https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/major-publications/qed/202... (Section 1.5, figure 30)
So it's more correct to say that local generation is 100% renewable, not total energy consumption.
The common term for this is "net 100% renewables" as opposed to "gross 100% renewables", and is typically defined as exporting more renewable electricity than you import fossil-electricity while simultaneously not generating any fossil-electricity locally.
And in Australia, whenever a state talks about "100% renewables by 20XX" they're almost always talking about net 100% and not gross, so it's a reasonable-ish thing to leave off. Still annoying, mind you.
So the headline isn't incorrect, just annoyingly ambiguous.
Tasmania is an exceptionally small state. Population 500K. Based on the renewable power sources available, they must rely on a network for stability. Otherwise, they would have to massively over-develop their power infrastructure. This itself would be unsustainable.
The issue is not that Tasmania needs to over-build. It's that Victoria needs more renewables. If TAS was a net importer, that would be a different story.
So it is not in their control to be powered only by non-renewable energy. The rest of what you have written doesn’t change this simple fact.
Nuclear has similar issues where baseload generation is inefficient when trying to cover shifting power demand. Thus small cities next to nuclear will import power even if they are a net exporter. In the end larger electricity grids are simply more efficient.
So, simplified you can produce 120% export 15% and import 5%. That’s net export, and covering 100% of demand. That’s also how they can have a “200 per cent renewable target by 2040.”
Batteries for example aren’t actually renewable energy sources. So when a solar or wind powered off grid home uses batteries to store solar energy for later usage is that 100% renewable energy as long as the power is originally from sunlight?
It seems somewhat silly to say such homes are battery powered. The same terminology is used when homes skip the batteries and send power to the electric grid only to use that amount of power later. Sure, they could spend more resources building batteries, but that’s wasteful.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s easy to disagree with the common definitions. However, as long as the definitions used are common and describe the situation you can’t say they are lying.
PS: Fossil fuels are also from sunlight just like wind, so saying their not renewable is really talking about the ability to use them vastly faster than their created. Which fits the batteries / grid as renewable energy storage definition just fine.
Yeah, so why choose deceptive ways to define things?
> Batteries for example aren’t actually renewable energy sources.
They aren’t a source at all. They are just a way to store energy.
> So when a solar or wind powered off grid home uses batteries to store solar energy for later usage is that 100% renewable energy as long as the power is originally from sunlight?
Sure, why not?
> Don’t get me wrong, it’s easy to disagree with the common definitions. However, as long as the definitions used are common and describe the situation you can’t say they are lying.
I don’t know about that. It seems quite hard to disagree with the common definition. It seems very apt. The definition you seem to defend on the other hand seems like meaningless political drivel.
As per the GP's comment, in 2020 that is not the case and have been a net importer.
If renewables+fossil fuels allow you to pollute less than either renewables alone or fossil fuels alone then that's what you should do.
Edit: per comments downthread, perhaps they're actually not quite there yet, but still I think the principle holds if internal generation is exclusively renewable and net imports are negative.
So it is actually over 100%? I don’t understand what you are even calculating when you say 100%, for me it makes no sense.
In a longer time frame they normally export more energy, but they are just announcing that all (used) local generation capacity is renewable, so even if we look at a longer time frame they still don't meet the definition.
Assuming they get normal rainfalls next year (and nothing else interrupts local generation) then they will likely hit the "net 100% renewables" target next year.
I believe the GP's complaint is that they're announcing something -- the ability in normal conditions to generate all their electricity through renewable means -- in a way that could easily be parsed incorrectly to mean they are doing so currently.
https://environmentvictoria.org.au/our-campaigns/safe-climat...
> But Victoria is catching up. In 2016, the Victorian state government announced new renewable energy targets. By 2020, 25 percent of Victoria’s electricity will come from clean renewable energy. By 2025, that will rise to 40 percent.
Their target is 50 percent by 2030, but I’m overly optimistic based on runaway rooftop solar deployments and the current utility scale projects in the pipeline. It is highly likely most of Australia is 100% renewables powered (electrical, doesn’t include transportation) by 2032, 2035 at the latest.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-can-be-powered-100-by-...
There are other small countries such as Costa Rica or Norway which are also already on “100% renewables” thanks to hydro power.
Also, this is usually just for electricity. They are probably still burning lots of fossil fuels for heating and vehicle traffic.
Washington state could be hydro powered, but it's only 70%, with 20% non-renewable. Quebec is 97% hydro, but 3% nuclear due to a historical political horse-trade. Illinois, despite having the mighty Mississippi River, has 3 total dams and is less than 1% of its energy mix, with more than 50% being non-renewable.
So Costa Rica and Tasmania do enjoy some advantages, but so do lots of other places that haven't accomplished the same.
This? https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/ma...
Couldn't imagine wanting to import nuclear instead of moving trains full of oil to burn during winter had anything to do with the decision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaste...
Tasmania is also blessed in that Hydro is our "base load" which can be ramped up or down in seconds based on the fluctuating wind and solar generation.
I was driving past some of Tasmania's older dam's today on the way home from a hiking trip and I found myself trying to imagine what the river would have been like if the dam's had never been built. While I am thankful for Tassie's dam's and what they'll mean for our future, it's hard to not notice how much they change the environment.
> They are probably still burning lots of fossil fuels for heating and vehicle traffic.
Car's YES... although I'd say a LOT of people (perhaps most) heat with electricity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTIbNVDQN8 is a good documentary about dam removals in the American west.
But more than the technical achievements, it's a political achievement too. Australia has been mired by coal mining influencing policy for decades, and in the past ten years states have been reacquainted with their fortitude and started making policy that helps the state and not the mining industry.
SA and Tasmania are full steam ahead on renewables and they are leading by example on just how capable new energy technologies can be when deployed with smart policy.
Yeah that's a renewable energy you know?
In actual fact even local generation is not 100% renewable, they have a small quantity of gas generation too. For example Tamar valley gas power station is running right now - and effectively being exported to Victoria.
"100% renewable" in the sense that generation of renewable electrical energy is more than 100% of electrical energy consumption. It seems like the most straightforward way to account for it.
Haven't seen anyone insisting they should build nuclear yet, that always shows up too.
2. Because nuclear is wildly misunderstood, has progressed dramatically in the last two decades, and has a bad stigma because of incidents in the past caused by poorly designed facilities and cut corners. The incidence rate of nuclear is ridiculously small, and most of the arguments against it have scientific and completely positive responses. It is a viable solution that parrots love to put down because "oh no chernobyl".
Due to improved security nuclear plants have gotten more expensive, and as a results almost no new ones are being built in the Western world to replace those that are shutting down. The industry is slowly whittling down.
Now you can start inventing excuses why this is happening (popular ones are the greens, and the governments, and scared people, and also people who don't want to pay for the transition off fossil fuels). But it IS happening.
There's a fair amount of hype surrounding nuclear tech, e.g. in the form of small plants, but so far that's all vapourware. They are not competing on commercial terms, or even close to.
It costs more than every other form of renewable energy even when variability is taken into account.
I've yet to hear a scientific response to this that doesn't involve some sort of FUD around variability.
As it is, calling this "100% powered by renewables" is like me saying I'm a vegetarian because I don't buy meat, omitting the fact that I regularly order and eat pizzas with meat in it.
Also, yes, nuclear should be the part of overall solution, but it's arguably too much capex for Tasmania.