Martin Ferguson’s Solar Energy plan for failure
Ferguson’s department once again has diverted funds to his favoured fossil fools and a gladbag of solar generation novices….Let’s get off this flagship of fools before it sinks the hopes of achieving a large-scale transition to renewables.
Solar Flagship shortlist comes up short * Olga Galacho, Herald Sun * May 13, 2010 FOSSIL fuel pirates and other opportunists have commandeered Energy Minister Martin Ferguson’s Solar Flagship program. The short-listed bidders for a slice of the $1.5 billion booty, courtesy of the Federal Government, was buried in a press release issued on Budget night.
It’s not that the Solar Flagship concept is wrong. It’s just that the companies that have been selected for the shortlist are second-tier, or worse, in terms of global solar energy.
The shortlist demonstrates an audacious tilt by gas, oil, coal and wind specialists, who should stick to their knitting and leave the large-scale solar sector to the large-scale solar sector….
this week’s shortlist does not include companies with the most advanced of this type of technology, which uses tall towers that collect and process concentrated solar energy and stores some of it in molten salts for dispatch at night.
The companies that have already built these power plants and other advanced commercial solar installations are Abengoa, Solar Millennium and ACS Cobra.
Instead, Ferguson’s department once again has diverted funds to his favoured fossil fools and a gladbag of solar generation novices, when that assistance was supposedly earmarked for companies that already had commercial-scale solar electricity experience…………
If Ferguson genuinely wants Australia to have a bright solar energy sector, he should at the second round of grants choose the best experts, because he has clearly failed to do this in the first round.
Let’s get off this flagship of fools before it sinks the hopes of achieving a large-scale transition to renewables.
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