To fight an opponent effectively it is helpful to understand them. We all know that one of the biggest issues in Australian politics right now is how we are going to make the transition to a carbon free economy. The coal industry and Transgrid are extremely worried since they cannot make a rational and reasonable case for continuing with “business as usual”. Instead, they seek to come up with all sorts of arguments to justify their future. One of the biggest threats is the replacement of a centralized electricity supply with local generation and small regional relatively autonomous grids, as already done in many countries. The coal industry requires thousands of kilometers of transmission lines, which loose a large % of energy to heat, to transport electricity from centralized power stations over enormous distances to its customers, such as Country Energy. Because of the heavily subsidized cost of coal, the inefficiency of the process is irrelevant, and paid for by the end user. At the moment this inefficiency is expressed in carbon pollution. When the industry, from 2011, is held accountable for these emissions, the system will become completely untenable. Therefore, if the 'powers that be' can create the necessary infrastructure to maintain a centralized grid now, its presence will be a very powerful argument later against smaller grids and local generation - $227 million worth of argument in our case at hand alone.
This is the reason, and the only reason, TransGrid wants to build this power line now. There is no need for it. In fact, as a result of new Federal and State government carbon reduction policies implemented over the last two years, the amount of centralized electricity distributed by Country Energy in NSW has actually decreased. TransGrid’s forecasts of the amount of power they will ‘need’ to transmit have been inaccurate and significantly overestimated. Also, they have not properly investigated the cleaner alternatives possible for the Far North NSW Coast.
These are the grounds we have to fight on - not on the basis of "not in my backyard”. This is a last ditch attempt by Transgrid and the coal industry to continue with “business as usual” which will endanger our’s and our children’s future. Above ground, long distance, transmission lines are an unnecessary, outdated and polluting technology.
The IPCC is at present looking into how renewable energies can be integrated into the local distribution grids and how we can reconstruct our infrastructure to enable us to use cleaner forms of energy. No fait a compli should be created until this report is released and its recommendations can be integrated into our energy supply plan.
TransGrid has to be forced back to the drawing board to carry out a proper planning process and to come up with a solution that is sustainable into a carbon free future; it has to be forced to take into account in its forecasting process new government policies aimed at carbon reduction, such as regulations for more energy efficient appliances, the phasing out of electric hot water systems, new insulation and building guidelines, etc.; it also has a social responsibility to take on board the changing public awareness which has seen government rebates for solar installations taken up at four times the predicted rate.
TransGrid has to be forced to take into consideration the models for a "smart grid" and devices that can automatically manage household energy demand, saving significant amounts of energy and dollars - two strategies the CSIRO and IBM have developed and which have been implemented in European countries.
TransGrid has to be forced to seriously look into the future of electricity supply over the next 20 years and do their planning accordingly. It has to look into the feasibility of smaller regionally independent grids with embedded generation connected over short distances by underground DC cables.
TransGrid has to be forced to properly look into the cost of underground high voltage DC cabling (HVDC), taking into account the newest technology which has reduced costs dramatically and which, when environmental, health and social factors as well as maintenance, reliability and quality of supply are taken into account, is actually more cost effective.
Finally to TransGrids claim of taking 7400 cars of the road with the new Transmission line. This reinds me of the joke which circulated in the first semester of economy course at Uni. The Professor says he will start smoking cigars because he needs to save money. How tht the students ask. If I smoke the cheap cigars I save 40 cents per cigar. So if manage to smoke 10 cigars I will be able to save $4 a day or $1460 a year
We have to fight this line for what it is: a technological dinosaur which would be built for the short term benefit of those with vested interests at the expense of our’s and our children’s future.