Antinuclear

According to Kobad Bhavnagri, Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s lead clean energy analyst in Australia, Australia’s investment is on track to rise to US$6.8 billion next year and will aim to be a total of $45 billion by 2020, However, is this enough investment to meet the target of renewable sources such as solar, wind and geothermal making up 20 per cent of the energy supply for Australia?

Despite some of the best renewable energy resources on the planet, Australia has been slow at tapping into the potential of these.  Nevertheless, Australia did see an increase of 11 per cent on the previous year; with the biggest contribution to the $4.7 billion spend on renewable energy, coming from solar power installations. However, Australia is only deriving 8.7 per cent of electricity from renewable energy, versus a worldwide average of nearly 20 per cent.  Why this is and what are the challenges and steps that Australia has to combat in order to not only meet their renewable energy targets of 20 per cent by 2020, but to exceed them?

Australian ideas commercialised elsewhere

Many Australian ideas are now being commercialised overseas, such as David Mills’ solar thermal technology, which is being developed in the US and is owned by Areva, the French nuclear power giant. The incongruity of having the ideas and resources, but not using them is a hurdle in Australia’s renewable energy development; according to Andy Cutt, Renewable Energy PhD student at Murdoch University, this is due to “political willpower to make it work on a large scale and drive down the costs so that it can be economically competitive”.

Australia must build its own infrastructure to reduce our greenhouse gas footprint, cut our dependence on liquid fuels, and enable the transition to a low-carbon economy.  What is currently lacking that prevents Australia from harnessing their own renewable energy inventions are economies of scale. Therefore, a small government stimulus, would allow many renewable energy technologies to compete head-to-head against coal-fired electricity generation within the next five years. In turn, this will provide significant employment and export opportunities.

Without government intervention to ‘tilt the marketplace’, Australia could lose its potential competitive edge in developing renewable energy technologies and will become a passive importer of technologies developed overseas, particularly in Europe; where the innovators of renewable energy technology mainly reside.

Storing renewable energy…..

CSIRO results point to an increase in support for wind energy development…….    http://www.eco-business.com/blog/the-route-to-a-renewable-energy-future-for-australia/