The WA Environment Minister Donna Faragher and Energy Minister Peter Collier of in-principle funding from the Low Emissions Energy Development (LEED) Fund announced further $8 million in funding for three new low-emissions renewable energy projects in the state which will bring the total investment of $38 million in low-emissions technology across Western Australia.

The news was warmly welcomed by WA Sustainable Energy Association Inc. (WA SEA) who put out this statement in response to yesterday’s announcement:

The WA Sustainable Energy Association Inc. (WA SEA) welcomes the announcement today by Environment Minister Donna Faragher and Energy Minister Peter Collier of in-principle funding from the Low Emissions Energy Development (LEED) Fund for 3 new projects. [...]
‘The Energy Minister regularly highlights the desire of the community to build renewable energy into Western Australia’s future, and business welcomes the Barnett Government’s commitment to continue to expand the share of renewable energy in the State,’ says WA SEA Chief Executive, Prof Ray Wills.
‘The LEED funding announced by Ministers Faragher and Collier is further evidence of the increasing recognition and support for the need to change to a low-emissions economy,’ says Prof Wills.
As Australia’s largest energy chamber, WA SEA looks forward to further announcements from the Barnett Government that grows the Western Australian Government’s response to climate change and builds a sustainable economy for Australia into the 21st Century.

Read more on the WA SEA website and the Government of Western Australia’s website.

Australia media is a-buzz with BHP Billiton CEO Marius Kloppers dramatic entry into the Carbon Price debate. As reported in The Australian today by Jennifer Hewett “BHP boss Marius Kloppers: It’s time for carbon tax“:

His very public intervention pressures the government on two fronts: not to cede ground to the Greens and independents who wish to revisit the fundamentals of the mining tax; and to take more decisive action on climate change in the wake of Labor dropping its emissions trading scheme and the fiasco of the proposed citizens’ assembly. …
Mr Kloppers’s call for a carbon tax undermines the passionate objections of Tony Abbott to setting a price on carbon before there is a global consensus. …
“Carbon emissions need to have a cost impact in order to cause the consumer and companies to change behaviour and favour low-carbon alternatives” [said Mr Kloppers at Australian British Chamber of Commerce lunch in Sydney]
“We all recognise this is a politically charged subject. No government relishes telling people that things need to cost more.”
Mr Kloppers argued for a revenue-neutral carbon tax, insisting that the government must not treat any income as windfall revenue but return it to companies and individuals and “let the market work”.

Giles Parkinson, from Climate Spectator, has written a great story entitled “Kloppers’ big call“:

There can be no doubting now that a carbon price is back on the political agenda. Big business – or, more to the point, the biggest business – has spoken, and there is now no hiding from the issue.
BHP Billiton CEO Marius Kloppers certainly made a dramatic intervention into the debate. He took three three pillars of the fossil fuel lobby’s defence of the status quo and threw them out the door. He didn’t just skirt around their Maginot Line, he ploughed straight through it. And he’s challenged the nation’s politicians to do something about it.
The three key elements from Kloppers speech was that it was clear that Australia did need to take strong action to reduce its emissions, it needed to look beyond coal and towards other energy sources, and it needed to do so to protect its international competitiveness.
The need for global action on climate change is not, apparently, just a left-wing conspiracy. And it is now, once again, a front page issue.
“We do believe that such a global initiative will eventually come and, when it does, Australia will need to have acted ahead of it to maintain its competitiveness,” he said.

We’ll be watching the movements in Federal Policy with interest.

Join us on twitter for more latest cleantech news.

Addition: Follow story on Sydney Morning Herald called “Kloppers under fire on carbon tax” published Sept 17th AAP:

BHP chief executive Marius Kloppers’s call for Australia to act before other countries and introduce a carbon tax has put him at odds with many business leaders.
While big miners such as Rio Tinto and Xstrata, as well as the Minerals Council of Australia, went to ground yesterday, refusing to comment on whether they supported Mr Kloppers’s contribution to the debate, others were vocal in their concern, urging the government not to adopt Mr Kloppers’s ”one size fits all” climate policy.

Cleantech News – a look at what’s going on in the cleantech/greentech space…

With or Without A Climate Bill, U.S Power Sector is Changing (first published on Energy Boom Sept 10th) and re-posted by Solar Feeds on Sept 14th, the author Mindy Lubber had a decidedly upbeat outlook for solar and renewable power, despite the recent delays to the proposed US Climate Bill:

Now that the climate bill is in hibernation, it would be easy to despair that the US power sector will resume its tradition of burning high-polluting coal to sell increasing amounts of electricity.
The Washington Post opted for such a conclusion in an August 23rd article, “More coal plants are under construction.” The article noted that “dozens” of old-style coal plants – 32, to be exact – have been built since 2008 or are under construction. But there was an important context missing: the article failed to note that wind power production was the largest source of new electricity in the US last year and that for every new coal plant built in the US in recent years, four proposed coal plants have been cancelled or delayed.
The reality is the US power sector is undergoing a dramatic transformation to decarbonize its energy offerings and sell less, not more, electricity.
Source: Solar Feeds – a great source of renewable energy news

Kerry Dolan of Forbes wrote a story on Bloom Energy A Billion-Dollar Company, Says New Report (pub. 14th Sept):

Now, a research report from NeXt Up released Tuesday morning on privately-held Bloom values the company at between $936 million and $1.034 billion if it were to go public.

Bloom Energy made a big media splash last February which had industry heavy hitters and guests like California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and senior executives from some of the fuel cell company’s early customers, including Google, Ebay, Coca-Cola and Fedex. The firm has been valued as a Billion dollar company, points out the reporter Kerry Dolan, even though Bloom have not actually disclosed in full detail how their fuel cell works:

In addition, Bloom has not publicly discussed in detail how the fuel cell works, says Balaraman. At the launch event in February, Bloom Chief Executive KR Sridhar kept emphasizing how his solid oxide fuel cells will lead to “clean, reliable power affordable for everyone in the world.” The road to that vision is a long one, since initially the cost is high for each fuel cell.

Harry Tournemille wrote up about GE’s Hydrogen Assisted Renewable Power Project in Bella Coola Now Online on September 14th:

The rugged, scenic town of Bella Coola, British Columbia, Canada is the latest site for General Electric’s (GE) Hydrogen Assisted Renewable Power (HARP) project.
Teaming up with BC Hydro and Powertech, GE’s HARP project is an energy storage system that converts off-peak electricity from a renewable source into hydrogen via an electrolyzer. The hydrogen is then used for energy later on, during times of peak demand.

In biofuel news, Richard Branson has announced further investments in the sector – covered in a previous CTTV post this week entitled “Branson banks on Algae” – and Australian-US based algae company “Algae.Tec” has announced MOUs with Australian company to build it’s demonstration plant in Nowra and another with Hong-Kong based company to take it’s technology to Asia. CTTV Green Reporter, Giles Parkinson, interviewed Roger Stroud about their unique space-saving and industry scale biofuel and carbon sequestration algae technology. Click here to watch the CTTV interview.

U.S. Government Gives W.R. Grace & Co. $3.3 Million For Advanced Biofuel Development on Energy Boom – with the US Department of Energy getting behind W.R. Grace & Co. who have been awarded US$3.3 million to develop thermochemcial conversion technologies of biomass into cellulosic biofuels that are compatible with current fueling infrastructure. Full story available on Renewable Energy News (pub. Sept 13th).

An interesting article was posted by a guest on the CleanTechies blog on the annual Women in Green Forum in Pasadena entitled “Women’s Impact on the Green Economy”

The World Bank has appointed one of UC Berkeley’s top energy experts to be the organization’s renewable power “czar”. Read the article published on 10th September in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled “World Bank taps UC Berkeley’s Daniel Kammen” here:

“Energy use is growing rapidly in developing countries, so in terms of implementing new ideas and hardware, developing countries are where it’s at,” Kammen said. “This is really an effort to make sustainable development at the core of what the World Bank does.”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/10/BU801FBB6V.DTL#ixzz0zZmDKWkz

The New York Times reported on US-China cleantech research deals moving ahead today “Amid Trade Tensions, U.S. Creates More Clean Tech Research Partnerships With China”

Jesse Jenkins wrote this article published on Forbes “Energy Source” blog today looking at what the new GOP developments in the US could mean for cleantech sector entitled “November GOP Win Could Be Win For Clean Energy“:

According to most electoral prognosticators, Republicans are poised to win major victories in the upcoming November midterm elections, with control of both the House and Senate within their reach. That should spell the end for climate and clean energy legislation, according to many observers, at least for the next Congressional cycle.

Also have a read of “Infinity Group launches world’s first Intellectual Property Bank in China to commercialise clean technologies“, “Stanford Supports Energy Research Programs with $7.5 million” “Sahara solar energy could power Europe”

From Australia’s Climate Spectator here are some current stories worth checking out “Solar’s quantum shift” & from Giles Parkinson “The guessing game begins” a look at the future of Australian climate policy:

Julia Gillard’s minority Labor government has been sworn in, Opposition leader Tony Abbott has finalised his A-team, and so begins the guessing game around Australia’s future climate change policy.
The early money is that if Australia is to have any sort of carbon pricing by 2013 then it is most likely to be an abridged form that affects the energy sector and little else directly, and so allows much needed investment to take place.

“Clean appeal – Bloomberg New Energy Finance“:

When Metlife, the biggest US life insurer, bought an equity stake in a Texas wind farm last week, it was far from the first time that a company completely outside the renewable energy sector had bought into green assets. It was not even the first clean energy investment for that company, which claims to have already invested $US1 billion in wind, solar and geothermal projects.
What the latest announcement brought into focus was the quietly rising trend of outside investments into clean energy assets, and not just by US companies either.

“CLEANTECH BUZZ: Divining the sun” by Sophie Vorrath:

Just when you thought you were abreast of the latest solar technology developments, a group of MIT chemical engineers have come up with a way to concentrate solar energy 100 times more than a regular photovoltaic cell using carbon nanotubes. The idea is that these nanotubes – hollow tubes of carbon atoms – could form antennae, or “solar funnels,” that capture and focus light energy, potentially allowing much smaller and more powerful solar arrays, reports Xinhuanet.com.

Lastly, Update: Top Solar Venture Capital Investors – Solar VC investors sorted by style points and vision, not IRR is a great resource from GreenTech Media.

According to an article published in The Times through the Business section of The Australian, even Richard Branson is jumping into cleantech and investing in Algae biofuel technology.

The article, written by Alexandra Freen and entitled “Branson bets his own money on renewable oils from algae“

RICHARD Branson is betting on algae as an alternative jet fuel and has invested a chunk of his personal fortune in its development.
Sir Richard has joined Unilever in investing in Solazyme as the industrial bio-tech company raised $US60 million in equity funding to develop oil-based products for use in goods ranging from biofuels to cosmetics and foods.
Sir Richard has invested in Solazyme’s financing in a personal capacity. His stake in the Californian company complements Virgin Group investments through the Virgin Green Fund in the renewable energy and resource efficiency sectors.

Here’s what Richard Branson has to say about this cleantech sector:

“Sustainable renewable oils and biofuels will play an important role in our future … We have made a number of investments in these emerging fields over the last four years and I’m excited about Solazyme’s potential to make oils for fuels, chemicals and foods at scale.”

This sector is really coming to the forefront of cleantech as it can produce environmentally responsible biofuel to meet the growing demand as oil prices continue to rise.

CleanTechTV has interviewed Roger Stroud of Algae.Tec this week as they are about to be one of the first companies to IPO in the Australian Algae sector producing biofuels and providing an industrial scale carbon capture solution for large carbon emitters. MOUs have recently been signed by Algae.Tec to build the first demo plant in Nowra and with a Hong Kong based company taking their technology into China. You can watch the CTTV interview with Roger Stroud of Algae.Tec here.

You can download a copy of the Algae.Tec Prospectus here.

For more cleantech news and to be part of the conversation join CTTV on twitter.

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.

Farmers in California’s San Joaquin Valley that have had to remove thousands of hectares of farmland from agricultural production in most part due to salt build up caused by years of irrigation are calling for the revitalisation of the land by putting it to a new use: renewable power generation.

By installing the proposed “Westland Solar Park” which they claim at peak output would generate as much electricity as several big nuclear power plants they would reuse the land which would have otherwise been useable for years to come. 12,000 hectares have been allocated by farmers from the region and officials at Westlands Water District, a public agency which supplies water to farms in the valley, into what would be one of the world’s largest solar energy complexes if it moved ahead.

As Australian farmland is tackling similar difficulties, the “Westland Solar Park” would be a good example of potential large scale projects – turning a bad situation into a positive outcome for our environment and local farmers.

First reported in the New York Times by Todd Woody, “Recycling Land for Green Energy Ideas” Aug 10th:

The San Joaquin initiative is in the vanguard of a new approach to locating renewable energy projects: putting them on polluted or previously used land. The Westlands project has won the backing of groups that have opposed building big solar projects in the Mojave Desert and have fought Westlands for decades over the district’s water use. Landowners and regulators are on board, too.
“It’s about as perfect a place as you’re going to find in the state of California for a solar project like this,” said Carl Zichella, who until late July was the Sierra Club’s Western renewable programs director. “There’s virtually zero wildlife impact here because the land has been farmed continuously for such a long time and you have proximity to transmission, infrastructure and markets.”
Recycling contaminated or otherwise disturbed land into green energy projects could help avoid disputes when developers seek to build sprawling arrays of solar collectors and wind turbines in pristine areas, where they can affect wildlife and water supplies.

He followed up with this story on the 11th of Aug “For Parched Farmers, a Crop of Electrons“:

In an article in The New York Times on Wednesday, I wrote about an ambitious plan to build one of the world’s largest solar energy complexes on 30,000 acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley of California.
Elsewhere, big renewable energy projects have encountered opposition from farmers, ranchers and environmentalists who worry about the impact of solar power plants on agriculture, wildlife and scarce water supplies.
But farmers in the San Joaquin Valley’s Westlands Water District are embracing solar power as a solution to their water woes. And environmental groups are backing the project as a way to avoid fights over building solar power plants in pristine desert areas.

Source: J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times

Also printed in the AFR, this story can be read online “Green energy scheme to revive unusable farmland”

As the election moves into the final sprint, Cate Blanchett has made this video with the Australian Conservation Foundation to call for a national commitment to clean energy in Australia and a strong climate change policy from our Government.

“Along with millions of Australian’s, I believe that we need to increase our efforts to reduce pollution and tackle climate change. Australia has more sunlight than any other continent. We’re an island, our waves are powerful and the wind roars in from the ocean. We could lead the world in clean renewable energy. And now is the time for us to make that transition from a pollution dependent economy to a cleaner one. Statistics show that Australians overwhelmingly support this notion. We have the technology here and the people to make it happen. We just need the right policies and leadership.”

Cate Blanchett calls for Australia to tackle climate change and transition to clean renewable energy. Source: Australian Conservation Foundation

Watch the video here.

Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton, Artistic Director’s of the Sydney Theatre Company, have been determined to make their stamp on the company and to have it be green. Since their time at the STC, they have initiated a number of policies to reduce the environmental footprint of the company.

Just last month, they were recognised for their contribution to the environmental cause at the 2010 Green Globe Awards, a NSW government initiative recognising sustainable businesses, where they were awarded the prestigious Premier’s Award for their “Greening the Wharf” program – introducing rainwater harvesting and solar power to the theatre.

As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald in an article entitled “Theatre project shines brightly” on the 28th July:

“Designing a sustainable performing arts centre on a greenfield site is one thing but doing so with a heritage building in a prime position on Sydney Harbour presents a considerably greater set of challenges,” Green Globes judging panel chair Ronnie Harding said of the decision to recognise the theatre.
“With 300,000 attendances at the Wharf each year the STC has an excellent starting point to promote its Greening project, including through hosting lectures, discussion forums and art exhibitions,” she said.
At the launch of the program in June, Blanchett said she felt environmental issues were simply too big to ignore.
“As a cultural institution we want to be engaged in what is the most important issue that is facing us as a species, that is, climate change.
“We all know theatre happens under electric lights. We’re a huge consumer of energy, so this is a really positive thing.”

STC artistic director Cate Blanchett, NSW Environment Minister Frank Sartor and NSW Arts Minister Virginia Judge inspect the greening of the theatre. Photo: Wolter Peeters. Source: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/theatre-project-shines-brightly-20100728-10uwb.html

A few cleantech stories you might have missed…

From Australia:

“Big solar’s big potential”, Climate Spectator, 16th Aug

This week, the Australian Solar Energy Society joined the Australian Conservation Foundation in calling for an additional 5 per cent of Australia’s electricity to come from ‘big solar’ by 2020.
That target would see the generation of around 8,500 megawatts of large-scale solar, and the construction of more than 30 big solar plants around the country. It would also cut Australia’s carbon pollution by more than 240 million tonnes over the life of the projects.

“The wind farm that ate the RET” Climate Spectator, 13th Aug

In Australia’s renewable energy market, fortune favours the quick and the big.
The $1 billion Macarthur wind farm to be built in south-western Victoria is being touted as the most significant renewable energy project in Australia since the Snowy Hydro.
But don’t expect another project of similar ambition to follow anytime soon, even though there are a couple on the drawing board – there’s simply no room left in the market.
Macarthur has been a long time in the planning for AGL, it’s just been waiting for the opportunity provided by the passage of the Renewable Energy Target.

“How to be fully renewable in 10 years” Sydney Morning Herald, 13th Aug

AUSTRALIA could switch completely to renewable energy within a decade by building a dozen vast, new solar power stations and about 6500 wind turbines, according to a major new study.
The Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan – a collaboration between Melbourne University’s Energy Research Institute, the environment group Beyond Zero Emissions and engineers Sinclair Knight Merz, puts the cost at $37 billion in private funding and public investment every year for the next decade.

“Fossilised approach to power” – The Australian, 11th Aug

BOTH Labor and Coalition policy on carbon trading will damage Australia’s emerging renewable energy industry, leading scientists have warned.
Michael Dopita, co-editor of an Australian Academy of Science report on renewable energy, says Labor’s plan to delay the introduction of an emissions trading scheme and the Coalition’s plan to go without one will send some start-up companies developing renewable energy to the wall.

“Geothermal’s pressure test“, Climate Spectator, 11th Aug

Geodynamics has spent an estimated $300 million over the past decade on the development of its cutting edge hot dry rocks geothermal technology in the Cooper Basin. Some time in the next month or so it might find out if it has all been worth it.
It may seem overly dramatic to label the fracturing tests that will be undertaken at a single well over the next few weeks as a “make or break” for the company.
But that is the way it is being viewed by Geodynamics and its backers. Success will deliver the key to an estimated 6,500MW of clean, base-load power that could be brought to the grid over the next 10 to 15 years; failure will cause the company to undergo a major rethink of its ambitions.

“Ten climate policy ideas Julia or Tony could steal” ABC Environment, 9th Aug

Some might say the government and the opposition are lacking for ideas on climate change policy. ABC Environment has 10 good ones they could consider.
THE GOVERNMENT’S proposed emissions trading scheme never quite got off the ground. And with both major parties being attacked for a lack of strong policies on climate change, it would seem alternative ideas were thin on the ground in the party rooms. However, ABC Environment has scanned the globe for climate policies the next Australian Government could steal.

“Ambitious targets in greenhouse proposal” Sydney Morning Herald, 9th Aug

THE state government is developing a new plan to combat climate change and it says it can make deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions even if a proposal to build two new coal-fired power plants goes ahead.
The state’s old greenhouse gas targets have been thrown out and replaced by a far more ambitious agenda to cut emissions by at least 5 per cent by 2020, instead of just stabilising them by 2025.
This means the average carbon footprint of every person in NSW will have to be reduced by a hefty 27 per cent in the next 10 years, according to federal government estimates. The NSW Department of Climate Change, Environment and Water says the plan is realistic even if there is no national emissions trading scheme by 2013.

“A mighty wind – turbine power growth hit 40 per cent last year” Sydney Morning Herald, 9th Aug

Wind power generation across the eastern states grew by 40 per cent last year as several large farms began operating.
A Climate Group report on electricity generation and its emissions, covering all states except Western Australia, found 83 per cent of power used in 2009 came from greenhouse-intensive coal. Nine per cent was from renewable sources – mainly hydro power – and 8 per cent from gas.

From overseas:

“Ban announces high-level panel to tackle global sustainability issues” – The UN News Centre, 9th August

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today unveiled a new panel on global sustainability that is tasked with finding ways to lift people out of poverty while tackling climate change and ensuring that economic development is environmentally friendly.
“I have asked the Panel to think big,” the Secretary-General told reporters in New York today. “The time for narrow agendas and narrow thinking is over.”
To be co-chaired by Finland’s President Tarja Halonen and South African President Jacob Zuma, the 21-member High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability brings together representatives from government, the private sector and civil society in countries rich and poor.
It is essential, Mr. Ban said, to promote low-carbon growth and enhance resilience to climate change’s impacts, as well as to tackle the intertwined challenges posed by poverty, hunger, water and energy security.
“In short, we need a new blueprint for a more livable, prosperous and sustainable future for all,” he stressed.

“The Necessity of Smart Grids” RenewableEnergyWorld.com, 9th of Aug 2010

You could argue that smart grids are unnecessary and that traditional system reinforcement with copper and steel will do the job. I can’t argue the physics of that, but I can argue on the commercial side. I know of a utility that complains that 30 percent of its copper and steel is idle for 350 days of the year, only getting used during the peak of summer. And its forecast is that this will progressively get more extreme with time. To install more metal infrastructure for progressively shorter periods of peak demand is just not economically feasible.

“Portugal Gives Itself a Clean-Energy Makeover” New York Times, 9th Aug 2010

Five years ago, the leaders of this sun-scorched, wind-swept nation made a bet: To reduce Portugal’s dependence on imported fossil fuels, they embarked on an array of ambitious renewable energy projects — primarily harnessing the country’s wind and hydropower, but also its sunlight and ocean waves.
Today, Lisbon’s trendy bars, Porto’s factories and the Algarve’s glamorous resorts are powered substantially by clean energy. Nearly 45 percent of the electricity in Portugal’s grid will come from renewable sources this year, up from 17 percent just five years ago.

As reported by Giles Parkinson on Climate Spectator, “Big solar’s big potential”, Australian Solar Energy Society has joined with Australian Conservation Foundation to call for an addition 5 per cent of Australia’s energy to come from “big solar” by 2020.

That target would see the generation of around 8,500 megawatts of large-scale solar, and the construction of more than 30 big solar plants around the country. It would also cut Australia’s carbon pollution by more than 240 million tonnes over the life of the projects.
A 5 per cent target is ambitious, but not unrealistic. The projects exist – Solar Flagships drew out 52 big solar projects, at least scoped at the initial phase, with local partners and support (see table below) – and the technology is ready, including the ability to dispatch power to the grid when it is needed most, 24 hours a day. The only thing missing is the incentive to invest.
The International Energy Agency reports Australia could generate 5 per cent of its electricity from concentrated solar power. In its recent report, Technology Roadmap: Concentrating Solar Power, the IEA indicated concentrating solar power should be a competitive form of peak and intermediate power by 2020, and of baseload power by 2025 to 2030. The IEA went even further, reporting that concentrating solar power would be able to provide 40 per cent of Australia’s electricity by 2050.
But as the IEA makes clear, government incentives will make the difference between the success or failure of big solar in Australia.

Read the full article on Climate Spectator and the AuSES press release regarding their announcement last week.

As reported by Adam Morton in the Sydney Morning Herald today, the eastern states of Australia experienced a whopping 40% growth in wind power generation last year.

A Climate Group report on electricity generation and its emissions, covering all states except Western Australia, found 83 per cent of power used in 2009 came from greenhouse-intensive coal. Nine per cent was from renewable sources – mainly hydro power – and 8 per cent from gas.

This growth was boosted by the opening of the largest wind farm at Waubra, north-west of Ballarat and wind turbines from across the states fed 4.1 million megawatt hours into the national electricity grid.

Wind supplies about 2 per cent of total power across the eastern seaboard. This is expected to grow dramatically over the next decade as wind farms are built to meet the bulk of the national 20 per cent renewable energy target.
The growth in renewable power last year meant emissions were about 2 million tonnes lower than if the electricity had come from coal.

Read the full story here.

Image Source: http://thinkgeoenergy.com/