|
| A wind turbine at Snowtown
| |
What negatives do AGL have in their record?
- They own and/or run fossil-fuelled power stations that produce more
greenhouse gasses than any other company, see
AGL's shame, below;
- AGL lobbied to reduce or remove the Renewable Energy Target;
- They are 'sitting on' wind farms projects in areas with high potential
that could be developed, stopping other companies from developing them
– for example
Barn Hill, which is adjacent
to
Snowtown, the most productive
wind farm in Australia.
What positives do AGL have in their record?
- Big solar farms at
Nyngan (102MW) and
Broken Hill (53MW);
- A solar power with battery trial in Adelaide, involving up to 1000
batteries in homes with
solar power, claimed to be "the world's largest virtual power plant";
- AGL has interests in several wind farms:
Macarthur (420MW),
Oaklands Hill (63MW),
Hallett (351MW),
Wattle Point (91MW)
and in May 2017 they commenced construction of
Silverton.
They have proposed a wind farm at Coopers Gap, but that's just
talk at the time of writing (2017/04/29);
- AGL has committed to close down all their coal-fired power stations
– by 2050; far later than they must be shut down if disastrous
climate change is to be averted!
|
Fossil-fuelled power stations that AGL either owns or
has major interests in
|
---|
Name | State | Fuel | Capacity (MW)
|
---|
Bayswater | NSW | Black coal | 2640
| Diamantina | Queensland | Gas | 151
| Liddell | NSW | Black coal | 2000
| Loy Yang | Victoria | Brown coal | 3000
| Torrens Island | South Australia | Gas | 1280
| Somerton | Victoria | Gas | 160
| Yabulu | Queensland | Gas | 121
| |
|
Hazelwood
Power Station (not connected with AGL) was the most polluting in
Australia, but shut down at the end of March 2017.
A clever and informative net page on the shutting down of Hazelwood, and the
consequent reduction in air pollution, is at
Is Hazelwood online?.
|
|
Loy Yang brown-coal-fired power stations (A and B), rated at a total of
3000 MW taken together, are the biggest and most polluting power stations in
Australia.
The Loy Yang Power Stations burn the most polluting type of coal used for
power generation in Australia, brown coal, and produce 26.6 million
tonnes of greenhouse CO
2 a year.
Bayswater Power Station emits 13.3 million tonnes of CO2 per
annum, making it the second most greenhouse polluting power station in
Australia.
Loy Yang and Bayswater are owned by AGL.
Finally, AGL is responsible for far more greenhouse gas pollution than any
other company in Australia, as shown in the graph on the right.
(See
The Dirty Dozen, GetUp!)
Another production worth a look, and good for a chuckle,
350.org have produced a video satirising AGL's greenwash.
|
Sundrop Farms
|
---|
|
A solar thermal power development at Port Augusta which is
integrated into a greehouse tomato-growing business.
This sort of innovation is the way of the future.
| |
Instead of lobbying to reduce the Renewable Energy Target, AGL could lobby to
increase it.
AGL should, and must, bring forward their date by which they will shut down
their last coal-fired power station.
This is at present set at 2050, the latest responsible date would perhaps be
2030.
They could be lobbying for the Federal Government to legislate a substantial price on carbon emissions.
This would introduce more certainty into the electricity market, to everyone's
advantage, including their own.
They could be developing pumped-hydro energy storage systems
(pumped-hydro, rather than batteries, is where the great majority of the
world's energy storage is).
This could not only be a money earner for them, it would allow them, and
anyone else, to develop more intermitant renewable energy.
They could speed-up their development of wind power projects that they have
proposed but done nothing with (for example,
Barn Hill).
They could encourage more people to install solar power on their roofs by
increasing the amount they pay for solar power from the present $0.061 to
at least the $0.08 paid by others, for example, Diamond Energy.
(See SolarChoice.)
|
AGL's Nyngan Solar Farm; a good start, but AGL has a long way to go.
|
---|
|
|
|
|
|
Personal responsibility
Consumption is correlated to greenhouse gas emissions; the more we consume,
the more emissions we are responsible for.
With an annual income of $7 million, I wonder how much greenhouse gas Mr
Vesey is personally responsible for?
|
|
|
|
|
Value for money: maximising happiness
Research has shown that, beyond an income that is sufficient to provide
material needs, more money produces very little increase in hapiness.
So Mr Vesey's $7m would probably not make him significantly more happy than
if he was paid $1m.
On the other hand, I would think that many of AGL's 3400 employees' day-to-day
financial concerns would be reduced by an extra $1760 each year.
The gathering of
excessive wealth into the hands of
a very few people is unethical.
Also see my notes on
contribution to society and
societal dysfunction and
cancer.
| |
AGL's day-to-day running is controlled by Chief Executive Officer Andy Vesey
(who receives
nearly $7 million dollars a year for his efforts).
Corporate bosses, it seems to me, are
motivated by greed and self-interest.
No one needs anything like $7 million dollars a year; the fact that they
take so much money from the company that they work for when they have no
need for it, and when it could do far more good if a part of it went to the
lower-paid of the company employees, seems to show a very low standard of
personal
ethics.
Consider that if Mr Vesey was to take one million rather than seven million
a year, each of AGL's 3,400 employees could have a pay rise of $1,760 a year.
To retain his job with its obscene salary Mr Vesey has to satisfy the
shareholders and board of AGL by maximising company profits.
Anyone with half a brain can see that
the coal industry is facing its end days.
Mr Vesey has certainly seen this and realises that the future of electricity
generation will be in renewable energy, so he is trying to juggle the need
to make as much money out of AGL's coal-dependent assets as possible at the
same time as moving, slowly, toward renewables.
Mr Vesey also has to retain as many of AGL's customers and shareholders as he
can.
There is a shift of electricity consumers toward more responsible power
suppliers who
offer renewably-generated electricity, such as Diamond and Momentum.
Many investors are concerned about the ethical implications of where their
money is invested; there is a
substantial movement away from
companies that have soiled images toward 'ethical investment'.
Green-washing AGL's image is an effort to retain these power consumers and
ethical investors.
Considering all of this, it would seem that whatever efforts AGL is making
toward greening its image are motivated by pecuniary interests, not by any
conscientious or ethical concerns.