No credibility in Labor or Liberal’s Climate Non Policies
Gillard’s announcement should be measured against the Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan released last week by green group Beyond Zero Emissions and the University of Melbourne’s Energy Research Institute.
Zero carbon plan better idea than zero credibility, Sydney Morning Herald, PADDY MANNING.July 24, 2010 “……….Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s exercise in small-target politics in Brisbane yesterday confirmed both major parties are missing in action on climate this election.
Gillard’s announcement should be measured against the Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan released last week by green group Beyond Zero Emissions and the University of Melbourne’s Energy Research Institute.
Their plan tries to answer the question, what would we do if Australia (and the rest of the world) were genuine about cutting emissions quickly enough to give the planet a better-than-even chance of avoiding more than 2 degrees of global warming by 2050?
If you work back, calculating a per capita ”carbon budget”, as Hans Joachim Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute did last year, you find the richest, highest per capita emitters like the USA and Australia need to achieve zero emissions this decade………………..
Researchers used actual demand in the national electricity market, over half-hourly intervals, for three years from 2007 to 2009, and actual wind and solar energy availability. They assumed energy demand would grow in line with ABARE forecasts, and also assumed new capacity would be installed to electrify transport (road and rail). They also assumed 40 per cent cuts from energy efficiency and demand management.
They found 98 per cent of this power requirement can be met by building 12 massive concentrating solar-thermal power stations with energy storage, and 23 new wind farms. A small amount of biomass would need to be burnt to provide back-up power in the worst case conditions – a few hours in winter, when there was low wind and low sun. They have costed the whole thing, too – $37 billion a year for 10 years or about 3 per cent of our GDP…………..
For Beyond Zero’s executive director Matthew Wright, co-author of the Zero Carbon plan, there is not enough time left – our carbon budget is blown – to build and operate ”fossil gas”-fired power stations for 25 years-plus. So surely a zero carbon plan is worth more than a zero credibility plan … or two.
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