Sci-fi world draws a familiar picture

Ballarat Courier
Monday 5/11/2007 Page: 10

THE revelation at the heart of Hollywood's The Matrix was that "ordinary life" was in fact a vast computer simulation, keeping humanity in a state of denial. In the film the human race was a vast supply of energy cocoons, pumping out the electricity humans naturally create to feed the insatiable power requirements of a malign machine based empire.

Far fetched sci-fi? Perhaps it's a metaphor of our current world, where humans have become blissfully dependent on the machines we have created and the vast amounts of power to run then. In The Matrix as in our real world, energy is the key currency and the key question is: "What should be its source?" Nearly all forms of energy on earth that we use - wind, petroleum or the energy it takes to floss your teeth, ultimately cone from the sun.

The earth receives 342 watts per square metre a year, while the world's energy consumption is 0.03 watts. Clearly, there are several Himalayas' worth of natural energy we're not using. Humans, however, have become fixated on one form of the sun's energy: fossilised sunlight in the form of coal. It's cheap, easy to find and plentiful. Which is important, because we are using a whole truckload more of the stuff. The average rate of energy use per person in hunter-gatherer society was two units. Joe Contemporary uses 100 units.

Unfortunately, coal is not very efficient. Transmission line and heat losses mean we only use 29 per cent of the original energy in a lump of coal. The other 71 per cent of "dead energy" is heading out past Venus right now. Gee. And to think I was smacked for wasting my veggies. The energy within coal is released when burnt, but it's not the only thing released. Lurking in every lump of coal is carbon. We are releasing quantities of CO2 that took millions of years to sequester. Outcome: hotter.

But do the alternatives to fossil fuelss stack up? Wind doesn't always blow on turbines and the sun doesn't always shine on solar collectors. Is renewable energy too unreliable to supply power to the electricity grid? Not according to Dr Mark Diesendorf, senior lecturer at UNSW. He's a man with a plan, and he's shown how a mix of energy efficiency, renewable energy and gas-fired turbines (gas contains far fewer emissions than coal) can bring home the electricity bacon.

And it's no lab coated boffin fantasy, either. Denmark will produce 25 per cent of electrical consumption from wind in 2008, with half of these turbines owned by local cooperatives. In Australia, we have 563 wind turbines. Germany, (roughly Tasmania's size), has 19,024 installed turbines, reducing CO2 by over 24 million tonnes.

Dr Mark Diesendorf will be speaking at 6pm on Thursday at the University of Ballarat.
Check the BREAZE website (www.breaze.org.au)