So we now know the Federal Government has $40 billion in the bank. Lets have a look at what we can do with that money…
Apart from chair sniffing in WA, there have only been two major political issues in the last couple of weeks, state electricity and the federal budget.
The NSW Government says that it has no option but to sell the electricity industry if we are to maintain power and meet growing demand. I think it is about time the Commonwealth Government got a bit of vision in this area.
Australia’s electricity consumption is ranked 17th in the world and yet is only 51st in the world for population. Over 90% of our electricity comes from fossil fuels, 80% of which is coal. Another 8% comes from Hydro. We are the sun burnt country and yet less than 1% of electricity comes from solar power. How can this be?
There are only two drawbacks to solar power, the high cost of installation of small and large scale products and the area required for solar panels. Because of this most of Australia’s solar energy comes from energy conscious residents willing to pay the tens of thousands of dollars to produce their own electricity.
Before the Budget the Federal Governments Photovoltaic Rebate Program (PVRP) would give customers $8 per watt up to $8,000. This encouraged households to install 1kw solar collecting systems, typically costing $12,000-$15,000. Most customers of the PVRP would only have to pay $4,000-$7,000 to cover about a quarter of their energy needs. But with the new budget the PVRP is now means tested, households earning over $100,000 are no longer eligible for the rebate.
In other words, the main customers of the program middle-income earners are now left in the dark when it comes to Solar power. Cancellations are already being made and the Australia’s solar energy industry looks on the verge of collapse. The Rudd-Labor Governments climate-change policy now looks worse for the environment than the Howard-Liberal policy.
The average Australian household needs 6,500kwh of electricity per year. A commercial installation of a 4Kw system that will produce 7,300Kwh a year will cost $40,000. At 5c per Kwh the average electricity bill is $325, it would take over a 100 years to pay off the solar panels, that’s if they last that long.
Realistically, in a climate of high interest rates and economic uncertainty, who but the most wealthy would make such an investment?
The tragedy is that other than the cost there are so many benefits to solar power. No greenhouse gases, peak electricity use is often on hot days when there is plenty of sun and electricity produced on a roof doesn’t need to travel to where it is needed.
Since one third of our electricity is already being lost through transmission, we would already be making the grid so much more efficient.
With $40 billion the government could take 1 million households off the grid. If the government paid dollar for dollar for solar panels, 2 million households will be off the grid.
The German government tried a different approach. In 2000 wanting to reach a target of 20% of electricity coming from green sources by 2020, the government legislated power companies to buy solar electricity at four times market rates. By 2001 the effects were already felt, a new industry was created, creating hi-tech manufacturing and installation jobs across the country. After another 5 years the policy was so successful that the government revised its target, stating that it will reach 30% renewable energy by 2020. Today, German farmers are now converting unused land for ‘electricity crops,’ the solar power sector now employs 100,000 people and another 100,000 jobs are predicted to be created by 2020. It has now become an economical rather than an environmental decision to install solar power. All of this from a country who spends two-thirds of the day under heavy cloud cover.
The Government is still stuck in the clean-coal fairytale. Millions and Millions of dollars are pouring into research into this area. I must concede clean-coal would protect our resource driven economy but we can’t be sure it will work, we don’t know if we can store it underground, we would have to retro fit the technology to all our power stations and the technology would be most effective on newly built power plants anyway.
Instead of rebuilding power plants for an unproven technology, why not rebuild it for one we know will work and we know will be clean and safe.
In Victoria a new 154 Megawatt hi-tech solar power plant is being built at a cost of $420 million. The Victorian government says this new plant will power 45,000 homes. There are 4.5 million households in Australia, $42 billion would pay for 100 of these power plants, enough to power every home in Australia.
We’ve all heard Kevin07 advocating Kyoto and telling us the buck stops with him in the federal blame game, so here is an idea for him to fulfil both promises.
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