Review: Saul Griffith's Quarterly Essay
A bike path across the Nullarbor will not solve climate change
Saul Griffith has recently written a Quarterly Essay about electrification and how we can address climate change.
In general, I like the work Saul is doing and believe that he is working on an important problem. But I expect more from him.
Climate change is an urgent and pressing problem and people who care about addressing climate change should demand better quality analysis from people who purport to offer solutions.
As you’ll see in the sections below, I’m pretty scathing of parts of this essay. At the outset, I think it’s important to note that Griffith explores a lot of ideas in his essay and just because the ideas I talk about are bad it does not therefore mean that the other ideas should be discarded out-of-hand.
Let’s get into it.
Basic errors make it hard to trust his opinion
In the opening page of the Essay, Griffith writes
"The Australian electricity network is the largest machine Australia has ever built. It physically links every single household and every single Australian. Because of this literal connection…"
I appreciate the intent of a metaphor that 'the network brings us together' but suggesting that the network is a ‘literal’ and ‘physical’ connection between all Australians is literally incorrect.
Australia does not have one electricity network. As the Clean Energy Council website says, Australia has "two main electricity grids and many remote 'island' grids".
A reader unfamiliar with Australia's electricity network could very reasonably interpret this to mean that all Australians are literally connected to the same network.
For a reader with a modicum of familiarity with the electricity system, such as myself, you begin to doubt Griffith's credibility from the very first page.
The situation gets even worse on page 3 which features a diagram which suggests that State Governments do not play a role in electricity generation.
This is profoundly wrong.
The Tasmanian government owns basically all the generation assets in Tasmania (primarily hydro but also some gas and wind).
The Queensland government owns 3 companies (Stanwell, CS Energy and CleanCo) which operate a number of coal-fired power plants, gas power plants and hydro-electric assets.
The West Australian government owns Synergy which owns a significant chunk of the coal and gas generation assets in the state.
The Victorian government, rather famously, just won an election on a promise to 'bring back the SEC' and invest and own renewable assets.
Suffice to say, it wouldn't surprise me if you did an analysis and found that more than 50% of the utility scale generation in Australia was owned by State and Territory governments.
Any reader who works in energy policy would be forgiven for throwing the book away at this point.
If Griffith’s is making such basic errors in describing the current system, how can I possibly trust his more speculative claims about what the future could look like?
Furthermore, how can I trust his analysis and recommendations for the future if it is founded upon such a poor understanding of the present?
To make this concrete, at one point he suggests that $12b in subsidies for electrification between now and 2027 will generate $302b in home savings by 2035. This seems like an incredibly high rate of return.
Can I trust that this number, which suggests that electrification subsidies would be incredibly worthwhile, is accurate?
Given the other errors he makes, I don’t believe anyone should take these figures at face value.
He also has some very questionable ideas for the future.
A 15,000km bike path around Australia covered in solar is not a good idea
Towards the end of the essay, Griffith presents a list of ‘big ideas’ we could ‘roll out’. The first one he mentions is a 15,000km bike path that circumnavigates Australia which is covered in solar panels.
He describes it as follows
We could afford a round-the-nation electric bike path with a solar shade overhead that provides 5 per cent of the country’s abundant and cheap renewable energy. We could plant fruiting trees along the way so tourists and idle teenagers can grab an apple as they ride.
This is not a sensible idea. Even with electric bikes that can travel 35km/h does he believe many people would make the 2,700km journey between Adelaide and Perth on their bikes?
Assuming you could ride for 6 hours a day (a tall ask in itself) this journey would take you 13 days to complete.
Apart from the Nedd Brockmann’s of the world, would anyone actually want to do this? Even if there are apple trees lining the path?
The same could be said for the nearly 4,000km bike path between Perth and Darwin which would take about 18 days to complete.
Building so much solar thousands of kilometres from the East Coast, where the majority of Australians live, seems unwise. Presumably there would be considerable electricity losses in transmitting the bulk of this energy across this large distance.
In a context where we are struggling to build transmission that is much closer to our population centres, it would be a huge mistake to divert resources and attention to pursuing this cockamamie project.
Blue-sky creative thinking is valuable but this idea is not. I support more bike paths and I support more action on climate change. But I struggle to find a reason to support this idea.
I will extend an olive branch. The idea of covering a carpark or train-line in solar panels is not necessarily always a bad idea.
For example, the Victorian government is currently building elevated rail to eliminate level crossings.
It seems worthwhile to explore whether solar panels could be included as part of a structure that covers the new trainlines.
Level Crossing Removal: New elevated train line and station in Melbourne
Trainlines are close to where people live (and use electricity) and the electricity produced from these solar panels could be connected to the distribution network at lower cost and with less efficiency losses.
Of course, building the additional structure above the trainline to support the solar panels would cost money and it might not be worth doing. Especially when solar panels can be put on a roof or in a paddock without needing to spend any money modifying the location where the solar panels will sit.
The problem is that I don’t know whether this is economically feasible. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. Who knows?
It would have been a useful contribution for Griffith to provide some analysis on whether this more promising idea is feasible but instead he’s too busy writing about building a bike path across the Simpson Desert.
Griffith’s should use his public profile to advocate for better ideas
As an engineer with a PhD from MIT, Griffith should use his skills to help guide the energy and passion of non-technical climate activists towards transformative but feasible solutions. By recommending this bike path idea, he fails to do so.
We don’t need engineers to be suggesting poorly thought through ideas like this 15,000km bike path. It would be counterproductive if some dedicated climate activists read this essay and spent their time advocating for this bike path when they could be advocating for much more effective solutions. Suggesting this sort of idea wastes everyone’s time.
Climate change is an urgent problem and we need technical leaders with a public persona, like Griffith’s, to be giving us feasible ideas that communities can rally behind and advocate for.
Maybe the other ideas in the essay fit this description, but we would all be better off if he scrapped this one.
I’ve now written a Part 2.