Health, Economic, and Environmental concerns: gas energy industry in Australia

Planet Earth
21

This is why I have supported campaigns and petitions to make changes with rentals to make landlords install solar panel generation at their investment properties were possible. Some units have no area available for installation, and this is where Community batteries come to the fore to provide local power storage rather than relying entirely on a very distant power generator.

There has just been so much stalling, prevarication, and even dismissal of the need to make these changes. It gets me very angry, that almost invariably it is those who have no capacity to arrange change, are the ones left with no choice and staggering financial and lifestyle imposts. Second class citizens seems an inadequate way to describe the situations they are left in.

In the home we have, we ensured we had panels and a battery installed. Total cost was quite substantial at around $30,000 for 13 kW of panels, and a Tesla battery. We are moving to install a further 6.6kW of panels as we realise that we want further self reliance from grid power. This will cost around a further $6,000 for the panels, installation, and upgrade of an inverter from 5 kW to a 10 kW one. This would be too onerous for most lower income households to even think about doing. If a rental, not even a realistic choice for the tenants to consider in the first place.

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22

If investment property owners are to shoulder any more costs than they already do, rental properties will become as rare as hens teeth, in Vic. in particular.

I’m not speaking for myself as I own my flat, and I’m not a property investor. The cooktop is the only appliance that will need to go electric, I won’t be facing great expenses. Nor am I a Luddite, I see change and I consider it on its merits.

I believe that the phasing out of Gas should have started at the source: stop the exports which are not paying their keep, implement gradual shifts from domestic gas usage (which Btw adds very little to environmental damage) to other sustainable/renewable forms of energy.

I guess they believed the Japanese oil giant who warned ‘world peace at risk’ if Australia stopped exporting LNG :wink:

PS

Re Bess, not the ideal solution IMO

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23

Any power generation comes with risks. Fossil fuel generation comes not only with climate change risk, it comes with health risks, it comes with fire risks, it comes with ethical and other environmental risks beyond just climate change including the mining. High initial cost to build the power generation equipment and buildings, it comes with high energy loss over transmission and transformers, large land requirements especially for the very high tension power lines and substations. Power stations have limited lifetimes. Gas fired power is at the extreme end of the cost of producing electricity, generally gas powered stations wait until the unit cost of producing power is at the top end of unit cost.

The Australian electricity system was founded on centralised, carbon-intensive coal-fired generation. The average lifetime of a coal powered plant is 29 years although its design life is 40 to 50 years. About three-quarters of Australia’s coal-fired power stations are operating beyond their original design life and some have had extensive refits.

Age is the major factor leading to coal plant closure. These old generators are inefficient and carbon intensive.

A director of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, Tim Buckley said a new coal plant with stringent emissions controls would take at least eight years to be approved and built, and cost around $3 billion.

People see the risk profile and suggest it is too risky. We are just too used to the old way of doing things, like with EVs and the hue and cry over the car fires. The evidence re car fires is that fossil fuel cars are far more likely to burn, yet we are made more aware of the EV fires.

As for lack of rental properties, that has been a failure of building to meet the needs of the population. There are usually very few properties available to rent. There is a dearth of social housing available for low income families. Average ROI on Australian rentals is 5%, though student multiple tenancies and similar can easily achieve 12% or more. It is not that owners can’t or don’t make money, simply there are just not enough places available to meet the needs.

Life span of a Community battery is expected to be in the realm of 10 years before individual batteries in the enclosure need replacement with newer packs. The remaining infrastructure needs no changes. The old batteries can then be recycled or used in less demanding situations. Though an individual battery on the Community battery can fail earlier.

All up not really a risky proposition, they have had some here not far from where we live for around 3 years so far with no issues. Studies have shown batteries support the grid, among the benefits is that they help decrease the impact of power failures and brown outs (low power events).

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24

It would help if we actually made good money out of this resource, however I don’t believe we do!
Genevieve

25

In the block of flats I’m in there’s a central hot water plant servicing 12 units with 2x260 litre gas hot water units.
One of the units has split, it needs to be replaced. Cheapest quote is over $6K.
I proposed changing to an electrical system now, and the majority of owners were in favour of looking into our options.
One of the experts we asked is a rep from Rheem. They sell both systems and could offer useful advice.

These are the problems we face:

  • We will need 3-4 electric hot water units to replace 2 gas, plus a heat pump to supplement supply at peak periods.

  • Electric heaters (no matter the size) can heat approximately 93 litres per hour. A standard shower head uses 6-16 litres per minute. We have 12 showers in this building. With electric, there is a chance residents may experience no hot water during peak periods.

  • Government rebates are only available with heat pumps.

  • The larger commercial electric hot water units (as we would need) and heat pumps require 3-phase power. We don’t have 3-phase power to this site. Upgrade costs will be substantial.

  • The hot water units would require 2-4 times as much space for electric so will not fit in the current room. Communal space would need to be allocated externally. This means the equipment would be exposed to the salt, weather and vandalism.

  • The electric hot water units and heat pump require fans for air circulation, running 24/7.

  • AGL charges around $1000 to remove a gas meter.

  • Electrical suppliers will charge $400-700 to install new smart meters.
    Just to swap gas to electric meters will cost around $16-20,000

*Overall, the switch to electric will be a massive project potentially costing $40-50,000, less a couple of grand for government rebates.

The rep also said:

Rheem work closely with government authorities and do not believe customers will be forced off gas. Gas is here to stay. Other states (SA for example) that brought in similar HWU legislation well before VIC and are now growing their exemption lists as they realise there are too many situations where electric hot water units cannot do the job (retrofit). Hospitals, apartment complexes, restaurants etc. New installations are different and can be covered by the National Construction Code.

We voted to replace the split gas unit.
How we will go in the future remains to be seen. Although the list of ‘exceptions’ is growing, gas charges will keep escalating, the environmental concerns will still be present.

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26

Thanks for the informative analysis.

I have posted elsewhere some of the limitations of heat pumps. While they are efficient in heating water, they are time inefficient (they take a long time to heat water compared to traditional storage electricity and gas systems).

Our local caravan park installed a bank of commercial heat pump hot water systems replacing a bank of commercial electric storage systems to save running costs. After about 12 months, with many complaints of guests having ‘cool to cold’ showers towards the end of daily peak shower times, they have removed the heat pumps and installed a gas instantaneous hot water system.

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27

It certainly seems necessary – and possible.

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Choice has stopped reviewing Gas Cooking Appliances
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Only because successive governments continue to allow the insanity of gas sold offshore (eg to Japan who then onsells to other countries at a profit because they pay no tax on what they export from Aus.) and the small population still using gas (not by choice at this stage) are practically subsidising it.

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29

Although it’s quite common for state governments make dumb decisions from time to time, here in WA they are smart enough to keep the gas flowing for all.

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30

Phil, they’re not going to leave the gas in the ground are they, it’ll be sold and used elsewhere. There is no point in stopping us for having access to this valuable asset. Having choices is the key.

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It’s an open question as to whether those of our governments who have made recent decisions should be doing more. If one accepts there are significant health and other negative costs arising from the use of gas in home and in certain small business settings. Those costs fall directly on the health system and indirectly on the economic output of the nation. Assuming as some have said there is a net benefit in removing gas from our homes. It would seem appropriate that the full cost of doing so is also met by the community and not the individual users. IE the net benefit is shared across the whole of the community.

Evidence of a change in attitude, and the possibility given positive financial incentives a significant number of consumers are prepared to move on from gas.

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Well, um, that could be an entirely rational decision - whether on financial grounds (cost of climate change exceeds revenue from flogging the gas) or on other grounds.

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33

Impacts on underground water supply a concern with unknown future consequences, for settlements and agricultural users as a well as the environment.

Concerns for a large portion of the driest parts of the continent.

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34

After seeing the annual electricity price increases in Victoria, a conspiracy type could think government is coercing Victorians to move on from gas (which they are) and once there is inescapable use of electricity for everything with no viable option, to give the electricity industry, including grid production, PV panels, and batteries, carte blanc to profit as they will.

The causes are many and varied from gas exports raising prices of fuel for power plants, grid upgrades and maintenance, and so on but as with most things there does not appear to be a cohesive forward plan excepting to keep the profits rolling on the business side, at the expense of the buyers. The overall efficiencies introduced by the current pseudo-competition of so many retailers, all replicating their excellent billing systems selling the same generated products over the same poles and wires had to be a breathtaking decision in the world of government policy? It may take time to understand how well policies surrounding PV and batteries were actually thought out?

The inescapable part is our gas exporters have been given what might be the greatest free ride on the globe and the industry is permeating more every year. The big winners? Shareholders and executives? The losers? Almost everyone else?

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