Comment: I am a Renewable Energy and Sustainability Practioner in the Industry.
Australia produces 500 times more than it needs daily for its Electricity Needs via Solar. As the South Australians did, all you need do is add storage, use what we need and export the rest.
“Australia has the potential to become the Saudi Arabia in Renewable Energy for the World” Jeffrey Steiglitz, Nobel Prize Winner in Economics 2015 on a Lecture tour here.
Then there is tidal - every day the tide comes in, the tide goes out., you can set your watch to it. Turbines -> pipes -> Energy Collection Facility onshore.
Wind - why do you think there are Wind Farms all the way from the top of Norway and down to Portugal - off and onshore. Why are they there? For their looks. Denmark produces 140% of its own Renewable Energy and exports the other 40% to Germany.
Geothermal- It is a constant 18*C, 2-3m down in your backyard 24/7. Enough to heat your home via Hospital Grade Ventilation systems The Technology is here and is happening in Australia.
Then there is Co-Gen, Tri-Gen many other forms of solar etc etc etc. The reason we have coal dinosaurs here is that Australia is Hicksville and a laughing stock internationally. ….caused by greed and corruption. The Fish indeed rots at the head.
Pffft, it’s not like we get enough sunny days, or enough windy days, or have enough coastline with tides, or…um, have the ability to dig holes in the ground to make this stuff viable.
because the greenhouse situation demands that we transition to renewables faster than the ‘free market’ economic alone will make it happen.
It is climatic and environmental suicide not to.
(As an aside, it’s hard to not see this thread as a reflection of the current political debate, and that as an illustration of how completely and successfully Abbott and his fellow Murdochian lunatics have reframed the debate in terms that are profoundly delusional but which suit them fine. The entire argument is about the economic side of energy policy. households will save $550 a year, no they won’t, yes they will, where’s your modelling, blah blah blah. No damn pollies in either of the major parties are saying a frigging word about emissions or greenhouse gas reduction. The cost advantage of new renewables vs new coal power is smallish, but it’s there. But ONLY if you refuse to price in the cost of either unrestrained global warming, or of finding the necessary emissions reductions requried to avert that in some other sector of the economy. A purely economic household-bill-based debate on energy policy, neglecting emissions reduction issues, is a futile and profoundly dishonest exercise, with its head buried so deeply in the sand it’s probably finding oil)
Oh so when the big 4 who make up 50% of emissions are either not meeting targets or not taking part in the paris agreement then why as a country that emits 1.5% should we go down this path…
we cant save our own in this country so whats the chance of saving the world!
Australia is hugely, disproportionately responsible for the current miserable state of world climate policy. More than any other single country, it was Australia under Howard that sabotaged to buggery the fleeting global consensus that COULD have resulted in significant early action at Kyoto, when there was bipartisan consensus that action was required, before rspecting basic science somehow became the despicable province of the vile inner-city left-wing latte-sipping elites.
Besides, we frigging LIVE in this world. We have 0.3% of the population but directly cause 1.5% of the emissions (not to mention the indirect emissions our coal exports cause). Our emissions continue to rise in absolute terms, when we’ve been promising for years that they’d start dropping aaany time now. If we’re not going to do our bit, when we’re a rich country with abundant opportunities for solar/wind generation, and that is horrendously exposed to climate change-induced desertification and droughts, how can we expect others to do theirs?
AEMO has forecast that SA will be net 100% renewables by 2025. That regardless of federal targets and even their 75% state target. All from private investment. The Monash Forum loons will need to start puttingextra taxes on PV cells if they want to keep holding back the dam wall that is going to burst on them.