Antinuclear

Senator Scott Ludlam explains Clean Energy Finance Corporation funding for solar thermal energy

“We have the technology, we have the institutional set-up and now we have the funding mechanism to make [concentrated solar thermal] plants like this a reality in Australia  largely in part because of the leadership shown by Senator Milne, by Adam Bandt and by our former leader, Senator Bob Brown, in bringing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation into being.

Barnaby Joyce’s renewables target: 100% ignorance REneweconomy, By Giles Parkinson   7 February 2013 “…….the most informed speech came from Ludlam (right) and it’s  worth a read. We won’t republish it in entirety, but here is a good excerpt. And here is a link.

“I think that many people, when they consider solar energy, think of rooftop solar panels. That is fine. We have seen huge falls in the cost of that technology as economies of scale kick in, particularly with the research and development leadership that Australia has shown over previous years, coupled with the massive manufacturing capacity of China. This has led to huge falls in the cost of PV. For example, in Perth—the latest figures I have from last September—218 megawatts of peak electricity was generated from the rooftops of the residents of Perth.

It is interesting to note that the largest renewable energy installation in Western Australia is actually the city of metropolitan Perth. Because costs have fallen so fast—with halting policy assistance from both federal and state that comes and goes; rebates that get slashed and reintroduced, different schemes that come and go and even so people have done the right thing—we are now seeing large-scale deployment of solar energy in Western Australia and right around the world. So, PV is a big deal.

“But, what we want to raise today—and the reason the motion is worded as it is—is that there are major changes occurring in concentrating solar thermal technology which does not use photovoltaics, it does not require the rare earth minerals, it does not require advanced electronics or miniaturisation or particularly advanced manufacturing technologies. These are fields of glass, a kilometre or more across, that reflect the sunlight onto a central receiving tower which heats some kind of thermal storage mechanism—whether it be water, or hot oil, or molten salt, as was the case in some of the plants that we visited, and other technologies, including one that is proposed to get up and running in Western Australia using the solid thermal storage medium of graphite—and that thermal energy can be stored and dispatched later.

“That is how you get better than baseload solar plants that can run around the clock. It changes absolutely everything. It certainly should change—although I suspect he would be one of the last people on the planet to get the message—the determined, unhinged, pig ignorance of people like Senator Barnaby Joyce and the display he put on for us just now. That a senior policymaker in 2013 can still hold and express views like that is dangerous. And, it is a leadership example set by his leader, Tony Abbott, and premiers like Premier Barnett in Western Australia which is dangerous. Crossing the road with a blindfold on is dangerous. We cannot allow people like these to hold leadership positions in Australia while the ship heads towards the rocks.

“We have the technology, we have the institutional set-up and now we have the funding mechanism to make plants like this a reality in Australia, largely in part because of the leadership shown by Senator Milne, by Adam Bandt and by our former leader, Senator Bob Brown, in bringing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation into being. We are not simply taxing the several hundred largest polluters in the country, but we are using a large fraction of that revenue to build the platform to replace the polluting infrastructure. This technology is good because it gives you the thermal storage, it is responsive to demand, unlike coal and nuclear power plants, it is relatively simple to build and it can happen on a large scale, on a utility scale. That is what has been missing from this debate up until now.”

The rest of the speech isn’t bad either. http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/barnaby-joyces-renewables-target-100-ignorance-96527

February 8, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, solar