Blowhard

Independent Weekly
Friday 18/6/2010 Page: 10

We will have to try a lot harder if Australia is to reach the Prime Minister's renewable energy target of 20% in a decade. Almost all renewable energy now comes from wind farms. Given that wind will have to provide the majority of the required new renewable energy, it's possible to calculate that we will need about one new wind turbine every day from now until 2020. At present there are only two wind farms being built in the whole of Australia: Waterloo, near Clare (37 turbines), and North Brown Hill, near Jamestown (63 turbines). It takes about 15 months to build a wind farm, so we can work out that the present construction rate is one turbine every four or five days - a fraction of the rate of construction needed.

David Clarke, Clare