Carbon dated: expert

Newcastle Herald
Saturday 11/8/2007 Page: 24

PUSHING on with coal-fired power would be a grave mistake for the Hunter, an expert warned yesterday. Professor Peter Droege, a conjoint professor at the University of Newcastle and chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy Asia Pacific, said there was no economic justification for coal.

Its continued use was merely the product of an alliance between coal interests and political leaders. The Sydney-based professor, who was in Newcastle to speak to business leaders and professionals in City Hall, said converting to renewable energy would lead to economic, social and environmental gains. Most of all, it would benefit employment.

"It's been shown in the US and also in Europe that for each job lost in the coal sector, you gain three jobs in the renewable sector," Professor Droege said outside City Hall. It doesn't take many people to run a coal-fired power station plant or a coalmine. "It's mostly mechanised... the employment potential is very low." Renewable energy offered more and higher-skilled jobs.

Australia's dependence on fossil fuel would lead inevitably to the country lagging in technological innovation. More money would have to be invested to make the commercial, residential and industrial energy sectors efficient, which could halve energy requirements. Professor Droege said the Hunter had ample opportunity to supply itself with power produced in the region from renewable sources such as wind, biofuel and solar power, which could happen in the next 20 years.

Nature offsets globe warming
NATURAL weather variations have offset the effects of global warming for the past couple of years and will continue to keep temperatures flat through 2008, a new study shows. But global warming will begin in earnest in 2009, and a couple of the years between 2009 and 2014 will eclipse 1998, the warmest year on record, in the heat stakes, British meteorologists said. The study used data on the ocean and the atmosphere to generate forecasts of climate change. AFP