Thursday 26 October 2006

Hazy dawn on a greenhouse fix

Herald Sun
October 26, 2006 12:00am

RIC Brazzale writes: encouraging that the Federal Government is taking action on climate change.

The announcement yesterday of the first allocation of its Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund -- $75 million for a 154 megawatt solar station near Mildura and $50 million for the Hazelwood coal power plant to experiment with making coal cleaner -- is welcome recognition that climate change is a problem.

But it falls short of what is needed most. That's a robust, strategic government policy that will make deep cuts to dangerous greenhouse gas emissions now, and develop a vibrant renewable and clean energy industry. What that means in practice is putting a price on carbon pollution with a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading.

It also entails raising the national Mandatory Renewable Energy Target from its paltry 2 per cent of electricity to come from new clean renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. China has a 15 per cent renewables target, yet it has fewer renewable energy choices and less expertise than Australia.

Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is the Carbon Terminator and leads a thriving economy; he has demanded a cut in carbon emissions of 25 per cent by 2020.

These market-based incentives -- a carbon price "signal' and a useful renewable energy target -- are sensible, sustainable and affordable ways to usher in the genuinely clean, green power that we already have pouring from the sun, roaring in the wind and simmering in rocks under central Australia.

The clean energy industry wants these measures. Increasingly, many big businesses are clamoring for them too. Even if climate change weren't a concern, the security of our electricity is.

A huge $24 billion has already been committed to our electricity infrastructure, which is cracking under the pressure of our soaring peak energy demand. This is where solar panels in particular are good for providing zero-emission peak energy.

On hot summer afternoons, when the air-conditioner is on full blast, solar panels on the roof can pour clean power into your home. But the clean energy industry has never called for coal to be completely replaced by any single "green energy" source.

Rather, it advocates a gradual build-up of a new clean-energy mix of renewable and low-emission energies; solar, wind, geothermal (hot rocks), bioenergy and natural gas.

AGL, one of Australia's major energy companies, undertook a study with Frontier Economics that found Australia could reduce its greenhouse emissions from electricity by 30 per cent by 2030 at a high-end cost of $2 a person a week.

Would it wreck the economy? Hardly.

The energy choices we make now, especially electricity, are crucial to whether humans manage to slow global warming. Electricity is the largest and fastest growing generator of greenhouse emissions in Australia.

Yet, and this is the good news, it makes up less than 3 per cent of most industry sectors' material costs, and Australian households spend more on grog than they do on electricity.

It means switching to cleaner energy reaps big greenhouse benefits but costs comparatively little. It's easy to get lost in despair over global warming. But when you break it down and start putting the issue in context you realise that this is a problem for which we do have the answers.

Their names are solar power, bioenergy, wind power, cogeneration, energy efficiency, hydroelectricity and natural gas. They have been around for many years and are excellent at cutting greenhouse gas emissions today. But the longer we wait the less time we have, and the bigger the mess we will have to deal with.


RIC BRAZZALE is the Executive Director of the Australian Business Council for Sustainable Energy

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