Antinuclear

Energy research in Australia welcomes the carbon tax

The real cost of carbon-based fuels needs to become apparent and with the carbon tax that will be so. When you see that real cost of carbon then other renewable energy projects like solar or wind or geothermal, they can now become a lot more competitive.

having a background like a carbon tax and all that will definitely help and assist these newer technologies to get to
maturity. 

Carbon tax powers energy innovators ABC Radio AM Adam Harvey , June 9, 2012 ELIZABETH JACKSON: At least one person in New South Wales’s mining heartland is looking forward to the carbon tax kicking in. Newcastle University professor Behdad Moghtaderi is developing new technology to cut power bills.

He’s working on ways to use the earth’s heat to power mines and he’s helped devise an ingenious system to warm the university’s swimming pool. He hopes that rising power prices, sparked by the carbon tax, inspires businesses to follow his lead…..

SEAN MCCRACKEN: We would use concentrated solar power which we collect on the roof of the pool and we will heat a fluid, known as the working fluid, which is part of our GRANEX technology. So that fluid will get heated by the sun and it will get pumped back down into the pool plant room and we will use our engine to convert that heat into electricity.

The by-product of our process means we’ve lower temperature heat
generated, we have to reject that, it’s just part of thermodynamics,
and to make full use, we can transfer that rejected heat to heating
the swimming pool. So it means that not only are we getting the
efficiency of converting sunlight to electricity, we’re getting the
by-products to generate heat as well.

ADAM HARVEY: A lot of the expertise here was devised by the
University’s Professor Behdad Moghtaderi. It’s just one of a number of
alternative energy projects he’s working on, like geothermal energy.
In short, that’s piping the Earth’s natural heat into power stations
to supplement ‘dirtier’ methods of generation, like burning coal.

Professor Moghtaderi is testing his methods in a prototype power plant.

BEHDAD MOGHTADERI: Essentially it’s a mini power plant.
ADAM HARVEY: But for the technology to climb out of the basement and
beyond the university pool, and make a splash in the real world, its
supporters say it needs both government assistance and measures like
the carbon tax.

SEAN MCCRACKEN: The real cost of carbon-based fuels needs to become apparent and with the carbon tax that will be so. When you see that real cost of carbon then other renewable energy projects like solar or wind or geothermal, they can now become a lot more competitive.

BEHDAD MOGHTADERI: Some companies may need a bit of a push and I think
the carbon tax will be that push.

They’re actually still not very mature technologies and they’re
therefore expensive; on their own they would not have any chance to
actually get off the ground.

Whereas having a background like a carbon tax and all that will definitely help and assist these newer technologies to get to
maturity.  http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2012/s3521738.htm

June 11, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | energy, New South Wales