This week's investor presentation - available on Rio's website - says the company intends spending $US7.5 billion ($10 billion) in halving its Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse emissions by 2030. I wrote about some of these issues in a piece on Thursday, but with Rio Tinto burnishing its pre-Glasgow environmental credentials by announcing its plans to decarbonise its iron ore and aluminium operations, I thought it was worth a further poke around, given the prominence of Tomago Aluminium to Hunter industry in particular, and the energy debate in general. But the mathematics are inescapable, and no amount of optimism about a green future powered by clean hydrogen and pumped hydro can be allowed to obscure the basics. That scenario is a gross simplification, and there are other methods of renewable generation beyond solar. And then there's Queensland, and Victoria and South Australia and. And then double that, making 10 times all up, to fill the batteries and meet the daytime load. And as just 20 per cent of the state's power comes from renewables, including Snowy Hydro, that means five times present capacity to replace fossil fuels. IN THE NEWS: And as you can't use power twice, the power going into storage has to be on top of the power being used, so the grid has to produce 24 hours worth of electricity in 12 hours. And as Tomago accounts for just 10 per cent of NSW electricity demand, we would need 900 of them to keep the whole state running for the 12 hours the sun doesn't shine. At about $100 million a battery, that's $9 billion.
That's how many it would take to keep Tomago Aluminium smelter running for a night, after a day in which it had been run by a renewables powered grid. ABOUT 90 or so of South Australia's Hornsdale/Tesla batteries.
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