Renewable energy the way to go

District Reporter Camden
Friday 9/11/2007 Page: 5

A large gathering at the Macarthur Centre for Sustainable Living this week given convincing evidence that the transition to renewable energy would provide, rather than cost jobs in Australia. Dr Mark Diesendorf from the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales explained why a target of 25 per cent energy from renewable sources by 2020 was realistic. He said that job losses in the coal industry could be absorbed by not replacing a small fraction of the workers who retired annually.

"There are around 24,000 jobs in Australia's coal industry, but as 80 per cent of our coal is shipped overseas only 4800 workers are employed directly in coal for use in Australia," Dr Diesendorf said. "These are the employees who would be affected by a domestic renewable energy target. "If renewable energy is increased from its current level of nine per cent to 25 per cent by 2020, the coal industry would lose only 44 jobs a year over 12 years.

"This is a very small number, especially when you consider that there are at least 600 people retiring from the coal industry each year anyway. And this totally ignores the job gains from renewable energy, which would be several times more than the job losses, "wind energy provides four to five times the number of jobs per unit of electricity generated than coal.

"Bio-electricity, which is the generation of electricity from burning crop residues, create three and a half times as many jobs per unit of electricity than coal, and most of these jobs would be located in rural areas where they are needed." Greens candidate for Macarthur, Ben Raue, who chaired the forum, explained that Dr Diesendorfs research made nonsense of repeated claims by the coal industry that The Greens 25 per cent renewable energy target by 2020 would be disastrous in terns of job losses. "Neither 'clean' coal technologies nor nuclear energy presents the necessary short-term solution to our climate change problem," Mr Raue said. "Renewable energy sources are the only realistic options."