Fight for sustainability
Global warming advocacy group, Beyond Zero Emissions, says Australia could derive its energy needs completely from renewable energy sources inside of a decade.
More than 1000 people packed into Town Hall last Thursday for the group’s Sydney launch of its ‘Zero Carbon Australia (ZCA) Stationary Energy Plan’.
The chief executive of Beyond Zero Emissions, Matthew Wright, told the crowd Australia could be powered completely with a combination of 60 per cent solar thermal plants and 40 per cent wind turbines using only existing technology established over ten years.
Coming as the result of collaboration between Beyond Zero Emissions, Melbourne University’s Energy Research Institute, and engineers Sinclair Knight Merz the plan calls for $37 billion dollars of investment every year for ten years with a final price tag of $370 billion, or $8 per household in Australia per week.
The plan was endorsed by Liberal MP, Malcolm Turnbull who was one of the event’s key speakers.
Other speakers including former NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr, federal Greens Senator Scott Ludlum and the City of Sydney’s Chief Development Officer for energy and climate change, Allan Jones.
Well known for his stand in Parliament on the ETS, Mr Turnbull said the report was the most “comprehensive technical blueprint yet” for addressing global warming.
”I believe our long-term global goal is to very substantially reduce our emissions, a goal that will require almost all of our stationary energy to be produced from zero or near-zero emission sources,” he said.
”This report demonstrates we could already be technologically ready to do that.”
The plan calls for the creation of several solar thermal plants that make use of the Australian-developed technique of storing heat in molten salt, and about 6500 wind turbines at 23 wind farms placed in coastal areas.
If followed, the plan would generate 325 terawatt hours of electricity, which combined with energy efficiency guidelines would meet Australia’s entire power demand.
The NSW Department of Climate Change, Environment and Water did not have a comment at the time of publication.
For more information about the Zero Emissions Project go to http://beyondzeroemissions.org
By Simon Black
