Climate Change Response
We recognise that we have a responsibility to lead the effort to decarbonise the Australian economy and to help advance Tasmania’s renewable energy capability. It's also our responsibility to prepare and respond to climate change impacts on our network assets to ensure safe and reliable service to customers.
Renewable Energy Transition
Australia has a big challenge ahead. Almost three-quarters of our nation’s power comes from coal stations that’ll close in the next 15 years.
Australia will need almost 50,000 megawatts of new clean energy capacity (wind, solar, etc) to replace the lost coal. That includes about 8,000 megawatts of dispatchable energy (hydro, pumped hydro storage, gas, etc) to keep the system stable and secure.
The impact of these major shifts on our operations is enormous and, as an essential service provider, we have carefully considered changes in our operating environment and plans to ensure a co-ordinated and balanced pathway to the future power system.
TasNetworks is also learning how to use new technology to prepare for upcoming distribution challenges. We are piloting projects that focus on demand response, distributed energy orchestration and trials of Electric Vehicle charging arrangements.
We continue to place social responsibility at the forefront of our planning and strategy. We will continue to listen to and be influenced by our customers, ensuring lowest sustainable prices and maximising the capability of the network to host new generation resources.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
As a Tasmanian energy business, we acknowledge that we have a responsibility to lead the effort to decarbonise the Australian economy and to help advance Tasmania’s renewable energy capability.
We're required to estimate and report on our greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) each year under the National Greenhouse Emissions Reporting Scheme (NGERS).
The majority of our emissions stem from the energy lost during the transportation of electricity from generators to customers, due to electrical resistance and the heating of conductors.
Unfortunately, we are limited in our ability to improve line losses, but have the ability to affect emissions from our fleet, electricity use at our facilities, diesel generators and SF6 leakage used in our switchgear and circuit breakers.
TasNetworks total reportable GHG emissions for 2020-21 are 82,465.7 tonnes of CO2-e.
Climate Change and Network Resilience
One of the biggest challenges facing electricity networks worldwide is managing the impacts of climate change on assets to ensure safe and reliable service to customers.
To ensure climate impacts are adequately accounted for in our decision-making, we’ve identified the following impacts with potential to affect our electricity network.
|
Impact |
Asset type |
|
|---|---|---|
|
|
Transmission |
Distribution |
|
Maximum wind gust |
Direct damage |
Direct damage |
|
Maximum temperature |
Reduced capacity |
Reduced capacity |
|
Storm intensity |
Increased outages per event |
|
|
Precipitation |
|
Flooding of assets |
|
Bushfire weather conditions |
|
Increased potential for asset damage from bushfires |
For each of the impacts we’ve assessed the risks and determined ways to mitigate the risks. The strategies include:
- Trialling non-burnable power poles at selected high-value pole locations
- Trialling fire-resistant paint for selected power poles in high fire danger locations
- Updating our overhead distribution powerline design and construction manual
- Monitoring for any increase in weather extremes
- Monitoring for any increase in occurrence of asset overloading failure rates