Let's do it again

Summit Sun
Thursday 15/2/2007 Page: 7

"IT'S given me the inspiration to do it again next year," said Rashida Nuridin after a wet but successful Renewable Energy Expo last Sunday. The Expo was part of the Flowing Festival and drew a lot of attention from visitors, who despite the rain, were keen to find out more about renewable energy and climate change issues.

Phillip May and Sophia Moody of Solartec Electrical Services have made renewable energy their passion after living on solar for almost 10 years on a property at Bredbo. They supply, design, install, and maintain remote area power and grid connect power systems utilising solar and wind energy.

Ms Moody said that they had been pleasantly surprised by the numbers of people and level of interest particularly in view of the weather. Solartec's system costs from $10,990 and allows solar electricity to be fed back into the grid.

Stan Reimer, Southern Area Account Manager for Country Energy said that there had been a great deal of interest shown in the green energy packages which allow customers to specify that 100 percent, 50 percent or 10 percent of their energy requirements are bought from renewable sources. Costs vary from about $4.40 to $1.50 per week extra. Anyone interested can call 13 23 56 to sign up.

Although numbers weren't high for the Al Gore presenters' talks on climate change, there was a lot of interest. Member for Monaro, Steve Whan attended one of the sessions and said: "I don't need a lot of convincing; I've read a lot about this." The talks were given by Bruce Beatson, a farmer from East Gippsland and Trish Harrup, Director of the Conservation Council, South East Region and Canberra.

Ms Harrup said that there were three factors affecting climate change, the population explosion, which has taken earth from 250 million people 2000 years ago to 6.5 billion people today. Other factors, Ms Harrup said, were the scientific and technological revolution, which allowed us to do more damage to the planet and our way of thinking which confused many people over the seriousness of the problem.