Amid all the shake-ups (mainly cancellations) of various solar energy schemes, Australia's original renewable energy scheme - GreenPower - seems to have dropped off the radar. Does it even still exist?
Well, yes. And a large number of Australian residents and businesses still subscribe to the scheme, which involves paying a premium on your electricity bill, used by your energy supplier to purchase renewable energy - mainly wind, hydro or biofuel from burning landfill.
That renewable energy must be in addition to the energy supplier's mandatory Renewable Energy Target, thus increasing the total amount of renewable energy generated in Australia.
But GreenPower has fallen from a 2009 peak when 904,716 customers, purchasing more than two million MWh. By June 30, 2011, that had dropped to 739,854 customers.
There are three probably reasons to customers feeling the squeeze of higher electricity prices, the media focus in recent years on solar rebates and feed-in tariffs, and a decline in media/public concern about climate change since Copenhagen in 2009.
Yet three quarters of a million consumers and businesses are still willing to pay extra to support clean energy. GreenPower is still the simplest way for Australians to "go green" and reduce their carbon footprint. But it is in dire need of some love and (media) attention.
I recommend this post on the Climate Progress blog for some useful statistics about renewable energy (albeit with a US focus) that shatter the idea that it is expensive, uncompetitive or impractical.
Lester Brown is one of America's leading environmentals, and founder of the Earth Policy Institute and Worldwatch (which produces the annual state of the planet reports). World on the Edge, his latest book, outlines the Earth Institute's "Plan B", a big-picture blueprint to save the world/civilisation from environmental catastrophe.
The first part of the book rounds up our current environmental woes. It's familiar territory, but a useful overview nevertheless.
The underlying problem, Brown says, is over-population (itself made possible by using fossil fuels, soil nutrients and water at unsustainable rates). This, in turn, is driving rapid deforestation, soil depletion and desertification, draining ancient freshwater aquifers and pushing fish stocks to collapse.
Rapidly rising consumption in emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil is exacerbating these problems.
On top of all that, increased use of fossil fuels is causing climate change. This will devastate agriculture through sea level rises, changing rainfall patterns, heat stress, increased drought and melting glaciers. For instance glaciers, most notably in the Himalaya, act as frozen freshwater aquifers on which a quarter of world food production depends. A one metre sea level rise would shrink Asia's rice harvest. Drought is spreading Africa's Sahara desert south. Ocean acidification and ocean warming will destroy coral reefs and devastate already depleted fish stocks.
Depressing, huh?
But Brown believes we already have the knowledge, technology and money to prevent climate change and environmental disaster.
Read the book if you can, but here's a condensed summary of Brown's plan to save the world...
1. Drive a switch to greater energy efficiency and clean energy by including the full environmental and social costs in the energy price. Make energy companies pay to clean up their pollution; they will pass the cost to the consumer. That would instantly make renewable/zero-carbon energy cheaper than fossil fuel and make energy efficiency more financially compelling. (Currently, taxpayers subsidise fossil fuel through government spending on health and environmental cleanups, and the loss of environmental services and amenity.)
2. Reverse population growth. It is well-established that improved primary education, healthcare and birth control will achieve this in poor countries, which are where the growth is taking place.
3. Implement an "earth restoration plan" of massive reforestation and more environmentally aware farming techniques. This will check soil erosion, stabilise water supplies and draw down carbon from the atmosphere.
4. Redefine "security". Most conflicts and failing states are due to environmental stresses, which leave governments unable to feed their populations. If we redirect some of our "security" budget from military spending to environmental restoration, Brown calculates we can fund his population and earth restoration programs with just 12 per cent of the world's annual military spending. (Or, 28 per cent of the $661 billion US military budget alone; America accounts for 43 per cent of global military spending.)
5. Act quickly: history shows change of sufficient speed and scale is achievable, if the political will is there. Brown cites President Roosevelt harnessing America's industrial might in the second world war in less than three years, and how Iran halved its birthrate between 1987 and 1994.
Of course, generating the political will is the real problem. Brown doesn't have an answer to that. I guess it's up to the rest of us.
With expectations low for the forthcoming Durban climate conference, it looks increasingly like our best hope is falling renewable energy prices. Here are a couple of interesting stories on that subject from Climate Progress and Yale360.
If that equation is projected into the future, the cost of wind will fall another 12% by 2016. The Bloomberg report states: "in the best locations [wind] generation is already cost-competitive with fossil fuel electricity, and that will be the case for the majority of new onshore turbines installed worldwide by 2016.
As anticipated, the targets and price are too modest and compensation overgenerous. There isn't nearly enough to promote energy efficient. But there are some good things in the Gillard Government's carbon tax package.
If it flows, dam it. I've blogged previously about huge dam projects in the Amazon and Tibet, and Chile's plans for a dam in pristine Patagonia is also attracting fierce criticism from environmentalists. But Turkey's plans to harness "100 per cent" of its hydro-electricity potential by building 4000 dams in the next 12 years are breathtaking even by those standards.
Turkey has one of the world's fastest growing economies. Largely as a result, the country is hungry for energy. Currently it depends heavily on Iranian and Russian natural gas and the re-elected liberal-leaning government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is keen to develop a degree of energy independence.
Laws are being drafted allowing hydroelectricity schemes to proceed even in nature reserves. And each hydro scheme will be allowed to take 90 per cent of the water out of a section of river, leaving the remaining 10 per cent as "lifeline support".
They should come to Australia and study the Murray-Darling first to see what happens when you do that to a river.
Read more in this report.
NSW consumers are facing power bill increases of around $300. Of that, something like $100 will be the result of subsidies for solar panels and other green schemes, through mechanisms such as the solar feed in tariff. Most of the rest is due to increased infrastructure costs - building new power lines and so on.
Noted UK environmentalist George Monbiot says in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima that the Fukushima nuclear incident has persuaded him nuclear power is safe. If a 40-year-old nuclear plant with shoddy maintenance can survice a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami without a major release of radioactivity, we should worry less about nuclear power.
Climate change legislation is dead in the United States. So dead that President Obama didn't even mention global warming in this year's State of the Union address.
So who will save the planet?
It looks like the Federal Government will use the Queensland flood levy to kill off a few ill-conceived funding programs, including a raft of green schemes.
Tipped for the chop are the cash-for-clunkers and green car innovation schemes, and funding for carbon storage.
I notice some in the Australian Labor Party are trying to stir up debate on nuclear power. The main argument of those spruiking nuclear is that the clean energy alternative - renewables - simply can't meet our energy needs.
You may have read about Sydney City Council's plan to build "trigeneration" plants that will use natural gas - and, ultimately, biogas generated from the city's composting waste and sewerage - to produce electricity, heating and airconditioning for buildings in the city.
With all the focus on solar panels, what's happened to GreenPower, that other scheme to encourage households to promote renewable energy?
In case you've forgotten, GreenPower lets you pay a premium to "buy" renewable electricity. (More precisely, your electricity supplier agrees to buy an equivalent amount of electricity from renewable resources.)
The good news is that more than 800,000 households were signed up for the scheme in June 2010. Those people are chosing to support a clean-energy future out of their own pockets.
My guess is green consumers are choosing to spend their money on solar panels instead, given the generous financial incentives. Why pay more to have renewable energy when governments are offering to pay you instead?
What is clear, however, is the huge public demand for more renewable energy.
The Australian Conservation Foundation and ACTU have released a report called Creating Jobs - Cutting Pollution that concludes that Australia can create 3.7million jobs across Australia by taking strong action now to reduce carbon emissions.
In my previous blog, I wondered if the Deepwater Horizon oil spill might create a mood among politicians and the public in the US to support a genuine drive for clean energy. Keep an eye on public opinion in the US in the coming months.
With the disappointment of Copenhagen still fresh as a raw wound, maybe it's time to conclude that the world's politicians are simply incapable of agreeing a worthwhile global deal to combat climate change, and that only technology can save us.
NSW Premier Kristina Keneally made a revealing comment this week, ahead of a decision by State Planning Minister Tony Kelly on whether to approve coal-fired power stations at Bayswater in the upper Hunter and Mt Piper at Lithgow, west of Sydney.
"What we're doing with our future (power) generation at those sites is providing opportunities for the market to determine and we will be progressing those in a fuel neutral development process," she told reporters on Friday.
"We do have to add to our base load, we know that, and that's why we've taken a position of fuel neutrality," she said.
Fuel neutrality? Translation: we'll be going for the cheapest option, ie coal.
And the respected Scientific American magazine ran a cover story on a Stanford University study that concludes the world can source ALL its energy from renewables.
The most cost-effective time to switch to new technology is when commissioning new power stations. Opting for new coal-fired power stations would be climate madness, locking us into decades of greenhouse gas emissions. It would also risk leaving NSW with useless infrastructure if an ETS or price on carbon does ultimately price coal out of the market.
But, as the authors of the Stanford University study note, "perhaps the most significant barrier to the implementation of their plan is the competing energy industries that currently dominate political lobbying for available financial resources".
The UK has announced an energy policy featuring 10 new sites for nuclear power stations, investment in clean coal (with a promise of no new coal-fired power stations without clean coal) and 30 per cent renewables (mainly wind) by 2020. The UK plans to generate 40 per cent of its energy from nuclear power by 2025.
The Federal Government has ended its $8000 solar panel grant scheme three weeks ahead of the original June 30 deadline. The scheme will be replaced by a new Solar Credits scheme.
Forget the $2 billion for clean coal in yesterday's Budget. Yes, it's a waste of money. A lot of money. But, given the power the coal industry seems to have over Australian governments, it's the price we probably have to pay for the $1.5 billion allocated over the next six years to build four giant solar power stations.
The Government says these will be three times the size of any other solar power station in the world - up to 1000 megawatts, as large as a coal-fired power station. The power stations could be solar panels or solar thermal.
Spain's renewable energy sector was rocked last week by a corruption scandal. Officials in several small towns allegedly took kickbacks for approving wind farm applications and similar things.
Melbourne-based renewable Energy company Energy Matters has an online petition calling for a nationwide gross feed-in tariff scheme for people feeding solar and other renewable energy into the grid.
Under the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme people who install solar hot water and/or solar power will not be reducing Australia's emissions but merely allowing polluters more room to pollute. GetUp! have started a campaign to get the government to close this perverse loophole.
Leading climate scientist James Hansen has written a personal plea to Barack Obama, saying the next four years could be humanity's last chance to avoid runaway climate change.
There are a number of good value bulk-buying solar panel schemes around at the moment. They take advantage of three things: 1) economies of scale; 2) the $8000 Federal Government rebate and 3) $1000 of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs).
I had a quick peak at a boat called Earthrace today - a bio-diesel powerboat that's currently touring the globe. Visually stunning, it certainly lives up to its billing as "the world's coolest boat".
What's interesting about this thermal solar power plant in Spain is that it incorporates the ability to store solar energy, by heating a molten mixture of 60% sodium nitrate and 40% potassium nitrate.
About ten years ago an aquaintance of ours in the UK had a mobile sound system powered by bicycle, which he used to take around the summer festival circuit. As long as someone in the tent pedalled the bike, you got music and lights. There was generally a line of pumped-up clubbers eager to jump on the bike.
Some big guns in the US are beginning to throw their weight behind renewable energy. Over there, the issue is often presented as "energy security" and reducing dependence on foreign oil imports, rather than reducing climate change, but never mind.
Far from fading away, coal is enjoying a revival - as this article from The Guardian explains. A hundred new coal-fired power stations are being built around the world, half of them in China. Germany, much-lauded for its leadership in renewable energy development, is commissioning 10 new coal-fired power stations. Britain is currently poised to join the global rush for coal.
If you've ever been surfing, you'll know there's tremendous power in the oceans. And harnessing it is, theoretically, rather simple.