Despite all of the dithering over the ETS here in Australia and the post-Kyoto international agreement, the transition to a clean energy economy is slowly gathering pace. Recenly announced figures from the UN, reported in the Guardian show that last year, global investment in renewable energy surpassed investment in fossil fuel energy for the first time. It is an important tipping point and shows where the future lies.
Wind, solar and other clean technologies attracted $140bn (£85bn) compared with $110bn for gas and coal for electrical power generation.
Here in Australia, the NSW Government yesterday announced approval of the massive Silverton wind farm near Broken Hill. The two stage project will include nearly 600 turbines, making it the biggest wind farm in Australia. It is expected the project will create around 700 jobs during the five year construction, around 120 permanent jobs, and will generate enough electricity for around 200,000 homes.
Earlier this week, Mike Rann announced that South Australia will increase its renewable energy target from 20% to 33% by 2020, as well as an additional $20million in funding to encourage renewable energy development in the state.
Imagine what could happen if we tried. Germany, for example, now employs over 250,000 people in the renewable energy industry.
If we are going to solve the climate crisis, we are going to have to get renewable energy to be cheaper than coal (as well as doing lots of other stuff). It’ll happen eventually but the aim of policy should be to make this happen as soon as possible. We still need decent renewable energy laws here in Australia, and we need a strong global deal. Unfortunately we don’t have time on our side.
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A quick point to clarify. Emissions targets do not encourage renewables to be built, they encourages gas CCGT’s to be built. Renewables currently get built in response to the MRET target (note: there is surplus of RECs being hoarded to support the price at the moment). Reducing emissions and supporting renewables are two separate issues that many people confuse (there is some interaction but it is minimal at this stage). A market mechanism will only involve the importing of commercial ready technology in renewables. The alternative is to the have government pick winners based on lobbying, dodgy dealings and electoral math.
NSW government approving Silverton does not mean that it will happen. There are now 14 wind farms approved in NSW since 2005, how many have been built? I’m fairly sure the answer is zero at this stage. In terms of establishing a renewable’s industry (that creates value adding export jobs) in Australia, what fraction of the $$$ stay in Australia? All the turbines (high-tech) and almost all the blades are from Europe.
There used to be a Blade factory in Portland, but it was closed a few years ago due to lack of government support for the renewable energy industry.
Nice post John.
I agree with you that renewable energy must be made cheaper than fossil fueled energy as soon as possible. Unfortunately the focus of climate change policy in Australia and abroad is on punishing polluters and making R.E relatively cheaper through imposing additional ‘market-based’ costs on fossil fueled energy production. This approach diverts attention from efforts to make R.E absolutely cheaper. It would be great if both climate change advocates and policy makers payed more attention to securing investment in clean energy R&D, technology demonstration projects, and building enabling infrastructure. Each of these play an important role in bringing down the cost of clean energy. I posted an article on this a couple of weeks ago: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8693
Cheers.
Brian good point. However the reason the Portland plant was closed was that it wasn’t set up to make big enough blades. Wind turbine technology has fairly rapidly shifted from 1 MW units with 30-40 M blades, to 2-3 MW units with blades over 50M long. The bigger units are simply more efficient, more cost effective, etc….
The wind industry in Australia is booming. To meet the new expanded renewable target in Australia purely with wind (which looks likely at the moment unless geothermal or solar thermal takes a massive step forward), another 40000 or so GWh on renewable energy annual capacity is due by 2020. Assuming that the average turbine is 2MW (at $6M each) and the average capacity factor is 35% that means 6500 new turbines or 1.6 per day every day until 2020.
Why the politicised headline?
It’s not Rudd’s dithering – if the Senate wasn’t being obstructionist, the Bill would have been passed long ago (and as it is, has passed through the Lower House).
Yes, Rudd amended his original package, but that was in an attempt to get something through, the opposite of dithering.
The facts are that he is facing a hostile Senate, which will not accept any package he puts to it (the Greens will want a bigger target, the Nats don’t believe cc exists, the Libs are being obstructionist).
If we want to politicise this, I could point to the Greens’ lack of support for – and sometimes active opposition to – wind farms.