We’ve been a bit quiet with our newsletters and blogs this year. I guess we’ve been too busy to find time for it. It’s a good problem to have, but it’s also important to talk about what we do, why we do it, and what we think the future holds.
So this is only a short one, offering insight into work we are doing related to climate change from an energy perspective and a water / adaptation perspective. This work is not about climate change modelling, but are some real examples of what is currently taking place and how difficult it is to redesign infrastructure to cope with climate change right now.
Please share and forward to anyone who might be interested.
Climate mitigation
So first up is the energy and battery work we are doing, related to managing a community battery storage project. Addressing climate change is really about zero emissions, and zero emissions is possible only with battery storage. Like a rainwater tank stores water, a battery stores energy for when we need it.
We need a huge amount of storage to run our electricity network, our cars, our industry, and our all-electric homes with 100% renewable energy. Batteries, EV bi-directional cars (i.e. import electricity from your car to run the house), and pumped hydro are most likely going to make this happen, in our opinion.
But do we need a battery in every home, or can we connect a neighbourhood of homes to one central community battery? In theory, yes, we can have one battery per 100 or so houses. one of projects is at the forefront of delivering this, and in practice we are finding that actually implementing these community batteries on the ground is bloody hard.
Firstly, we need land to host the battery, and land managers – be them council, state government or a roads, water or rail agency – have land, but this doesn’t mean they have the capacity or strategic interest in allowing that land to be used for community battery storage. And then, assuming you can secure land, the next challenge is getting a retailer to create a billing system (and incentive scheme) to connect your energy usage and bill at home to this local community battery in your neighbourhood.
We’ve been mostly successful overcoming these two challenges but now we’ve encountered another hurdle that is proving very difficult to navigate through: asset insurance. Unlike electricity distribution companies and councils, community organisations cannot easily obtain property and asset insurance. We have been working on some creative paths forward but success is not guaranteed.
Our tips for those applying for new community or neighbourhood battery projects and funding; ensure you can get property and asset insurance and a lease for the site first! Or don’t bother!
Climate adaptation
The second project is a tricky one, especially for a country built on the coastline. What if you build on a flood plain or near the coast and water won’t drain away? Engineers and developers will tell you that anything can be fixed and there is an engineering solution to any drainage issue. And mostly there is, but at what cost?
We did a project earlier this year on how best to solve a low-lying drainage problem in a small town on the Victorian coast. We found that, in all probabilities, there is no long term, realistic, maintainable, cost-effective solution fixing the drainage, and building in places that are just too vulnerable and too close to the coast and floodplains is very problematic.
We tried hard to find a simple but sound design solution for road reserves and parts of private property that are often underwater. We tested that solution for a range of storm events and probabilities and looked closely at the data on sea level rise and rainfall intensity.
Our conclusion: it genuinely is a wicked problem and we believe based on this analysis that it is almost impossible to design a cost-effective solution to these historical development problems. A really tough message for those that live there now, and we think a message that will become louder, as climate change continues to impact on us.
But we are always hopefully we can overcome these climate change related challenges, so that is why we will end this with this image below!
