Never mind that 'renewable energy' in the form of firewood emits particulate matter when burned, causing real pollution -- not the fake 'pollution' of increased CO2. Never mind that the production of biofuels has driven up the price of food worldwide. Never mind that wind farms have soaked up vast sums of public money for a piddling return. Never mind that tidal power plants crash and sink, or that nuclear power stations melt down: these are trivial problems, my hearties, and can easily be solved by hurling vast sums of taxpayer's money blindly in the general direction of 'alternative energy sources'.

The big advantage of letting the private sector take care of these issues is that, unlike the Government, they eventually run out of money and sanity prevails. Sometimes they even make progress: something government-funded climate research has conspicuously failed to do. Let our investors do the investing, if they want to: our taxpayers are going to have enough to worry about in the near future.

I would think the process has to be taken further than finding clean technology, as almost all technology results in some type of waste, or uses some type of natural resources.

I would think governments should be investing in energy minimisation as well as investing in clean technology.

At present, each person in Australia uses 40 barrels of oil per day, as well as considerable amounts of coal, (and then we rely on the export of coal to pay for it all).

It verges on disgusting, and in Australia, energy conservation may be the best short term, medium term and long term solution to the problem of fossil fuels.

The problem with spending carbon tax revenue on alternative technology is that it may attempt to pick the winners in advance. Avoidance of carbon imposts should motivate new technology knowing that customers will buy the cheaper product. We may have already seen examples of fruitless government spending on clean coal and geothermal, neither of which seem ready for prime time despite hundreds of millions of dollars in support.

Apart from complete duds the spending may go on underperforming technology. Perhaps rather than subsidise wind and solar that don't help in calm weather and at night we should invest in energy storage. That could be pumped hydro, sodium batteries, compressed air and so on. That way the intermittent energy can be recovered at times of high demand.

Another troubling aspect of carbon tax is that it may make us more dependent on gas which is a finite resource. New power stations will be gas fired rather than coal. If they have quickly variable output they may be able to complement wind power picking up the slack during wind lulls. What happens when gas gets expensive as has occurred in Europe? If anything I'd spend carbon tax revenue on energy storage.

Alice, R&D is not something you go the street and pick up, it's a high risk area and not everyone wants to invest in it.

The people profiting in green/renewables in Australia are importing it and the government allows the rules to be bent, such that if only 1 or 2% of the R&D is here, it can be claimed as "local R&D", you get tax offsets etc.

Solar panels are not built here, nor are wind turbines, no R&D was done on those here.

R&D to make such systems more reliable or more efficient here, are trivial sideshows, and are done to soak up R&D grants by universities.

It is a complete falsehood to be chanting the mantra that Australia can be at the leading edge of a new sustainable energy industry, if only we invested here or there.

It doesn't work like that. You need creative people to do the forward thinking, to try hundreds of techniques and one or two may come of that. Our government only funds winners, with high profile front-men, like Tim Flannery with geothermal (a dismal failure with over $100M sunk)

If you want businesspeople to invest, stop taxing the crap out of them so they can invest something in high risk.

You somehow think if you create enough pain over there, you will create an environment of happy investing over here, using the stick method - but with our existing tax structures, it's less risky to invest in ways to get around the carbon tax and knee jerk ALP behavior.

The road you have to travel to get some of the Carbon Tax revenue for R&D, will not be easy for new entrants, it's not going to go to off the wall R&D. The usual universities who have grant writing to fine art would beat you to death if you tried to do something different.

Nothing is going to change, and we will not get new technology under our current system.

It's like an open sales pitch, "give us money and we'll do something", just more ALP spin.

Alice - what Amicus has begun I can take further.

The main clean technology manufacturer is already China and, with the Australia dollar the way it is, there is no possibility of a wind turbines and photovoltaic panel manufacturing industry becoming established here on any significant scale.

Australia already has considerable experience in subsidising marginal manufacturing operations and none of it is good. There is also considerable experience in forcing R&D in directions it does not nauturally go and, again, no-one wants to repeat any of it. Both policy initiatives are a straight waste of time and money.

If and when a carbon tax is instituted, the equipment use to meet its requirements will be mostly imported, and that is not going to change. Deal with it.

Let's examine the recent Gillard government postulations on its carbon dioxide tax.
1. People won't pay, big polluters will pay. Who are they kidding?
2. The entire amount collected will be spent in compensating "millions of households". Ditto.
3. Well, 50 per cent of the amount collected will be spent on compensating households and millions of them will be better off. Ditto ditto.

Each of these, individually and collectively, illustrate the incompetence of the government. They are clueless and befuddled.

But when you boil down the policy, it's a combination of Labor's traditional magic pudding tax, where there's always and forever more to spend, and a stock standard pyramid scheme, which would be illegal if anyone else tried it, allowing the government to cream off profits while leaving a lot of other people with no shirts.