Powering Sydney (Allan Jones) » Sydney 2030

Making it happen – clean, green infrastructure

The City has an ambitious plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70 per cent and for the city to have capacity to meet up to 100 per cent of electricity demand by local electricity generation and 10 per cent of water supply by local water capture by 2030.

To help achieve this target the City appointed UK energy and climate change expert Allan Jones. His previous work reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the borough of Woking by 80 per cent and produced similar results for London.

At the moment 80% of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the production of electricity, primarily by coal-fired power stations in the Hunter Valley. Two thirds of the energy being used by these stations is wasted as heat from cooling towers and on long-distance transmission and distribution over power lines to Sydney.

The City’s goal is to produce 70 per cent of its electricity needs from trigeneration and 30 per cent from renewable energy. Trigeneration is more than twice as energy efficient as coal-fired power stations because it uses the waste heat from local electricity production to both heat and cool buildings. The rest of the City’s reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would come from energy efficiency and other carbon reducing measures such as advanced waste treatment and sustainable transport.

Local power and water for the City of Sydney

Allan Jones is responsible for the tendering process and procurement for green infrastructure. He is also overseeing the rollout of major energy efficiency and renewable energy programs for the City’s own buildings and operations such as the building energy and water efficiency retrofit, LED street and public domain lighting and the large scale solar photovoltaics program.

Electricity network businesses in Australia are spending over $46 billion over 5 years, more expenditure than the $34 billion National Broadband Network.

In NSW, electricity networks are undertaking capital expenditure of $17.4 billion over 5 years. This represents $2,400 per person and an 80% increase on the previous 5 year period.

Average electricity prices in the Sydney electricity distribution network area are expected to increase by 83% during this period with the proportion of electricity bills that goes to pay network charges to rise from 40% to 60%. The proposed trigeneration network, energy efficiency and renewable energy could achieve savings in deferred electricity network costs and avoided costs of new power station capacity to serve the city’s growing demand in the order of $1.5 billion by 2030.

Green Infrastructure Plan

A key component of Sustainable Sydney 2030 is the call for a Green Infrastructure Plan which comprises:
• Decentralised Energy – Trigeneration Master Plan
• Decentralised Energy – Renewable Energy Master Plan
• Advanced Waste Treatment Master Plan
• Decentralised Water Master Plan

The City’s integrated plans for a city-wide energy, water and waste infrastructure makes it possible for trigeneration, recycled water and waste collection to share the same network infrastructure routes and stations. Recycled water could be treated by zero carbon waste heat from trigeneration and renewable gases and non potable water could be recovered from waste and used in the city’s green infrastructure network.

Decentralised Energy Master Plan – Trigeneration

In 2009, the City engaged the Kinesis consortium to develop the City’s Trigeneration Master Plan. The interim Trigeneration Master Plan was published in 2010 and the final Trigeneration Master Plan was published in 2012. This is the first of the City’s Green Infrastructure Master Plans, and it could potentially produce significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and energy savings across the city.

There was extensive modelling of the electricity, heating and cooling demands of buildings in the local government area to determine the optimal sizes and locations for trigeneration systems. The Master Plan identifies that trigeneration and cogeneration could produce up to 477MWe (megawatts) of local power, which would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between 24-32 per cent. But we need to lobby the federal and NSW Government for regulatory change that will create incentives for the big end of town to hook their buildings up to trigeneration precincts.

Decentralised Energy Master Plan – Renewable Energy

In 2010, the City engaged Arup to develop the City’s Renewable Energy Master Plan report. This work is being supplemented by renewable gases/fuels and economic studies to complete the Renewable Energy Master Plan. The Renewable Energy Master Plan will set out the renewable electricity and renewable gases resources both inside and outside the City’s Local Government Area (LGA).

The draft report shows that 55% of the 30% renewable electricity target could be delivered within the LGA and 45% from outside the LGA. In addition, enough renewable gases and fuels needed to displace natural gas for trigeneration in the Trigeneration Master Plan could be sourced from renewable feedstocks within 250km of the city. This does not include the geothermal hot water resources in proximity to the city that could also be developed.

Together, this would deliver reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of 2.15 million tonnes a year which would equate to a 31.5% reduction in overall greenhouse gas emission and potentially up to 100% of the city’s local energy target (70% trigeneration plus 30% renewable electricity) being met from renewable energy by 2030.

Decentralised Energy Master Plan – Advanced Waste Treatment

In 2010, the City engaged Arup to develop the City’s Alternative Waste Treatment Business Case. This work is being supplemented by renewable gases/fuels and economic studies to complete the Advanced Waste Treatment Master Plan. The Advanced Waste Treatment Master Plan will set out the advanced waste treatment process and renewable gas resource in the City of Sydney Local Government Area (LGA).

Decentralised Water Master Plan

In 2011, the City engaged a consortium of GHD, Institute of Sustainable Futures (University of Technology Sydney) and P3Ci to develop the City’s Decentralised Water Master Plan.
There was extensive modeling of the mains drinking water and recycled water demands of buildings, parks and open spaces. In addition, stormwater pollution was also modeled and assessed. The plan identifies a 30 per cent reduction in mains drinking water demand with a city-wide recycled water network and a 50 per cent reduction in stormwater pollution.

Carbon reducing projects in the City’s own buildings and operations

Leading by example is an important principle for the public sector as you cannot expect others to do what you are not prepared to do yourself. The “show by doing” principle, adopted in Woking and London, demonstrates that if the public sector leads, others will follow.

The City has already reduced greenhouse gas emissions in its own buildings by 18% by building energy efficiency retrofits and has let a building energy and water efficiency retrofit contract to reduce emissions by a further 24%, increasing the total emission reductions to 42% by the end of 2012. The City has also replaced all City owned street lighting with LED’s over the next 3 years which will reduce emissions in its street lighting by 51%.

The City has also resolved to let a contract for what will be the largest concentration of solar energy photovoltaics on buildings in Australia. The project is being funded from the City’s Renewable Energy Fund and is expected to be completed by 2014.