For those people who worry about global warming here are some back of the envelop calculations that show we can stop green house emissions and still produce as much energy as we need.

The cost of building coal fired thermal power stations is between $1,000 and $2,000 per kw. The running costs of coal power stations is around 2 cents per kwh.

The cost of building thermal power stations heated by geothermal or solar thermal is about $3,000 per continuous kw (solar thermal also includes the cost of heat storage for night operations). The running costs of both are about 1 cent per kwh.

The cost of installed thin film PV materials is $1,000 per kw but it only runs 8 hours a day or again about $3,000 per kw.

The total energy used by each Australian for ALL purposes is estimated at 90,000 kwh per year. There are about 9000 hours in the year so we need 10kw capacity per person.

Thus to build enough renewable capacity for each individual is about $30K. Spread over 10 years this is about $3K a year per person.

This back of the envelop calculations says it is doable and at the end of the day we have power produced at half the cost.