Energy forum looks to the future
Local residents converged on St Peters Town Hall on April 13 to listen to CEO of the City of Sydney Monica Barone talk about the City’s new Trigeneration network.
The crowded hall also hosted Geoff Cameron from Beyond Zero Emissions who gave a lecture on renewable energy.
Ms Barone outlined the improved energy efficiency of the Trigeneration network but conceded that it was only a less dirty source of power than traditional coal.
“What I hope people understand is that it’s not an ‘either or’, that we all have to work together to look at every single thing we can come up with to bring down emissions,” Ms Barone said. “We all have slightly different priorities but it is really important that we all work together.
“There is high-carbon and there is no-carbon and we need to transition through a low-carbon process to get to no-carbon,” she said. “What we’ve got is a plan, and it’s better than having no plan, and it’s a hell of a lot better than what we’re currently doing.”
“Coal is really dirty, gas is pretty dirty too,” she said. “But it’s a bit cleaner than coal.”
Ms Barone outlined how Trigeneration plants inserted in buildings trap heat which is lost in traditional coal power process.
“It’s “tri” because you use one lot of gas and you get the electricity and the heating and the cooling and that makes it three times more efficient, and you get a third of the emissions.”
Ms Barone said that the City of Sydney had “resolved to not support CSG extraction.”
Ms Barone said that the journey to “beyond zero emissions” was a hugely expensive one which currently lacked the hard, social or regulatory infrastructure to implement.
Mr Cameron outlined a vast roadmap for the future of zero emission energy sources for Australia. Under the plan 60 per cent of Australia’s energy would be derived from solar plants similar to those already operating in Spain and 40 per cent would come from wind turbines.
Mr Cameron said that the technology for the required switch was available and the failing was one of policy from the leaders of the country.
Members of the audience complained that Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP was spending too much time spruiking cycle-ways and not enough focusing on issues that really mattered like the threat of CSG extraction in the inner city.
The evening was arranged by Sydney Residents Against Coal Seam Gas and attracted Councillor Irene Doutney from the City of Sydney, Pip Hinman from the Socialists Alliance and former Greens candidate for the seat of Heffron Mehreen Faruqi.
