Regrow Qld 20 January 2021 Issue 3 Vol 2
Renewable energy, regenerative farming, and revitalising our communities. Unashamedly parochial. Unashamedly political. Let's Regrow Queensland.
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Editorial
Anna Hitchcock
Regular readers and those who ought to be regular readers (I’m looking at you, Hugh!) will remember that I purchased this book with good intentions prior to Christmas in order to get to grips with the Regenerative Agriculture thing.
This book has already blown my mind and I’m only up to Chapter 5.
Over the years I have been involved in various iterations of Native Plant groups, Landcare, Coastcare, Bushcare, Waterwatch and done some work in the agricultural sector. I’ve seen contour ploughing, low stress stock handling and various weed and gully management systems come and go. I attended a speech by Peter Andrews about his theories of landscape management.
I’ve also done a fair bit of Permaculture work, and the latest of my experiments can be seen in my current garden which I am building up from a starting point of 1 palm, 1 magnificent mango tree, and an awful lot of river sand deposited in the 2013 flood.
All of these have been steps along a path along which Regenerative Agriculture is another step.
I hesitate to mention this, but I grew up in (gasp) NSW and thus am not a ‘bogan’ but a ‘westie’. So Chapter 4 - ‘An Upside-Down World’ about Tim Wright’s property west of Uralla in the Northern Tablelands of NSW hit very close to home as I spent my first 18 years living not 50 kilometres from there.
I’ve been forced to confront some long held dormant beliefs about the country up there, how it should be managed, and whether sheep grazing is a viable land use. Having seen a lot of very poor land use, and having spent the twice daily school bus trip driving past the most enormous erosion gully, with sheep grazing in almost bare paddocks, I had some ingrained ideas about stocking rates and land management that clearly needed to be shaken out of me.
Chares Massey says his brain felt scrambled as he reflected on triple stocking rates on a property that is 1/3 forested. On dams that don’t dry up in a drought, and springs that don’t stop flowing. On no need for agistment, or sending flocks to be slaughtered. On no goddamn superphosphate fuelled thistles (which were the bane of my childhood).
He provides that most dangerous of ideas, hope. And that may just have brought a tear to my cynical westie eyes.
‘Upside-Down World’ indeed.
{Anna}
NEWS
Big batteries picking up the load
“Two of the world’s biggest batteries, worth a combined $1bn, will be built at the sites of NSW coal plants in a move to ease strains in the power grid and provide back-up for renewable energy generation.
Origin Energy plans to develop a giant 700 megawatt battery at Eraring, Australia’s largest coal-fired power station, while France’s Neoen is preparing a 500MW battery stack dubbed the Great Western Battery Project at Wallerawang, home to the former EnergyAustralia coal station, which has now been decommissioned.
The two batteries would rank as the largest storage devices in the world and over four times larger than the Tesla world-beating battery in South Australia, which is also operated by Neoen. ”
Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII
“US greenhouse gas emissions tumbled below their 1990 level for the first time last year as a result of the response to the coronavirus pandemic.
A preliminary assessment from research group Rhodium says that overall emissions were down over 10%, the largest fall since World War II.
Transport suffered the biggest decline, with emissions down almost 15% over 2019.
Energy emissions also fell sharply, due to a decline in the use of coal.”
“With stay-at-home orders in place, economic activity ground to a halt in March and April and this had significant implications for greenhouse gas emissions.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55632050
BHP and Toyota to partner on light electric vehicle trial
“Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP will partner with Toyota Australia on a trial of a new light electric vehicle (LEV) at its Nickel West operations in Western Australia.
BHP announced last week that a converted LandCruiser 70 – which now runs as a fully electric vehicle thanks to an onboard battery – will be trialled at its Nickel West operations, fulfilling several roles at the site and operating in both above ground and underground settings.
The move builds on previous trials undertaken by BHP with other suppliers that are currently ongoing at its Olympic Dam operations in South Australia and its Broadmeadow operations Queensland.”
https://thedriven.io/2021/01/12/bhp-and-toyota-to-partner-on-light-electric-vehicle-trial/
Colombia: BYD Wins Cumulative Orders To Supply 1,002 EV Buses
“After the completion of a massive order for 470 electric buses, BYD has won additional orders for a cumulative 1,002 electric buses … for Bogota, Colombia. This is the largest BYD order for electric buses outside of China.
According to the company, 9- and 12-meter models will be produced in partnership with local bus manufacturers - Superpolo and BUSSCAR - which will use BYD's integrated electric bus solutions and locally produced body parts. Deliveries are scheduled for 2021 and the first half of 2022.”
https://insideevs.com/news/466616/colombia-byd-cumulative-orders-1002-ev-buses/
Forward thinking -
Peter Van Beek
Gladstone should become its own “Renewable Energy Zone”
RAPAD takes the lead in Repowering Regional Queensland (1).
(This is a follow up on the letter we sent to all Gladstone’s Regional councillors which we published on 6 January in Issue 1, Vol 2.)
The Queensland Government has declared three Renewable Energy Zones in North, Central and Southern Queensland. We wholeheartedly endorse this. But that does not mean that individual Regional Councils with special conditions cannot take their own initiatives to supplement these zones. A group of councils out West are doing just that.
RAPAD? What or where is that? It is a very large slice of Queensland, 23% in fact, known as Central West Queensland. It consists of seven Shire/Regional councils: Barcaldine, Blackall, Longreach, Barcoo, Diamantina, Boulia and Winton.
They are looking to create Australia’s first renewable energy industrial area together with Professor Garnout’s Sunshot Energy company. They have submitted an application to the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund to kickstart an industrial zone near the town of Barcaldine. It will be known as “The Zone”.
Professor Garnaut knows the area well. He said the project will provide a model for rural industrial development throughout Western Queensland and Northern Australia.
The area claims the best grid-connected solar resource in the country and Sunshot will provide the low-cost Renewable Energy. Other renewable sources may include using biomass in the form of an invasive species, prickly acacia, for bio-oil, biogas and char. The area has artesian water, existing rail and road connections and communications needed to start new industries.
Envisaged future activities include “protected horticulture”, manufacturing vanadium electrolytes, and a commercial scale zero carbon hydrogen plant. It will double the number of jobs in Barcaldine with further expansion of employment and income during later stages. All based on cheap renewable energy.
Gladstone has Queensland’s most concentrated energy market plus a whole heap more advantages, see our Factsheet “Gladstone needs Renewable Energy now”(2). We should follow RAPAD’s lead. And do it now, before we our lose jobs to overseas competitors.
Images sourced from: https://www.rapad.com.au/publications/annual-report/
Upskilling:
We’re loving this article by Mark Manson about the attention diet. Of course, while reading it, we checked our Facebook stats, answered several texts, and wandered off to Twitter to see what outrageous thing happened in America in the last 10 minutes.
That’s it! We’re going on an attention diet . . . tomorrow, or maybe next week.
In all seriousness, if you are looking for more hours in the day, seriously limiting your social media time can make a big difference. Even if your job is social media, there are ways to focus that time better, such as using scheduling and planning tools.
Language warning on this one - Mark is famously sweary and that’s what we love about him.
https://markmanson.net/attention-diet
Opinion:
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Change is in the Air
Folks, I don’t know where you live (yet) but there’s a pretty good chance you’ve had some rain recently.
Happy Days!
Especially those of you living in the border lands of Queensland and NSW… you lucky, lucky, damp sods.
While we could do with some more, I can’t complain, because in my neck of the woods (or what’s left of them) for the first time in a long time all the bushfires have been extinguished, the grass is green, the cattle aren’t foraging for fodder 24/7 and some of our creeks have puddles in them now.
Again, Happy Days!
Frankly, things are so good I saw a farmer’s face grimace into a smile this week!
Sadly, it was gone by the time I whipped out my phone to capture the momentous occasion, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
But things really are so pleasant right now, that I’ve taken to driving round with my windows down to revel in the smell of freshly scrubbed air, the scent of flowering trees and plants and the delightful aroma of newly mown grass.
Have I uttered the phrase ‘Happy Days’ yet?
Also, flocks of birds are gorging themselves on the bonanza of bugs bought forth by the rain; although my windscreen has made a bit of a dent in the local flying insect population.
On the downside, driving with my windows down also means I’m being frequently fumigated by the choking exhaust fumes from the many 4WD’s and trucks I get stuck behind.
I’m no stranger to this because, as a lad, air-conditioned cars were rarer than, well, a happy farmer, so being constantly engulfed in exhaust fumes was something we simply lived with; that, and vinyl seats which removed several layers of skin from any part of your body that unwittingly came into contact with the lava-hot plastic.
These days, while I’m extremely grateful vinyl car seats have gone the way of the Dodo, thanks to air-conditioning very few of us have any idea of what smells (good or bad) are surrounding our hermetically sealed vehicles.
We really are cut off from nature while we’re out and about.
Especially those of you living in a major city. On a visit to Brisbane last year, I stepped outside my air-conditioned unit to get some fresh air and was forced back indoors by the pong of exhaust fumes.
Once my lungs had refilled with enough air to attempt speech, I loudly declared we’ll be the last generation to live with this level of airborne pollution.
In the next decade, as more electric vehicles hit our cities gridlocked streets, they won’t be emitting any fumes.
Think about that for a moment; no more diesel or petrol fumes!
No more smog!
No more engine din!
No more haze on the horizon indicating a large metropolis is nearby!
No more air quality warnings on the news!
People living in central business districts will be able to smell, for the first time in generations, what their city’s actual scent is.
And, whatever that smell is, we’ll soon find out, because the other big thing in the air right now is: Change.
Happy Days!