Sustainable Energy Issues Paper
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Summary
Climate change is a major issue. Energy efficiency, renewable energy, carbon capture & storage (“clean coal”), afforestation and other measures all need to be harnessed to solve the problem. None of these options will prosper without a price on carbon pollution.
Renewable energy comprises many energy forms, including photovoltaics, solar thermal electricity, solar heat, wind, geothermal, bio energy, hydro, ocean energy, solar buildings and clean transport systems. Taken together, renewable energy and energy efficiency can provide most of Australia’s energy needs by 2050. Renewable energy and energy efficiency are more job-intensive than coal fired power stations.
Direct solar energy such as photovoltaics and solar thermal, with a resource 1,000 larger than current energy consumption, is the most important of the renewable energy technologies in the long-term.
Baseload power can be met by wide geographical dispersion of collectors, technical diversity (using many different forms of renewable energy), storage (e.g. pumped hydro - pumping water uphill during the day and releasing it through turbines at night) and shifting loads from night time to daytime.
The worldwide solar energy industry is doubling in size every 20 months, and will reach $100 billion per year by about 2011. Wind energy is enjoying similar growth. Australia has real innovative strength in some sectors, notably photovoltaics. Australia can play an important environmental, employment and economic role in this industry.
It is important for Australia to have a balanced portfolio. Increased support is needed for renewable energy and energy efficiency R&D, demonstration, commercialisation and market incentives. The latter could include an extension to the Government’s mandatory renewable energy target, carbon pricing and individual technology incentives. |
Innovation in energy technology
This paper is in response to Issues Paper 4 of the Garnaut Review, Research & Development: Low Emissions Energy Technologies.
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Summary
- The Government cannot provide world-scale innovation support for all low emission technologies, and should therefore pick a small number of low emission energy winners. These should be photovoltaics, solar thermal, geothermal and carbon capture & storage.
- Sustainable energy (photovoltaics, solar thermal, geothermal) should be accorded greater innovation support than fossil fuels, taking into account all investment in CSIRO, Universities, CRCs, Geoscience Australia, tax breaks and similar.
- Education & training needs to be front and centre of any sensible innovation and industry development policy for sustainable energy because of the current narrow skills base.
- Solar, geothermal and wind energy have very small environmental impacts compared with fossil and nuclear energy
- The MRET scheme could be considerably improved by setting aside substantial tranches for technologies with particularly good future prospects.
- A close examination of forestry and bio energy from the greenhouse emissions point of view is warranted. The associated greenhouse gas emissions have been seriously underestimated.
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How to reduce your domestic CO2 footprint
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Would you like to contribute in a practical way to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions? Perhaps you are tempted to buy green power, or a photovoltaic panel. Before you do this, however, there are a range of measure that you can adopt that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from your home by two thirds - 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year - at modest cost. Even if you don’t live in a modern solar efficient home, you can radically reduce your greenhouse gas emissions.
Many of the measures described in this paper cost little or nothing to implement, but can make major reductions in CO2 emission |
Energy Options for Remote Islands
Remote islands typically import diesel fuel at high cost to generate electricity. Prices of AUD 0.50/kWh are common, and in many cases alternative energy options can produce energy at lower cost. Could remote islands be the breeding grounds for alternative energy development?
Interdisciplinary research is currently underway to examine issues relating to energy options on two remote islands off the coast of Australia - Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island. It appears that the adoption of alternative energy is not as simple as the economics might suggest, and there are a myriad of social and political factors that are significant to any aspect of change. A combination of social science and biophysical science is being used in this project to find ultimately better solutions for energy production and consumption on remote islands. The lessons learnt in these locations provide invaluable contributions to understanding mainland scenarios.
Download David Barton's Thesis: "Social and technical aspects of community level decision making on energy options on two remote island communities" (47MB)
or download in parts:
00 Abstract.pdf
01 Chapter 01 Introduction.pdf
02 Chapter 02 Literature Review.pdf
03 Chapter 03 Methods.pdf
04 Chapter 04 Technical and economic analysis of energy options.pdf
05 Chapter 05 Lord Howe Island interview results.pdf
06 Chapter 06 Norfolk Island interview results.pdf
07 Chapter 07 Social network analysis.pdf
08 Chapter 08 Findings.pdf
09 Chapter 09 Contributions from literature.pdf
10 Chapter 10 Conclusion.pdf
11 Appendices.pdf
12 References.pdf
View the Remote Islands external site
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