Australian renewable energy efforts have been featured in Matthew Perry’s Green Chip column of the New York Times on 22nd August “Australia steps up renewable energy efforts“
Australia has plans to build the biggest wind farm in the southern hemisphere by 2013, part of its scramble to fight climate change and harness its abundance of clean energy sources — wind, solar, waves, geothermal energy and bioenergy.
Renewable energy now supplies just 6 percent of power in Australia because the country has historically lacked the political and commercial will to pursue big renewable energy projects. And the very sources of Australia’s clean energy — its vast outback and nearly 60,000 kilometers, or 37,000 miles, of coast — are major obstacles to linking new, remote power sources into the grid.
Matthew Warren, head of Clean Energy Council which represents over 350 cleantech companies that specialise in renewable energy and energy efficiency, said:
“It’s a blessing and a curse,” said Matthew Warren [...] “Australia is really at the top of the list, in the scale of the economy and the quality and scale of renewable resources,” Mr. Warren said. “But the grid issues are significant because we run a very, very large, long and thin grid,” he said.
“It’s like running a grid from Paris to Moscow with sparsely distributed energy demand through that grid.”
However, Australia is beginning to tackle the problem as demonstrated with the revised renewable energy targets passed in June which earmarked AUD $20 billion for clean energy technologies and is expected to create 28,000 green jobs. Furthermore, the Clean Energy Council feels that despite the fact that Australia has not yet set a price on carbon the renewable energy target of 20% by 2020 is achievable.
Climate change policies have been a topic of hot debate during this year’s neck and neck Federal election and, despite lack of the climate policy stability, movement in the sector is progressing. A.G.L. Energy, the largest energy retailer in Australia and New Zealand’s state-owned Meridian Energy announced earlier this month that they would build a billion dollar wind farm in Victoria – with 140 proposed wind turbines it would make it the largest wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere.
Read the full article here.
Tags: cleantech, cleantech news, climate policies, greentech, renewable energy, smart grid, wind, wind power
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