanders well-being and lives at risk, cutting deals for known polluters from overseas … but its all about money … $6 millon is a drop in the bucket (for ‘Hendra Virus’), but when the Labor government (and if the LNP gets in it will be more of the same) relies so mucg on income from energy resource sell-off, we know that health is secondary …

42% of the Qld government income comes from payments in sales of energy resources …. to get an idea of what our landscape will look like in the not too distant future, Google CSG depleted sites and the economic hole those regions now find themselves in …

Emissions from petrol-powered passenger cars represent 7.7% of total net emissions (41.6 Mt(CO2-e) of 537 Mt(CO2-e) AGO National Inventory 2009 ).

Registered cars in Australia in 2009 were 15.7 million (ABS 2010); [which is about how many new cars were sold in the USA before they hit the wall; its down to about 11 million cars for 2010] Cars to be replaced (and meeting the criteria) under Gillard’s program is 200,000 or 1.27% of all cars, therefor

Reduction in fuel consumption is about 75%, so the savings from this program would be: 75% x 1.27% x 7.7% = 0.074% of total net emissions. However, the increase of car emissions averages to 1.4% per year, which is 19 times the “cash for clunker savings”, so the program is not going to make any difference at all and is yet another example of posturing rather than tackling the problem …

Does anybody else out there see a common thread of simplistic band-aid solutions to a serious problem ?
Ethanol,
Compact fluoro lights,
Running aircon 1° warmer,
Pumping your tyres up properly,
Pool pumps switched on at night only …

There is that significant factor of embodied energy (the energy that goes into making a car) and the additional funds people pay for a new cars or have to borrow and the additional debt to service for such a loan, so replacing many of the older cars may only offer a minor improvement in consumption with new cars

New cars with more complex computers to extract additional efficiency usually weight more than the car they replace and can only be serviced by dealers required to buy state of the art programs; this extra cost will be passed onto the owner who may well decided not to have the cars serviced and the only fuel efficiency will be that touted in the colour brochure.

I drive a manual 1988 BMW 535i with nearly 400,000 Ks on the clock; it weighs 1,623 kilograms and I use 10.9 litres per 100 kilometres. It owes me (I bought it for $5,150 and have spent about $1,500 in mechanical issues but not the motor), $6,650.

[This is a basic calculation and doesnt factor in the quality of fuel; if you run an ethanol blend, it can reduce the cars distance travelled by 15% or more; conversley - and I hate to admit it but proof is in the pudding - Shell V power will give you about 10% more distance than the standard unleaded]

So if I bought a new – low end – car for about $15,000 for a low end car (and remember low end cars wear out quicker) and if that new car uses 8 litres per 100 kilometres, then I have to factor the cost. $15,000 less $8,350 leaves $6,650; divided that by $1.35 for (premium unleaded) = 4,926 litres. 4,926 litres in my car = 45,192 kilometres; and 4,926 litres in a new car = 61,580 kilometres.

So the difference is 16,388 kilometres more in the new car, but you have to pay $6,650 to achieve that ‘savings’. [I won't go into the greater safety, handling, comfort or the cheaper parts for a BMW versus the low end cars ... however, it is about the total cost is it not ?]

Rudd got the flick just as two million voters had swung behind the Greens after the backdown on the carbon pollution reduction scheme; the UK entered a new era, with a third party holding the balance of power.

How long will Gillard go before voters decide she dances too close to the wolves and will will she deliver less than Rudd on value issues while the Green tide rises ? What pull has Romilly Madew (boss of the Green Building Council of Australia) got after softening the sustainability stance on various toxic (no pun) issues like vinyl ?

Does the Green Building Council need a review; to mature; will a Green Star rating dominate and control which suppliers are in and which are out; should such power come under some form of government regulation? Never, says Madew.

Urban un-myths

Public transport is up. Car use is down. Density is on the rise and light rail is growing around the country. If that continues for the next 30 years, many problems may be solved, but that assuming Peak Oil has yet to arrive, but you certainly wouldn’t want to invest in toll roads.

Climate deniers like Abbot, what of them … are us envionmentalists still raving nutters ? A more serious world moves on, concerned with pollution, poor practices in building design and techniques, toxic materials, fairness to fellow humans; we all need to lift our game.

The business world, led by property – as usual – is busy rewriting its sustainability vision. From GPT to Stockland and Mirvac – even Walker Corporation has a new six star Green Star building in Canberra. Green action is endowed with significant strategic value these days.

Another issue is NABERS, the missing link for the engineers who love to retrofit buildings to more sustainable energy-efficient levels. Easy to use; useful to the building owner, tenant and technical aficionados alike. We know NABERS needs tweaking – some variations in the underlying formulas mean that, at around 2.5 stars and below, buildings in Melbourne rate lower than buildings in Sydney.

According to an insiders’ views, the real problem with NABERS isn’t NABERS at all but mandatory disclosure’s definition of what an office building is. According to just-passed legislation, offices of 2000 square metres or more need to be NABERS assessed at the point of sale or lease. Think about it: developers have done a great job of creating hybrid office/industrial premises that blur the boundaries of uses. They are not so easy to unscramble.

In many of these facilities the only way to separate the energy ratings of the base office building and the rest of the premises might be to turn off the operations while you put in separate metering systems. Not exactly a very feasible thing to do. Some city offices have been caught because savvy tenants have offered to put their air-conditioning system onto their own electricity metering system – and now the owner has no way to create a base building rating.

The only rating available in this case would be a whole building assessment, which is not much help to the owner when he or she is looking to disclose base building energy to a prospective tenant.

Energy assessors roles are crucial to becoming energy efficient.

Origin CEO (Grant King) told the committee for economic development of Australia that electricity prices across Australia are likely to triple over the next 10 years; he suggested that a combination of the federal government’s mandatory renewable-energy targets, energy policy uncertainty, higher electricity transmission and distribution costs, and higher fuel costs would drive the increase.

The fact is, the end-user should pay, but when you see corporate remuneration sky-rocket and the size of these boards increase (usually with ex-politicians and senior bureaucrats), it no wonder the cost are going up.

King said the boom sales of energy-inefficient flat-screen televisions’ are also pushing up household energy use, despite the development of more energy-efficient household appliances such as fridges and dishwashers. How he joins increased consumption with the need for the price of electricity to go up substantially is the $64,000 question. Perhaps if companies like brink and concrete roof tile manufacturers paid the same price as the average house-holder, then there may be justification for rasing the cost, but these organisations receive subsidized energy.

Mr King said ‘the cost of electricity transmission and distribution has historically been about 50% of the cost of energy to consumers; but this would now go up to between 60 and 70 % of the total cost’, but why?

He went on to say,  ‘we think that by 2020, the cost of electricity will be threefold what it is today, given the current policy of large amounts of renewables being forced into the system, uncosted charges for those renewables given the current policy settings and a substantial increase in transmission and distribution costs; fuel prices in Australia will also be repriced much more to international pricing levels’.

The reality is that electricity generation via coal gas and oil has been subsidized by goverment in the billions of $’s and his comment inferring we pay less than elsewhere for fuel is fanciful. To claim renewables places fossil fuel energy generation at a disadvantage; the honeymoon is over, they have dipped in the public coffers to excess and the game is up.

The only thing I agree with is when King said the federal government would fall “well short” of its goal of cutting carbon emissions by 5% by 2020. With our population growing the way it is, the higher numbers will nullify any savings if there were any.

King was right on one thing, he said he was concerned politicians and policy-makers were fatigued by the challenge of introducing measures to cut back carbon emissions in Australia and would defer the issue into the next electoral cycle.

One of the main reasons is that most bureucrats have no idea and don’t know where to ask about relevant policy being written and secondly, no corporate sponsors will pay money into a re-election campaign if they don’t make money …

However, it will be local governments that have escalating financial upkeep problems, extracting money from ratepayers struggling to meet very high transport and food costs on a shrinking householder’s family budget. With exisitng public transport, how will workers get to work with only 15% of their normal fuel usage ?

On 1st March 2010, the Federal Government published a new Australian Energy Resource Assessment (AERA)[1].  In chapter 3 on oil it contains a graph on future oil production on page 79. [fig_3_43_geoscience_australia]. What we can see from this graph (note the inserted comment is by the author of this paper):

* Crude oil production from known oil fields will dramatically decline by 85% over the next 10 years

* This decline is offset by condensate from wet gas (mainly in LNG projects) but because of a lack of condensate splitters in Australian refineries 95% of this is exported and

* The prospect for new oil discoveries is not very good.

Geologically, Australia is better off with natural gas; however, since global oil export volumes are shrinking at the same time (details below), Australia will slide into a huge oil import crisis. While the government hopes coal-to-liquids, gas-to-liquids and 2nd generation bio fuels will come to the rescue, despite the report stating it is very uncertain whether that will materialize in the quantities required, the reality is it will always be too little and forget about the too late; even they do see the light of day, the energy profit ratios of these fuels will be very low:

6/1/2010

Diminishing Returns of Fossil Fuel Energy Invested  – http://www.crudeoilpeak.com/?p=909

Checking the above graph compares with previous government reports and Figure 6 is from Geoscience Australia’s 2005 submission 127 to the Senate Inquiry on Oil Supplies:[2]  figure6geoscienceaustralia.  It shows 3 projections up to 2025: P10, P50 and P90 and each number denotes the probability in percent that this projection will actually occur.

Strangely, the AERA report does not show different probabilities. So let’s superimpose the 2 graphs to see where we are:
fig_3_43_superimposed_ga_subm127_actual_au_petroleum_stats.   We can see from the graph that the actual crude production curve (black line 2006-2009) has just hit the P90 estimate from 2005. It remains to be seen whether it will follow the new projection (light blue columns).  A lot of condensate has been added and that assumes all LNG projects go ahead as planned.

Read more about:

* Australian oil reserves and resources, how AERA omits Geoscience Australia’s conservative 2P reserves
* AERA’s misldeading statement about “enough” oil for 42 years and a factually incorrect “balanced” oil supply
* the problems with propane deficient LPG and butane exports
* Australia’s coming oil import crisis
* Lack of a Strategic Oil Reserve
* Need to save oil in a hurry
* 3 examples of road projects which make no sense in a period of declining oil production: new Clem7  road tunnel in Brisbane, Hunter freeway and Western freeway in Melbourne; by downloading the full article of 10 pages as PDF file: Australian
Crude Oil Decline 85 Percent Over 10 Years [1.27 MB]
http://www.crudeoilpeak.com/pdfs/28

My quest to understand the science of energy started at an early age; not so much in the comprehension of AC / DC power, but the effort one put in and the divided return. Mr Briggs (an old farmer who lived ‘next door’) spoke to me not as a child of 10 but as probably just someone to talk to.

He discussed the effort that Nugget (his draft horse) provided and the hay and grass he needed to maintain his strength to pull the plough; how planting a half acre of strawberry and carrot would earn him net few Pounds.

I also learned that prevention is better than cure and this statement of fact has never been more relevant than today.

Geosequestration is no cure (nor will it ever be viable); the likes of geothermal energy or ethanol from algae are all pipe dreams more about how corporations can pull in investors and relieve them of their money than actually turning a profit; even the holy grail of solar power has limitations that relate back to a simple equation of Nugget (the draft horse) and his work load being proportional to his consumption of other resources.

We have reached a point in time where we recognize it cant be business as usual with respect to reducing carbon emissions; however, most attention has focused on new technologies which in simple terms just translates into more resources being allocated to supporting a system that is unsupportable.

What we seem to have lost sight of is prevention … businesses revolves around consumption, so it makes sense that the new mantra is energy efficient technology, but what is technological about reduce consumption ? What everybody seems to have lost sight of is the real issue is behavioural.

Some people want to believe technology will find an answer, so they procrastinate or their attention wanders to other priorities in their life; however, corporations need to sell more stuff not less stuff, so they badge product to appease / mislead the public.

The federal and state governments have individually taken steps to address reduce energy consumption; however, as they semi-own the power generating companies, their hearts are not that into the effort.  The Green Loans program should have been effective, but vested and or constrained thinking of organisations supposedly there to compliment, have actually under-mined it through agendas known only to themselves.

There has to be recognition on the importance of behaviour, when people have the necessary information, they do make decisions and modify their lifestyle choices for a win-win situation if that option is available.

At the end of the day, comfort in the home (and even work) comes from enjoying natural nature rather than trying to replicate it, so choosing the correct orientation, design and suitable building materials will will prevent costly cures.

LG Electronics has agreed to pay affected customers $331 to cover the unexpected increase in their power bills, but has not agreed to refund the purchase price of the fridge.

It is the third time LG Electronics has been caught making false claims about the environmental credentials of its products; in 2008 it had to repay $3 million after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ruled it had inflated the energy-efficiency star rating of five models of air-conditioner.

ACCC deputy chairman Peter Kell would not comment on an investigation, but said consumer laws due to be introduced this year would give regulators greater powers to police claims.

The new legislation – the biggest since consumer law in the 1970s – would give the ACCC the power to force companies to substantiate environmental, health and other claims, as well as the power to enforce harsher penalties.

From April 1 2010 a new star rating labelling system and energy rating calculation will be introduced for all fridges.

The Good Guys said it had received a manufacturer’s recall notice from LG for the L197NFS fridge on February 26 and said the company would offer customers a full refund and would pursue the matter with LG Electronics.

Market demand for the scheme from new large-scale projects, such as wind farms and solar energy plants, has stalled partly because the government used it to reward households installing rooftop solar panels with an $8000 rebate; however, the government intends, from January 2011 to split the scheme into two parts: one for large-scale projects and a second for small-scale technologies such as solar panels and solar hot water systems.

‘We anticipate under these changes we will exceed our 20 % target by 2020′ Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told reporters in Canberra today. But she was reluctant to nominate by how much the target would be exceeded, saying that depended on (1) the take-up by households.

Large-scale projects will deliver about 41,000 kilowatt hours, the “vast majority” of the 2020 target [45,850 kilowatt hours]; ‘what that will deliver is certainty to the large-scale market,” Senator Wong said, adding the change aimed to drive investment. Small-scale projects will be covered by an uncapped fixed price – $40 per megawatt hour of electricity produced – scheme.

The changes mean the average household will pay $3 to -$4 more a year in electricity charges, Senator Wong said, but Parliament will need to approve the changes. And while the Australian Greens have welcomed the decision, questions remain unanswered about how it will operate. The Greens – Senator Christine Milne – said the changes meant thousands of Australians employed in building and running renewable energy power stations could breathe a sigh of relief that their jobs were secure, but with the details still to be clarified, important questions remained about how the scheme would now operate.

‘While the fixed price removes some uncertainty for solar investors, we need to know what long-term certainty the government will offer the industry, given that the solar multiplier will phase out over the coming few years’ she said. The Greens are calling for a gross national feed-in for all forms of renewable energy and a parallel energy efficiency scheme.

Australia’s largest electricity retailer AGL Energy managing director Michael Fraser said today the changes could see construction begin on new wind farm projects “sooner rather than later”. AGL had put a hold on any investment in its proposed Macarthur wind farm, about 300 kilometres west of Melbourne. [The Macarthur project is a joint venture with New Zealand's Meridian Energy] But Mr Fraser said the changes to the scheme could spark investment in new renewable energy projects. ‘We’d like to congratulate them on being decisive in trying to address that issue’ he told analysts at the company’s half-year results presentation. ‘We obviously need to work through the detail of what is being proposed … we’ll work through the detail, get that legislation worked out; I’d like to think that once we understand the detail and see that legislation in place we’ll see projects like Macarthur begin construction much sooner rather than later’.

But really is it still just smoke and mirrors ? The Green Loan program – that could have seen thousands of Australians led by the hand in making changes in energy consumption reductions as well as energy production via solar power – has been neutered.

But the last word comes from someone far smarter and with simple logic, Albert Bartlett.
The now world famous professor of Physics, Al Bartlett, took Australia’s Climate Change Minister Penny Wong’s figures apart on climate change emissions and population numbers, showing that Ms Wong is wrong.

He said ‘to accommodate the projected population growth AND to reduce overall annual emissions by 60% would require an annual rate of decrease of per capita emissions of polluting greenhouse gases of 3.543 % per year over the next forty years; the per capita annual emissions would have to be cut in half every 19.6 years !’

Bartlett went on to say that at its present rate of growth, Australia’s population will double by 2050, so thats not 35 million as touted by the federal government, thats almost 45 million people … and we have to import much of our food now; and despite the heavy rainfall and some billions spent of water infrastructure, we’ve had probelms getting water to half the projected national population in 2050.

In Australia we use the Rule of 72 to calculate the effects of growth and reduction; so we can apply this Rule to anything … numbers of patients per doctor; average waiting time patients per doctor then injecting (pun intended) additional patients, you can calculate the new wait time … road / traffic density, add additional users and we could see what I saw in Argentina in Buenos Aires; imagine Queen street 20 lanes wide.

Why local, state and federal governments don’t seem to want to acknowledge this simple calculation is anyone guess … but one thing is for sure, if you educate the population in ways to reduce GHG emissions, not only will they have more disposable income (to pay fat bankers) but it will reduce massive infrastructure costs associated with the soon to be required power stations to supply electricity to 40+ million Aussies and have cut our emissions in half … yer right …

With climate change being seen everywhere around the world, resulting in changing weather patterns, many countries are re-evaluating existing generation and looking for ways to reduce infrastructure costs, be it promoting wind or solar or other more extreeme choices (like geothermal and tide).

What we need in Australia is a Hugo Chavez (Venezuelan President) who has declared a national emergency in the electricity sector as the country’s worst drought in 50 years dries up water supplies in hydroelectric dams.

Despite the continued USA’s inteference which has some opposition parties blaming the government for the lack of rain in more than a year, Chavez has more popular support than most any other American president.

El Nino – through climate changes – is now hitting the world harder and the Venezuelan government is scrambling to avoid a power-grid collapse by buying generators from Brazil to China after nationwide rolling blackouts failed to prevent dam-water levels from dropping. Chavez fired his electricity minister and retracted an electricity conservation plan for Caracas last month after the measures left traffic lights without power, prompting protests.  The Guri dam is 46% full down from 60% at the beginning of the year (according to the National Administration Center, which operates the power grid) and its waters are used to generate more than two-thirds of the South American country’s power.

A state of emergency has been declared and Chavez announced measures to penalize households and businesses that consume more than a certain level and provide incentives for them to cut energy consumption; electricity companies will charge a surcharge on households that consume more than 500 kilowatt-hours an hour a month and don’t reduce their usage by 10% whereas those that cut energy use at least 10% will get a discount and those reducing consumption by more than 20%will see their bill halved.

Those that increase usage by 10% will see their bills double and those increasing consumption by 20% will receive a 200% surcharge. Chavez said ‘this is a motivator; we don’t want to charge anyone; what we want is for you to be more careful and save energy; this is a punishment to be imposed upon the people who waste’.

Failure to comply with the cuts will prompt a notification, followed by short-term suspensions of service and then an indefinite cut.

The government plans to add 4,000 megawatts of power into the national electrical system this year to resolve ‘the basic crisis’ and Venezuela will add 15,000 megawatts of power generation by 2015 at a cost of $15 billion. Venezuela hired a Chinese company to build power plants over the next two years, Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said yesterday after returning from a trip to Russia, China and Japan to sign energy deals and seek financing. The plants have generating capacity of 2.7 gigawatts. 

The down side – for the environment – is that new plants will be powered by diesel, natural gas or fuel oil, which Venezuela has plenty of and they will help resolve electricity crisis with allies including Cuba and Argentina. ’We will be unrelenting’ Chavez said.