Push to speed up renewable energy

He might not know it yet, but Anthony Albanese has started a renewable energy revolution.

It was at his Marrickville office in May 2009 that founder of the recently launched 100 per cent Renewable Energy campaign, Lindsay Soutar, asked Mr Albanese whether he understood the science around climate change and the severity of the threat.

“He looked me in the eye at that meeting and said ‘Lindsay I’ve met more climate scientists than you have in my time and yes I understand what’s going on but until people all around the country are telling me they want action, we’re not going to do anything about it’.”

Speaking at the campaign launch in Newtown on May 2, Ms Soutar said it was then she decided a national community campaign around renewable energy was necessary.

“We waited a long time for the NGOs to come up with a campaign like this that local groups could jump on board and they just didn’t, so we got tired of waiting and decided to do it ourselves,” she said.

Since then, support for the campaign has been growing steadily amongst climate action groups: more than 70 groups across the country, representing tens of thousands of people, supporting the initiative.

Climate Action Newtown, of which Ms Soutar was a founding member, started in 2007 as a few friends having a beer at the pub and now boasts over 600 supporters.

At present, the Federal Government’s Renewable Energy Target (RET) aims to have 20 per cent of Australian energy coming from renewable sources by 2020.

But Ms Soutar says the RET scheme is far from adequate and additional measures will be needed.

“We’re calling for the government to introduce a clean energy bonus scheme as the first step towards 100 per cent renewable energy in Australia,” said the 28-year-old who now works as the campaign co-ordinator.

“That scheme will reward investors in renewable energy by providing them with a premium price and will promote the uptake of emerging technologies like solar thermal, wave and geothermal that aren’t currently getting any support from the Government.”

Moving towards 100 per cent renewable energy will also create thousands of new jobs, Ms Souter said, citing the 280,000 jobs Germany has created in its renewable energy sector.

“We need to stop those new jobs being created in coal energy and create them in renewable industries instead.”

Professor Mark Diesendorf, who spoke at the campaign launch, said switching to 100 per cent renewable energy was entirely feasible with commercially available and soon to be released technology.

“If we take those technologies and move forward with decent government policies we could retire coal power in this country within 20 years and replace it with energy efficiency and renewable energy,” he said.

The professor blamed a “greenhouse mafia” of heavy emitters for preventing the immediate uptake of these technologies by “spreading lies, fallacies and myths about renewable energy”.

“We could be exporting vast quantities of solar energy to our neighbours in Asia and the Pacific … let alone providing 100 per cent of Australia’s electricity needs,” Prof Diesendorf said.

Marrickville Greens councillor Fiona Byrne, who also spoke at the launch, supported the call for a bonus scheme, also known as a feed in tariff.

“A national feed in tariff would help to drive investment in renewable industries and will hopefully allow us to achieve a shift to renewable energy now rather than when it’s too late,” she said.

– By Flint Duxfield