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The Forum > Article Comments > Funding Australia’s move to renewable energies > Comments

Funding Australia’s move to renewable energies : Comments

By Kevin Cox, published 28/11/2006

Investment in replacement technologies will not be driven by ideology but by the economic market.

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To my mind this idea is considerably better than a consumption tax, due to my main concern about tax being that the government can come to rely on it, thus relying on the product/s being taxed.. cigarettes being a prime example here.

I'd also like to add that at least in some states now you can request that your electricity comes from clean sources. The additional cost appears to be just under 10%. Pretty much worthwhile in and of itself. It would be great if this was subsidised by extra cost of carbon producing products or energy sources.
Posted by Happy Bullet, Tuesday, 28 November 2006 12:28:52 PM
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I agree that we should be thinking about how to finance the massive investment required in clean energy given the amounts currently frittered away on conspicuous consumption and foreign wars. Speaking of which this scheme reminds me of war bonds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_bond. I also agree as does Al Gore that green charges should be offset by cuts in other taxes or recoupment possibilities. However I'm not sure this is better than cap-and-trade. Moreover there are no guarantees that the investment will immediately cut emissions; for example when the new wind farm is built perhaps they could dynamite one of the boilers at the coal station to make sure. Also a few quibbles with numbers and assumptions such as the viability of clean coal. This proposal needs to be lined up with alternatives like carbon trading, carbon taxes and personal transferable quotas...maybe they all have flaws.
Posted by Taswegian, Tuesday, 28 November 2006 12:42:44 PM
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With electricity consumption Australia faces increasing demand because
- more consumers
- increasing consumption per capita
- increasing consumption because the climate is getting hotter and air conditioners are becoming more prevalent

Another problem is that demand for electricity isn't even through out the year or even through out the day. The peak time for electricity is on hot days when people get home from work and turn the airconditioner on at the hottest time of the day.

I agree that we probably need to invest in more power stations but if households contribute some of the power then less electricity will be lost in transmission.

Why can't householders install solar panels for some of their own usage and sell back the excess to the electricity grid. In the southern states this would help alleviate the peak electricity demand that the electricity system is starting to experience on really hot days when everyone turns on their domestic air conditioning units. Why doesn't Australia adopt the switching mechanism used in south australia that turns of air conditioning compressors for 10 minutes every hour to alleviate peak load.
Posted by billie, Tuesday, 28 November 2006 12:49:58 PM
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It is an interesting idea but I'd like to see some comments from an economist.

It almost sounds like an alternative currency. If you were to buy an airline ticket with GRI's would it attract GST? In fact could we compare it frequent flyer points? If we were to consider FFs as a currency it would be second only to the US dollar as having the biggest volume "in print" and all airlines would go broke if consumers wish to spend their FFs all at once.

Overseas people have adapted a supply side target. California, a dozen or so other states and many EU members have adopted targets like 20% renewable by 2010. The idea being that creating volume in the market will bring down the cost of solar cells, wind turbines and other equipment. In many places you can sell your excess energy back to the grid. Last weeks economist has an interesting article going into much detail.

Australia with its low population and massive amounts of fossil fuels has not gone down this road yet
Posted by gusi, Tuesday, 28 November 2006 6:36:02 PM
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Billie,

You asked why households can't have solar panels on their rooves to generate part of their electrical consumption.

The answer is that renewable sources of electricity such as solar and wind power are not continuous, and in fact can be very erratic in their power delivery. Winds vary, the sun can go behind a cloud, and solar energy will definitely not be solution overnight. Electricity has to be consumed the instant it is produced, as it is very expensive to store it, and the whole art of delivering power to a distribution grid is to maintain it at 240 volts day and night despite unpredictable wild swings in consumption. Locating renewable sources at a variety of locations can help somewhat, but basically you cannot exceed having more than about 20% of your power from renewables without a severe risk of the grid becoming unstable, and having massive power blackouts. The only way to run a power grid with a lot of renewables, such as Denmark does, is to have hydro backup, which they obtain by importing hydro power from Norway. Hydro can cope with large swings, as the power station can go from 0 to 100% output in less than 60 seconds. Unfortunately, we don't have much hydro, because we have neither the rain or the high mountains for the rain to fall onto. This is why we need continuous power sources, and the only non CO2 emitting sort around at present is nuclear.

As a famous person said, life wasn't meant to be easy.
Posted by plerdsus, Tuesday, 28 November 2006 9:57:24 PM
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I'll tel you why people don't install solar panels.

It's because you still have to be hooked up to the grid.
It's because, while you still buy electricity at maxumum rates the electrictiy companies only pay you the bare minimum when you sell it back to them.

The only places that solar/wind is viable are country properties a good ten kays from the nearest power lines.

The SEC used to take the main power lines to them for free and then everyone alog the road hooked in.
These days under the user pays policies no power company wil do that. You want a ten kay power line to come past your place? You pay a hundred grand. Up front! This makes wind and solar cheaper.

These are stand alone units with big panels that normaly operate in surplus and waste a good 50% of the power that they collect, and a few big storage batteries.
Posted by sparticusss, Thursday, 30 November 2006 6:54:25 AM
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