A reality check.

Australia is not going to become "a world leader in clean renewable technologies."

We do not have the scale or the funds. We're simply too small.

What we are going to do is adopt renewable technologies developed elsewhere. We're also going to build nuclear power stations.

Ironically, much of the innovation in renewables seems to be developing in the US.

See:

http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11565685

"Clean" coal does not exist. All coal is dirty. It should be called "cleaner" (note the -er) coal, because the processes are an improvement on what we currently have.

Such technology can only be a half-way house, and to buy time to let true renewables develop.

Clean coal is like "clean" rubbish. If we simply took household and industrial rubbish and buried it into landfill or "deep geological repositories" for millions of years, that would be unacceptable.

We need to aim for a closed cycle, where waste = food for another process...

Dear People.
Is Kev an alchemist - is he a chemist?
He certainly ain't the Scarlet Pimpernel.
A glib, very controlled speaker who happened to win a raffle is, for the time being, leader of the majority in Reps - that's our Kev.

Fuel.
Stuff we find. Available. Exploitable.
Mostly with carbon in it.
Fuel, from Mammoth dung to JP7(explanation at request) has served us well for millenia.

When combined with oxygen, heat is released, work is accomplished, and a fair amount of effluent is produced; all depending upon the involved efficiencies.
A similar process happens in my body - and (can I face it) Geck; in Kev's.
Here we avoid actually touching the matter - rather speaking about it.

Humans, even Kev, exhaust voluminous waste products too.
There is a fair deal of pollutants and 'greenhouse gases' produced by the average mammal.

Meanwhile human animals, including Kev, to labour the point, happen to be omnivores.
That means if they are not chewing through a fair amount of processed body parts of what I consider to be sentient beings - they make up the deficiency from other, less salutary, salubrious, sources and by doing so all involved increase their 'footprint' and consequently the combined deficit.

I could be horrid and suggest that Kev is explaining to the unimpressed realists in the Big Apple that not only does Australia have a secret for 'clean coal' - but over 20 millions of us subsume to his theory and cunningly, collectively, have suppressed all our personal emissions in accord with his gambit.

The poor chap. The bubble has burst at Wall Street as these bubbles always do. So will our's sooner rather than later.

If we might get away from Wall Street, middlemen, brokers and oxygen thieves - then provide a bunch of dedicated engineers and their families some decent accomodation and workspace - then we might move forward.

Let Kev get back here and direct his people to administer that.

Kevin Rudd might have made a big mistake in not having a spring clean of his advisory staff - instead he took on John Howard's boys and all their relationships and connections.

I am talking about buildable, bankable projects (BBP). The kind of hardware that companies like Worley Parsons are building in California and now planning here.

Large Scale Solar Thermal.
Thats a BBP. Has been for decades. The storage issue is being solved, and meantime, it can be hooked up to either coal or gas firing as a transition step to give the "baseload". Its scalable and can suite small communities to big miners (who want better security than diesel for their electricity requirements)

Wind.
In situ and price competitive. Not "baseload"? Try this. Studies done years ago showed that if you have sufficient wind capacity feeding into the same grid from DIFFERENT wind regime, you get the balance.

Waves
The Carnegie Corporation are very close to going full scale with an under sea technology that generates electricity AND has desalination capacity in the one plant. Sites around the coast from Geraldton to the QLD NSW border are said to be the best on the planet.

Geothermal
Close to commercial with a very high temperature project at Innaminka. But geothermal plants do NOT have to be drilled 5Kms into the earth. Smaller (shallower) plants are the better choice. Where you have heat, you have a resource to create building heating, air-conditioning etc. The bolt on gear is off the shelf. Its BBP.

Biomass
BBP right now. Plants that use say salt tolerant mallees that can be coppiced in rotation can generate electricity, oils, charcoal.

The bigger answer is a MIX – not one technology. And then there’s the most unsexy activity of the lot – being more efficient with energy. The experts say we could reduce about demand by over 30% across the nation. Next time you pass a sliding door that activates as you pass when you did not need to enter, thing of the waste of electricity. Might as well burn money for the value it has.