Monthly Archive for November, 2007

New leadership on Climate Change

Published
by
Christian
on November 29, 2007
in General
. 0 Comments

Got an email from a friend of mine in the legal sector. It contains an examination of the Rudd govts environmental plans. Makes for interesting reading:

http://www.freehills.com/publications/publications_7084.asp

Renewable energy
Labor can also be expected to implement its announced policies on renewable energy: Labor’s 20 Per Cent Target For a Renewable Energy Future. Labor has promised to ensure that at least 20 per cent of Australia’s electricity supply (approximately 60,000 GWh) is generated from renewable sources by 2020. This will be a significant increase on the current target of 9.5 per cent (approximately 15,000 GWh). The aim is to combine existing and proposed state and territory renewable energy schemes and the national Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) scheme into a single national scheme.

Labor considers that renewable energy targets do not have a long-term future given the planned implementation of an ETS. It proposes a phase-out of renewable energy targets from 2020 to 2030 as domestic emissions trading matures and carbon prices become sufficient to ensure that mandatory renewable energy targets are no longer required.

Labor has also committed to providing (among other things) $50 million for geothermal drilling to assess the potential for hot, dry rock technologies.

Clean energy funds
Labor can also be expected to implement its announced policies on ‘clean’ energy: Federal Labor’s Clean Energy Plan To Help Tackle Climate Change. Labor has promised to provide: $500 million for a Renewable Energy Fund, $150 million for an Energy Innovation Fund, and $240 million for a Clean Business Fund.

Spending under the Energy Innovation Fund will include: $50 million for an Australian Solar Institute based on an existing CSIRO centre in Newcastle, $50 million towards solar PV research and development, and $50 million towards ‘general clean energy research’.

Spending under the Clean Business Fund will include: $90 million for a Green Building Fund to subsidise 50 per cent of the cost of retrofitting commercial office buildings, with a maximum of $200,000 provided for each building. It will also include $75 million for grants of up to $500,000 to help small- and medium-sized manufacturers retool their production processes, reduce their environmental footprint and cut carbon emissions. Another $75 million will go to a program to support development and commercialisation of ‘clean, green technologies’.

The existing Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund scheme and the Greenhouse Gas Abatement Program will be abolished.

More Good News

Published
by
Christian
on November 20, 2007
in General
. 0 Comments

George Monbiot is so alarmed by recent scientific findings that he has released an update to his book Heat.

—

The last time we had two degrees of warming in the Pliocene 55 millionyears ago, the ice sheets at the poles did not melt - as the IPCC proposes -over a millennia, but within the course of one century. And they did not cause a maximum sea level rise within the course of one century - as predicted by the IPCC - of 59 centimeters, but of 25 meters.

And Hansen proposes that through a series of factors - the collapse of the buttresses that prevent the ice from sliding into the sea, the melt water trickling down through crevasses and lubricating the base of the ice sheets, and melt water on the surface of the ice sheets changing the albedo, making the ice darker and therefore absorbing more heat, will lead to the sudden and - certainly in geological terms - almost immediate collapse of both the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets within the course of one a century at somewhat less than two degrees of warming.

Continue reading ‘More Good News’

30 MW, 360 million $ Solar farm in Hunter valley

Published
by
JeremyC
on November 18, 2007
in General
. 0 Comments

Has anyone any further information on this solar farm ……

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/16/2093119.htm

Wind Resource Prediction using public domain data

Published
by
iain
on November 15, 2007
in Wind
. 0 Comments

I found this masters project from a UK university quite interesting. They have developed a framework for estimating the wind farm potential of a site using existing data in the public domain.
Wind Resource Prediction Project homepage

Nanosolar

Published
by
Christian
on November 15, 2007
in General, Solar PV and Wave
. 8 Comments

Cost has always been one of solar’s biggest problems. Traditional solar cells require silicon, and silicon is an expensive commodity (exacerbated currently by a global silicon shortage). What’s more, says Peter Harrop, chairman of electronics consulting firm IDTechEx, “it has to be put on glass, so it’s heavy, dangerous, expensive to ship and expensive to install because it has to be mounted.” And up to 70 percent of the silicon gets wasted in the manufacturing process. That means even the cheapest solar panels cost about $3 per watt of energy they go on to produce. To compete with coal, that figure has to shrink to just $1 per watt.

Nanosolar’s cells use no silicon, and the company’s manufacturing process allows it to create cells that are as efficient as most commercial cells for as little as 30 cents a watt. “You’re talking about printing rolls of the stuff—printing it on the roofs of 18-wheeler trailers, printing it on garages, printing it wherever you want it,” says Dan Kammen, founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. “It really is quite a big deal in terms of altering the way we think about solar and in inherently altering the economics of solar.”

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2007/green/item_59.html

A history of solar energy in Australia

Published
by
iain
on November 13, 2007
in Solar PV and Solar Thermal
. 0 Comments

Rear Vision looks at the history of solar technology in Australia. Why is Australia now lagging behind other nations like China and Germany? Features discussion from Robin Batterham and a number of Australian solar experts.

RN Rear Vision - 11November2007 - Solar energy in Australia

Victoria’s total power needs in 50 square kms

Published
by
RobC
on November 11, 2007
in Solar Thermal
. 4 Comments

According to this article Ausra will be building a 177MW solar thermal power plant in central California on 1 square mile of land (640 hectares). Based on this ratio Victoria’s power needs of 6000MW could be generated in 50km2.

Sounds too good to be true, but I’ve heard the 50km2 figure thrown about before. Like to know what others have heard about this. Is it possible?

http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9810199-54.html 

Palm Oil to CO2 disaster

Published
by
JeremyC
on November 9, 2007
in Biofuels
. 1 Comment

Below is a link to Thursday’s Guardian of an article warning that Indonesia’s rush to cultivate palm oil as a fuel substitute could release billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in one go. This is because deep peat bogs that contain massive amounts of carbon would need to be cleared to make way for palm oil cultivation.

The article is written by John Vidal and he aims it at UK supermarkets because they use a lot of palm oil but the context is our hope that palm oil could be an oil subsitute.

Its a pretty stark article.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/08/climatechange.biofuels

Jeremy C

Climate change a mainstream issue

Published
by
iain
on November 8, 2007
in Climate Change
. 0 Comments

Just in case there was any doubt it is pretty clear that climate change is now a mainstream political issue. In todays debate between Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Garret, both environmental spokesmen stated that climate change is the biggest threat to our environment and the economy.

The entire debate can be viewed on the ABC website:

Climate change dominates environment debate - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The eco-office block of the future

Published
by
iain
on November 8, 2007
in Energy Efficiency and Housing
. 1 Comment

More from the Catalyst archives. This reports looks at the CH2 building in Melbourne which has been designed to be highly energy efficient using a range of innovative ideas for temperature control. Ties in well with the ideas that were presented by Geoff Andrews.

Catalyst: Council House Two – the eco-office block of the future - ABC TV Science