Thank you, Sven Teske, for setting out clearly a well –informed case for some optimism, in discussing the Energy Revolution Report, and The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Industry and Resources inquiry into Australia's renewable energy sectors.
A year ago, when I realised the urgency of Australia’s current wrong direction on energy policy, I began a website, all out for preventing nuclear power – for all the danger and pollution reasons.

Now I’m realising that for Australia’s ECONOMIC future, we desperately need, not just to fight backward-looking polluting technologies like nuclear, but more, to get on with conserving energy and promoting renewable energy technologies. The Howard government has Australia on the wrong track – and I’m not that confident about Labor, either. But it’s becoming clear that, world-wide, people are taking up these clean 21st century technologies. With this groundswell of public opinion, and with some people of vision in Parliament – there definitely is hope!
Christina Macpherson www.antinuclearaustralia.com

This is a very good article that hopefully attracts much attention.

Unfortunately, some people are still mired in the debate about whether climate change is happening. So be it, they will wallow in the mud. The rest of the world is moving on.

But where is Australia? Where have we been these last 10 years? What are we going to do?

The author is right, “The political choices of the coming years will determine the world’s environmental and economic situation for many decades to come. Renewable energy can and will have to play a leading role in the world’s energy future. There is no technical barrier - only political barriers are blocking the shift from coal to a clean renewable energy future.”

Powerful vested interest groups (like the coal and nuclear lobbies) have the blessing of our current government. This has to change.

How we make these changes under the current regime would be difficult, we need business and political leaders with a vision.

It’s not about right or left, conservative or liberal, east or west, them or us, whatever. People have to understand that it is the troposphere, the planet’s border, which needs protecting.

Political ideology will taint the issues but the environment must come first, all else follows.

Last year just THE INCREASE IN ENERGY USE ALONE was five times the total wind energy capacity ever installed!! This shows how rapidly world energy use is increasing relative to the tiny fraction of energy derived from renewables. Unless population and economic growth is stopped there is no hope of renewables contributing significantly to our energy use before an economic/population growth crash (and not much after because, after a crash, there is not much capacity to do anything).

michael, please don't use that dirty language in public. p*pulation g*owth makes all the discussion of energy generation rather pointless. if p*pulation keeps growing, it won't matter how frugal we are, the heat generated will cook the planet. but none of the chatterati know what to do about p* g*. so they talk about some easier, and fashionable, problem. to be fair, putting the problem on future generations has always been the solution of choice.

of course, here in oz, the need to produce water with desal plants because we haven't got enough for current needs means water shortages are going to promote more global warming, which promotes more water shortages...

quite a few people realize the population question is fundamental, enough at least that i don't worry about my sanity- but i do worry about the iq of the general populace, or the arrogance quotient of the people who fight their way to the commander's position, and then have no notion of what to do. it's likely "we'll all be rooned" is all we can hope for. but i'm struggling against the more likely scenario wherein we are all ruined, except for the rich and selected flunkies.

A very sensible article by Sven.

To our detriment, there are few politicians, Labor or Liberal who are able to grasp the impact of toxic hydrocarbons on all life forms on the planet.

Even if the IPCC got it wrong on climate change, the emissions of hazardous hydrocarbons and by-products from incineration, will continue to wreak havoc on human and animal health and the ecology.

How many deaths have occurred from the emissions of anthropological hydrocarbon chemicals and then covered up by pollutant industries and the industry aligned, sycophantic governments?

How many pollutant industries are there who've been sufficiently ethical to implement the already available pollution prevention control technology? Very few!

Our "leaders", obsessed with economic "progress", threaten us with recessions - even depressions, when we object to their attempts to dupe the masses in their quest of profits for the few.

We, the masses will have to pay for any reduction in industrial CO2! What ever happened to the "Polluter Pays" principle? "All praise to the recidivist polluters,". says our ill-informed Johnny and his cohorts and the state premiers!

My recollection of the pending computerised era within Australia was the fear of thousands of workers where they would become redundant, having only manual skills. That fear has been proven to be unfounded.

The increase of renewable energies in this country can only be to the benefit of the masses, creating new skills, many new industries and a vast improvement in environmental and human health.

Unfortunately we are governed by yesterday's men, determined in their pursuits to further pollute this fragile planet!

Reckon the power of the sun on a hot summer's day is nowhere near utilised in Australia.

Mirrored reflectors also must only catch a fraction of the sun's true solar power.

Aussie kids found out years ago how a bulbous torch magnifier glass a half inch across could burn one's skin to the bone in seconds on a normal sunny day.

Using the above principle then, what could a magnified bulbous dome the size of the Telstra dome achieve?

dickie, isn't 'masses' rather unfashionable? i prefer 'people'. the reason we are ruled by second rate solicitors is because the people are, alas, treated as brainless 'masses', even by their friends. but it's not genetic,i hope. ozzies can be led to feel they can direct their nation's destiny,with discussion and example.

or maybe not. just as people raised in a wheelchair would have withered legs, people raised in parliamentary societies seem to have withered political imagination. they simply can not imagine participating in formation of policy because they have never done it.

leaving the management of society in the hands of alpha males, on the other hand, seems to have led us to the brink of ecological disaster. the structure of society prevents decisions being made for the good of the majority because that is what it was meant to do.

so the choice is educate people who for the most part think they know enough already, or watch large chunks of the human race die in mass famines and/or the warfare that arises from resource exhaustion.

the real problem is not energy, the real problem is getting the human race to adjust it's numbers to available resources. the adjustment will happen, the only variable is how much pain will be involved.

Demos

I am unconcerned that you view the word "masses" as "unfashionable." That is how many politicians view the people of this nation.

One can not expect a sustainable environment when bankers, commercial property developers, lawyers etc are given control of the the environment portfolios.

These ministers often have vested interests or totally lack any background in chemistry - an essential requirement to buffer the spin that industry aligned senior bureaucrats feed to their ministers when a catastrophe occurs, a result of those bureaucrats' failure to regulate a pollutant industry.

Of course, one could forgive a minister's naivety if they endeavoured to understand, by conducting their own minimum research, the measurements of toxic emissions from industrial stacks - they don't!

For example if I advised you that one small company's stack emissions revealed a measurement of 0.2ng/m3 PCDD's, would you understand? I doubt it, nor do the ministers. Nor do many of the bureaucrats - no do they care!

Though I do recall a minister, with a background in chemistry, instructing her department to enforce the capping of excessive toxic emissions from a pollutant company, in an effort to protect a community from the release of hazardous hydrocarbons. The department ignored her determinations.

The current parliamentary enquiry into the catastrophic lead pollution in Esperance WA, gives some optimism that the department of environment, in its shameful neglect of the people in that state, will be called to account. The committee investigating this pollution includes 2 doctors who,hopefully, will not be misled by the crap this department usually feeds to the "masses."

Unfortunately, the majority of the people find all this quite tedious or they naively believe these departments and their ministers are protecting them and their environment. That could not be further from the truth. Your suggestion of "discussion and example" to get real about hydrocarbon pollution has to date, had little effect on the people's apathy, revealed by their reluctance to demand a cleaner environment in this "clever" country.

In essence, we need to insist that our own backyard is cleaned first, before picking on anyone else!

The cost of building hot rock geothermal power sources is estimated by geodynamics to be $2.6M per megawatt installed capacity including connection to the grid. This will generate 8,760,000 kwh per year in clean emission free energy. This is a capital cost of .34 cents per kwh per year. The running cost is estimated at 1 cent per kwh.

It is estimated that each Australian on average consumes a total of 70,000kwhs per year for all purposes. The capital cost to generate this amount of emission free geothermal energy with existing technologies is about 23,800. If we invested $1,000 each for 23.8 years then we would have an emission free energy industry in Australia.

Why are we only setting targets of 50 and 60%? Why not increase the amount of investment to $1,500 and do 100% in 15 years. We are going to have to invest this and more to replace and add to our existing energy infrastructure. It is a matter of redirecting investment and we should not wait for Carbon Trading to force this to happen but look at other market driven ways to direct investment.

One simple way is to ban any new investment in fossil burning energy plants and let the market decide which is the most efficient non polluting way to both generate and save energy but there are other less draconian ways to achieve the desired result.

Geothermal is the way to go for base load power here in Oz, NOT nuclear as our current government seems so intent on.

“Clean” coal (CCS) will play a part but it can not be put in place now.

We must also supplement our energy supplies with solar, wind, tidal, etc.

We should also improve our energy efficiencies, especially the big users (and emitters).

Governments should stop subsidising the major contributors to GHG emissions, e.g. aluminium smelters.

Blah, blah …

There is one major problem, our government is subservient to the fossil fuel and nuclear lobby – so it is not that simple.

We expect our business and political leaders to do the right thing. Unfortunately, WE have to drive their policies; WE have to hold them accountable.

If we don’t, we’re screwed.

It seems to me that it will be known before nuclear power can get
started that geothermal & solar thermal can or cannot provide base power.
Once it is known that the alternatives can do the job then nuclear
will not be financially viable anyway.

The big problem is liquid fuels and they have limited time anyway.
Oil & gas products should be kept for plastics and fertilisers.

Which gets us back to transport energy.
Build & Electrify the the long distance rail system and reopen closed
branch lines. Suburban light & heavy rail will need significant investment.
Do it while we still have the energy to construct the
new regime of infrastructure.
The long distance trucking industry is finished anyway so it is mainly local
truck transport and personal transport for those journies other than
commuting to work that will be served by electric cars.
There is no absolute certainty about the time of peak oil.
However, there are indications that it has already happened.
Even if it is another 15 years away we need to get cracking now.