Green Tasmania could help wean Australian cities off coal

Bloomberg

Tasmania wants to turn itself into a battery.
The island state off the Australian mainland’s southern tip is pursuing what its leaders say is the world’s most ambitious renewable energy target, boosting hydro and wind generation to twice its own needs by 2040 and exporting the rest via a planned undersea cable. The strategy could play a key role in weaning the nation’s urban centers of Sydney and Melbourne off their reliance on coal.
Tasmania already gets almost all of its power from hydro and wind, making it an outlier in the nation, one of the world’s most-polluting on a per-capita basis because of its heavy coal and natural gas use both domestically and for export. While the federal government is pushing for a “gas-fired” recovery from the economic hit of coronavirus measures, it is offering a cleaner source of energy. “We are a nationally significant renewable energy powerhouse,” Tasmania’s energy minister Guy Barnett said. “But we want to take it to the next level and become a globally significant player.”
Tasmania is famed for its wild coastlines and ancient forests, and has been successful in cultivating a global reputation for fresh and natural produce — President Xi Jinping visited the island in 2014, sparking a wave of interest from Chinese consumers. Clean energy is a natural extension of that image.
At the heart of Barnett’s plan is a solution to store renewable power so that it can still be dispatched when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. That will be crucial as several aging coal plants — which still supply around 60% of the nation’s power — retire over the next decade, and wind and solar step in to fill the gap.
Tasmania is assessing several pumped hydro projects, taking advantage of the state’s strong water resources to deploy the long-established storage technology. But their viability hinges on building a 370-kilometre (230-mile) power cable under the Bass Strait that can unlock access to the mainland.
The so-called Marinus Link would add a second undersea cable to the existing Basslink, which is owned by Singapore’s Keppel Infrastructure. Basslink has suffered a number of outages in recent years and was out of action for several months last year due to a technical fault.
A study by the state’s electricity company, TasNetworks, found the Marinus Link to be commercially feasible, and the national government has given modest financial backing to the $2.4 billion project.