West Australian
Saturday 9/6/2007 Page: 6
A visit to Germany leaves Chris Johnson impressed by the country's commitment to renewable energy. But it also gets him questioning: why hasn't sun-blessed Australia gone down the same path?
Take a stroll through just about any city, village or farmyard in Germany and two questions spring to mind: why are there so many solar panels attached to buildings? And how come the same thing is not happening in Australia? With an abundance of continuous natural sunlight blessing the whole continent, it remains a sad but confronting fact: Australia has not embraced solar energy to the degree it could. This vast nation also boasts ample wind around its coastline, through its valleys and across its plains, yet wind energy is another alternative energy source that is barely tapped.
John Howard says sources of renewable energy simply cannot supply the baseload power needed to be a major player in Australia's response to climate change. Neither will wind, solar and other renewables see a significant boost to the national economy, according to the Prime Minister. But on the other side of the world Australia is being shamed by the renewable energy endeavours of Germany, which attracts far less sunlight and no more wind.
Germany is ranked number one in the world of countries that have installed wind-power stations. The planet's highest rate of additions to new renewable electricity production is also to be found in Germany. Indeed, the country leads the world in solar energy research, technology and number of power stations. Germany installed 100,000 solar systems in 2006 alone, representing 750 MW of solar-electric generation. In some parts of Germany whole cities have converted in extraordinary measures to solar power. Freiburg, on the edge of the beautiful Black Forest in the south of the country, is one such place.
A medieval city of some 200,000 inhabitants, Freiburg has the reputation of being one of the prettiest cities in Germany, and one of its sunniest, too. Marketing itself to the world as a solar city, Freiburg is living proof that renewable energy is not only efficient, but it also pays. Freiburg employs 10,000 people in renewable energy industries. These jobs include research (which is an industry of its own in Freiburg), production, installation, education, sales and compliance as well as a host of flow-on occupations supported by the renewable energy focus.
In fact, hardly a job in the whole city would be completely disconnected from the solar industry, proving Mr Howard wrong that renewable energy is not an economy booster. It was in the 1990s when the Freiburg city council adopted a resolution to only permit construction of what it called "low energy buildings" on municipal land. Since then, all new buildings constructed within the city's boundaries must comply with certain low-energy specifications.
Freiburg also introduced successful initiatives to reduce the number of cars on the road. Its cyclists rule. Dedicated bike paths, where even pedestrians must give way, traverse the whole city. But walkers are also well catered for when it comes to pathways and an attractive flat-rate fare for all public transport sees far fewer cars on the road than other cities of similar size around the world.
Director of the city's environmental protection agency, Dieter Worner, insists the success of Freiburg in reducing its carbon footprint was driven by the people, not politicians (even though the city's mayor is a member of Germany's Green party). "This policy has not been a philosophy of the administration or of political parties," Dr Worner says.
"It is very much an initiative of the citizens of Freiburg. This is accepted now across all parties. We didn't have to convince the citizens. They drove the policy." Solar photovoltaic panels adorn roofs and external walls of homes, sporting arenas, apartments and office blocks throughout the city, with some suburbs completely powered by the sun. Tourism ventures have been set up specifically to showcase the city's climate-friendly initiatives. The whole economy benefits substantially due to the people's conscious decision to employ renewable energy technologies.
The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems positions itself as a link between universities and industry in order to bring the very best of solar expertise together. And it sets an example with its purpose-built research centre designed to make the most of the natural elements. As does private solar technology manufacturer Solar-Fabrik, which in 1998 built Europe's first zero carbon-emitting factory, making solar modules.
In addition to PV panels, the Solar-Fabrik building uses heating pumped from underground, has no air-conditioning, stores its own water, recycles just about everything, and stands as the ultimate advertisement for the company. Many homes employ similar passive solutions where residents use only a fifth of the energy used in conventionally built homes through modern energy-saving technology and efficient insulation.
But while Freiburg is an outstanding example, it is not the only city in Germany switched on to renewable energy. The entire country has embraced these new technologies and made noticeable reductions in its greenhouse gas emissions, but Freiburg happens to be doing better than most.
Within the context of the Kyoto Protocol, Germany shouldered the lion's share of the European Union's bloc target of an overall eight per cent reduction in carbon emissions from 1990 levels. Having been a big polluter thanks to the Cold War era industrial estates inherited from East Germany, a reunified Germany agreed to do more than other EU nations to reduce emissions.
It undertook to cut its emissions by 21 per cent compared with 1990 levels by Kyoto's first commitment period of 2008 to 2012. According to government data, Germany is only about three percentage points away from meeting this target. Australia's Kyoto commitment is 108 per cent of 1990 emission levels, yet Mr Howard will not ratify the agreement his Government signed in 1997.
Germany has gone "above and beyond" the cause in its willingness to address climate change and has indicated its willingness to cut emissions by more than 30 per cent by 2020 if the EU undertakes to reduce its greenhouse gases by a total of 30 per cent over the same period.
The driving engine behind their success is the Renewable Energies Act which guarantees to give priority to electricity that is produced regeneratively. The Act prescribes minimum remuneration rates for electricity generated from modules on the roof, converted by a solar concentrator and fed into the public grid. The electricity is then fed into the grid and the energy supplier reimburses the system owner.
Using the feed-in law, Germans invested more than US$10 billion ($12 billion) in new sources of renewable energy last year. This included wind turbines, solar panels, and biogas power plants, all helping the German government's aim to increase the proportion of renewable energies to at least 12.5 per cent of total electricity supply by 2010 and at least 20 per cent by 2020.
The Australian Government's Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET), which started in April 2001, requires the sourcing of only 9500 gigawatt hours of extra renewable electricity per year by 2010 through to 2020. The German government's sustainability strategy hopes to achieve a result of having at least half of the country's energy demand satisfied with renewable energies by mid century.
Many businesses now thrive on supplying the demand for renewable energy. Photovoltaics companies, like Ersol Solar Energy, operating on the outskirts of the tourist town of Erfurt, in central Germany, supply the world with wafers for solar panels. In Munich, even BMW has a team dedicated to further developing the hydrogen combustion engine for motor cars as its contribution to reducing harmful emissions. In fact, across Germany 250,000 people are employed in the renewable energies industry because the government decided to grasp the opportunity.
One leading global provider of large-scale solar power systems, PowerLight, with an impressive array of 50,000 panels tracking the sun at Mulhausen, in Bavaria, has links to WA. Solar Sales Pty Ltd in Welshpool is the Australian representative of SunPower, which owns 100 per cent of PowerLight.
Director John Davidson says investment in infrastructure on a scale like that seen in Germany is needed in Australia to increase the capacity and timely delivery of dispersed energy to the general public. "The method for achieving that is through the use of a feed-in tariff like Germany's to stimulate investment returns in order to bring forward the eventual market uptake as price per installed watt reduces," he says.
WA Greens MLC Paul Llewellyn, who recently inspected Germany's renewable energy endeavours, insists there is much to be learned from the European example. "While Australia is an internationally recognised technology innovator, we remain a technology taker whenever our companies seek to develop large-scale renewable energy projects," he said.
Ray Willis, chairman of the WA Sustainable Energy Association, agrees that the German experience is one to admire and adds that it is only political will that is hindering similar initiatives here. "The challenge of climate change should be the catalyst for changing the way we think about and plan infrastructure, changing the way we use energy and future proofing our economy by developing an array of sustainable solutions for Western Australia," Dr Willis said.
Governments should be putting in place measures that promote energy efficiency across government, business and the community by directing tax relief to buyers investing in energy efficient homes, buildings, appliances and vehicles. The key barrier today is the fact that generators are not rewarded for producing peak distributed, emission-free energy. They are required to pay upfront capital costs which provides a rental stream that does not reflect the cost of producing that electricity.
In June 2004 Mr Howard announced his government's $75.3 million Solar Cities program as outlined in the Securing Australia's Energy Future White Paper. It is a partnership approach that involves all levels of government, the private sector and local communities which all commit to demonstrate how solar power, smart meters, energy efficiency and new approaches to electricity pricing can combine to provide a sustainable energy future in urban locations.
But the initiative pales in comparison to what is happening in Freiburg, a medieval town showing Australia the way in renewable energy production.
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