Thursday October 26, 2006
Australia yesterday announced it would build one of the world's biggest solar power plants amid warnings of blackouts unless it can increase generation to meet the growing demand for air conditioners.
With climate change being increasingly blamed for the severe drought that has been affecting parts of the continent for six years, and with cities imposing punishing water restrictions, the government has begun to support alternative forms of energy.
The new plant, expected to be built in Victoria by Solar Systems Generation, is expected to be a solar concentrator, an emerging technology that collects sun rays in hundreds of square metres of curved mirrors, then beams the concentrated heat on to photovoltaic panels.
The 154-megawatt project, which will be heavily subsidised by federal and state grants, will be able to provide power for 45,000 homes and could produce temperatures as high as 1,000C (1,832F).
Similar solar power stations are now being built in the US and many Mediterranean countries, and it is likely that Australia's proposed plant will be nowhere near the largest in the world by the time it is officially completed in 2013. A Spanish solar power station using similar technology is expected to produce 354MW of solar power within a year.
The federal government has been been widely criticised for not accepting Kyoto climate change targets and for setting very low national targets for renewable energies, but yesterday it also announced a A$360m (£146m) project to produce cleaner energy through brown coal drying and carbon capture and storage.
Australia, one of the world's biggest per-capita producers of greenhouse gases, is, with the US, the only major developed country that has not embraced the need for emission cuts. With a powerful fossil fuel lobby, it is the world's largest coal exporter and relies on coal-fired power stations for most of its energy supplies
Severe early season bushfires and record early spring temperatures have been recorded recently as a mild El Niño develops in the Pacific Ocean, bringing hotter, drier conditions throughout the continent. Eastern Australia has already experienced five consecutive years of below normal rainfall.
Prime minister John Howard this week released US$263m (£140m) in drought relief for farms but it is being proposed that farmers move north from the grain belt regions to open a "new agricultural frontier" in the tropical north of the country where rainfall has been above average.
"It's a no-brainer that we need a new agricultural frontier in northern Australia, where the Timor gulf and Burdekin catchments have 60% of the nation's run-off - 10 times more than the Murray-Darling basin - but are virtually untapped," said Liberal party senator Bill Heffernan yesterday. "It's time we just faced up to reality that much of the land currently farmed shouldn't be farmed," said Clive Hamilton, an analyst at the Australia Institute economic thinktank.
The latest predictions suggest extremes of drought and heat will increase because of global warming in many areas. This week, the country's leading science body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, said wine growers needed to re-think plans to cope with climate change or face possible ruin.
"In some regions it will become too warm to produce balanced wines from some - or maybe all - the grape varieties growing there now," said researcher Leanne Webb.
She said that temperatures in most Australian wine regions were anticipated to rise by as much as 1.7C (3F) by 2030, which would would reduce grape quality by up to 57%. It may be impossible to grow Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc grapes, as well as some Chardonnay varieties.
But Mr Howard said yesterday that solar was not a mainstream option. "The problem is that, like wind power, it is not going to make a big contribution. Base-load power is only going to be generated using fossil fuel or nuclear. I see solar as being part of the solution, but at the periphery rather than at the centre."
Panel technology
- Solar power has started to take off as photovoltaic (PV) cells, which convert sunlight directly to electricity, become cheaper.
- Production of cells doubles every two years and more than 2500MW of electricity is now generated by PV cells worldwide.
- Japan, where 160,000 homes get some electricity from the sun, is the world's PV leader, but Germany, Israel, Spain, Portugal and the US are investing heavily in the technology.
- Costs have dropped from $30 per watt in 1970 to less than $3 a watt today.
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