Hi Julian, I really admire the work you are doing making Australian's aware of their impending food insecurity. However, this techno-fantasy stuff about us fueling Asia's energy demand with our renewable or nuclear energy is crap that is reducing your credibility. We would have almost insurmountable trouble building the infrastructure to supply Australia's own energy needs with renewable energy so the idea of supplying Asia's is just silly. And if you are thinking about nuclear read Dittmar's stuff on the reality of the world's uranium resources. It is one thing to build a DC cable - but you need to have something to put in it. Read Ted Trainer's pieces to see some numbers that can dispel your illusions on renewable energy. Regards, Michael.

There's some embryonic ideas in this proposal which point to the future. Australia is indeed an energy superpower with ready built coal export facilities, growing LNG exports and large uranium reserves. Therefore we can call the shots and if other countries don't like see how they go elsewhere. That means that we can and should reduce the amount of carbon we send overseas. Putting the carbon tax on export coal and LNG would be a start. Other countries can ask for the money back if they spend it on green programs. Then when we move to an ETS in 2015 carbon-in-exports will have to come under a cap. It means the coal industry must decline after 2015 since domestic and export carbon will be rationed. If not the whole scheme is pointless.

As for underwater cables I'm not so sure. According to Sen. Milne Tasmania gets 50% of its summer power from brown coal via Basslink. That wasn't possible before 2006. Big cables are easily sabotaged which is why I doubt North Africa will ever supply much power to Europe. They moved the Dakar car rally to South America because of terrorism. Forget Aussie coal power being exported after carbon capture. They can't even export humanely slaughtered beef.

I agree that Australia should build a number of nukes and also enrich uranium. The deal could be that other countries get out uranium instead of coal. Perhaps we could even reprocess or bury their nuclear waste in outback mineshafts. Anything that reduces global CO2. So in general terms the intentions of the article are good but not the specifics.

It's great to see someone positive about our future energy, and not all doom and gloom eco activist on us.

michael I'm not sure what the problem is you allude to with our own infrastructure? Is it the infrastructure if we have to change to all renewables, wind and solar, with all the backup coal and nuclear? We have infrastructure now.

Julian has an interesting idea but I suspect he's been carried away by the possibilities of the new comparatively new technology of high voltage direct current transmission (actually an old idea made possible).

Among other problems, the cable he proposes would pose a major security threat to the nations using it. What happens if its damaged? Australia already exports a lot of energy in its conventional form -coal and LNG - and there is no reason to change. As for the renewable energy stuff, the Asian nations can generate their own extremely expensive electricity. They don't need to import it.

What a vision, but a hard sell amongst people without any idea.
We need visionry people to come up with ideas to off set the amount of leather asses we have in this country.

Sorry Michael, but I think it's do-able though let's start with an expanded intra-country grid shall we? I'm convinced by Beyond Zero Emissions that we can supply all of Australia's electricity needs by 2020 with solar thermal and wind. That requires an expanded grid connecting up geothermal on the corner of SA, QLd and NSW, wind from SA and solar thermal from the arid interior somewhere, and then on to the major cities. It's not THAT difficult to envisage taking it to Asia.

HVDC?

Interesting.

But I'm inclined to think that electricity is like desk space. The more that is available, the more that is used and eventually wasted.

I would much rather see Australia leading the way in energy conservation.

It seems honourable enough.

We export coal and gas for the short term, to develop technology and modes of living that eventually reduces energy consumption in the long term.

Julian’s proposal has considerable merit. It may not come to much -- thinking outside the square is an unrewarding exercise at any time, and Australia’s justifiably wary of ‘Big Ideas‘ after the last few years. Still, if we’re going to rabbit on endlessly about reducing our carbon footprint, winding down coal consumption, and actually making renewable energy a viable proposition, we’d better forget about Julia’s Carbon Tax and move along smartly towards something like HVDC.

There’s absolutely no point in peppering roofs with solar panels. It saves ZERO carbon emissions: you can’t turn down the volume on your local power plant because the sun is shining, full stop. Solar photovoltaic is just expensive window-dressing. Those rich enough to spend $10,000 on solar panels get taxpayer subsidies for installation, then payments from utility companies funded by increased rates -- the poor subsidise the rich. Nice one, that.

Wind generation is no different; it’s expensive, intermittent, and useless for base-load power generation; your coal- or gas-fired power plant doesn’t burn less fuel on windy days either. It’s only advantage is that most wind turbines are sited in the Regions, where urban greenies don’t have to look at them, let alone live with the noise, or the stench of dead birds ripped up by turbulence.

The beauty of Julian’s scheme is that it COULD make use of solar photovoltaic, wind, solar thermal, hydroelectric, nuclear, geothermal, wave power, and almost anything else that comes along, to produce base-load energy. You don’t need the expensive technology to synchronise many small DC inputs. HVDC is versatile in ways our current AC generation infrastructure can never be.

The problem is that we’re supposed to be developing alternatives to fossil fuels, but we’re pretending that isn’t a radical change that’ll take a full century of innovation to bring about. We’re also pretending that generation technologies not net conceived will mesh with our existing AC energy grid, and that’s very, very unlikely. It’s MUCH more likely, though, for a HVDC approach. And almost certainly less expensive.

Think outside the square. You don’t bet, you can’t win.

Hi Julian,

thanks, exactly what we need.

Naysayers were to be expected, as in Europe with Desertec. Schopenhauer said, all truth passes through three stages. Ridiculed. Violently opposed. Accepted as being self-evident.

Saul Griffith from Sydney left Australia years ago for California where his "audacious" ideas are much more appreciated. In his short video about wind energy

http://www.ted.com/talks/saul_griffith_on_kites_as_the_future_of_renewable_energy.html

he explains that audacious things have been done many times in history and shows the example of a refrigerator factory that needed to build airplanes during WWII. At the beginning they made 1000 airplanes a year, at the end of WWII they made 100,000 airplanes.

It has to be DONE not talked about. Due to the decisionmakers' dilemma you mention I do not see much chance today for your Australian Energy Superhighway, however, I'd be happy to support any activities. Visions like yours are of utmost importance.

Europe with its poor conditions for solar is way ahead of Australia. And Germany has more new developments in the pipeline like EE-Gas which again no one here in Australia is even talking about.

Years ago I have done a pre-feasibility study about deep water off-shore wind in bass strait for Desertec Asia showing it could supply all of Australia, and more. In a speech at BZE Keith Lovegrove said once something like your vision is set up it would create a never ending cash flow from Asia to Australia. We have that with coal today but for how long and at which price?

Then there is the solar tower of Environmission that after years of delays is now being build in the US. Why not here?

It will only be able to go forward in small steps like supplying an island with wave power. Japan is missing around 40 GW from the defunct nuclear power stations which could be replaced by wave power. I have made it to the sub-governmental level with a detailed proposal but there is a insurmountable barrier, so I think it is better to start small and wait until they knock your door and ask: How do you do that?

You've got to wonder whether it wouldn't be easier to use all that energy to actually make stuff here, rather than simply exporting it like all our other raw materials.

@michael(L?), uranium resources are a non-issue, in the medium term due to exploration (the current resurgence is still in its infancy), and in the long term due to Generation IV reactor technology.

how can we feed anyones demands, let alone our own, when we are planning the cut emissions, not increase them.

this is th fundemental flaw in their future outlook

I don't know weather to cry or laugh. Julian no one wants to buy our power, or anything else that has used our labour to make, or we have profited in making. They have their own labour to employ, & they buy our raw materials to profit from converting them to products.

That's the problem with your suggestion Mark. Stop supplying raw materials, & they'll go else where, it's not as if we have a monopoly on any of the stuff. If you can do it better, & cheaper, go for it, but that's where we have a problem. It's always our price that kills us. The world would love to drive Commodores, if we could make them cheaply enough.

We actually tried that with aluminum a while back. We have an alumina industry, because the inputs are bauxite & power. We developed it when our power was still cheep. The idea was to go the next step, & produce first the aluminum, then supply finished castings like automotive engine components.

Everything looked good, until the price, where we couldn't compete. I think there was $150 million tax payer money went up in smoke with that one.

Renysol I would love it if you blokes would restrict yourselves to what works, & has a track record. You are always telling everyone about what is only a "gunna do".

For years it was all Spain. They were going to rule the world with free energy. Well, now the billion dollar wave gear slowly rusts on a sand dune, the windmills catch unwary birds, & Spain is bankrupt. Now you champion some new unproven pie in the sky technology basically because it hasn't failed yet.

For every missionary who became lord of an island or tribe, a thousand or so got eaten. Missionary work does not have good statistics, & is best avoided, leave it to the dreamers. Then buy the new improved second edition, that one usually works.

Hasbeen wrote:

„Renysol I would love it if you blokes would restrict yourselves to what works, & has a track record.”

I am sorry I can’t. Life would just be too boring ;-)

I am very happy that Edison did not think so. He would not have attempted 11,000 times to get the light bulb working, and we would still use candles.

Spain's bankruptcy has nothing to do with renewable energy but with real estate. You are right, that wave energy snake off Spain did not last long, neither did the wave generator off Nowra.

That does not mean to stop working on better technologies, see Edison. There is now a much better wave design, and we will soon see how it works.

If Desertec in Europe/Africa ever does see the light of day - once it has solved the many issues that go with such a project, it might well be worth considering for Australia into Asia. It will certainly take many decades to get to that point (notwithstanding the optimism of Beyond Zero Emissions).

Just a correction Julian to your article. I think you will find that it takes an area 50x50 kms or 2,500 sq kms (not 250) to meet Australia’s current needs with CSP and I suspect that is just the solar collection field. Access roads and heat storage tanks will increase this further.

http://www.desertec-australia.org/content-oz/australiacsppotential.html

To supply a significant proportion of Asian demand would increase that area substantially. This is no small engineering feat which will cost over 100 billion dollars just for the solar field to supply Australia and does not including the cost of transmission lines or storage tanks.