Australia’s unique opportunity to develop non-nuclear energy

All that sun gives us a different glow The Age, Dr A. Barrie Pittock, author of Climate Change: The Science, Impacts and Solutions, October 14, 2009 THE Age editorial and feature on nuclear power as a means to decrease carbon emissions (13/10) continues the strange process of ignoring major alternatives.The article again quotes apologist Ziggy Switkowski’s oft-repeated, but wrong, statement that the only way to ensure baseload electricity while reducing emissions is via nuclear power. The article, to its credit, does seriously discuss one big alternative: solar thermal power with storage. This is proven and could be a key contributor within a decade if funding were guaranteed.

However, no attention was given to the capacity of geothermal energy to deliver baseload power.

The dismissal of solar photovoltaic energy is crazy. Not only can this supply energy where it is consumed, thus avoiding costly transmission infrastructure and losses, but it can be stored in batteries for electric cars, or as hydrogen generated for fuel cells. New thin film photoelectric technology is reportedly about a 10th of the cost of silicon cells and is already in production in the US and, soon, in Germany.

Switkowski rhetorically asks why Australia should be different to other countries on nuclear. The obvious answer is that we are endowed with the greatest amount of free solar energy of any country on the planet. All we need to do is harvest it.

All that sun gives us a different glow