Well I got the free education, I don't suppose I should complain about missing out on the free insulation and free solar.
When the CFR decides Australia will be a superpower in something then our Rhodes Scholars will take their marching orders and things will progress in that direction. Until then we will be a convenient agent of legitimacy in the Asia-pacific for an hegemonic power that demands we consume all the crap they produce and add the weight of our nation status to their foreign policy decisions. Expecting anything else is living under a false hope and the source of disappointment.
Drive out to Kogan Creek Power Station where there is a veritable field of solar panels that have been sitting there for years, cost umpteen million to install and have yet to produce a watt. There are a number of interests that dont want to see solar be a viable option.
When I read the first part I thought they meant we would export solar power like Saudi Arabia does oil and was trying to imagine how
There have been technical and scheduling delays according to the website, with completion due 2016: http://kogansolarboost.com.au/news/construction-is-well-advanced/ If you have evidence of deliberate delays by any power that be then please cite it.
Yeah it's a real shame that the Government doesn't subsidise uneconomic technolgies more. We would have been the global leader of green electric vehicles exporting to the world within a decade if we had only been providing relatively modest assistance to our car industry over the past 20 years
I think that we are a super power at shooting ourselves in the foot. Abbott is not doing this country any favours and in my belief will go down in history as a prime minister that wasted Australia's opportunity. I don't understand his mentality. If he thinks that wind farms are a visual blight then what are coal mines? I work on coal mines and I like the engineering but wouldn't say they are good looking in any way. Abbott is a fool
Honestly, that was my immediate impression also, but then "Doh". Pleased to see I'm not the only one. BUT, realistically this is possible (maybe even ultimately, feasible and practical). In an area of very high light, energising fuel cells for transport elsewhere is a way of 'exporting' energy in the same way as exporting fossil fuels. The Tesla people are supposedly working on some wonderous batteries that are set to revolutionise the storage of energy en masse. The feasibility would depend on the destination - I could imagine Antarctica and Siberia as being places that might import non-fossil energy supplies. (Yes, I know, I'm a dreamer. Dreaming is the scout of Invention) By the way, anyone notice with PV panels that they ae badly effected by heat? I reckon mine work at their best on bright days between 25-30 and are effectively non-functional when the air temp goes above 40, regardless of how bright the light.
What I can say is the German contractors who installed it left it with some "technical issues" that will cost upwards of 100 mill to rectify and neither governments, both federal and state, Liberal and Labor over the past few years have shown any interest in coughing up the required funds. Good luck finding that information cited anywhere.....I cant reveal my source who discussed this with me whilst I was at the site but lets just say it wasnt just joe blow who clocks in and out each day. Care to place a bet about it being operational at any stage in 2016?
Which car industry? The one we had that kept producing V8s while the consumer was shifting to small urban run-abouts, or the one we should have had that could have adapted to producing better vehicles with more advanced technology? Subsidizing companies to keep doing the same old thing they've always done is not proof that subsidies can't achieve good outcomes.
You don't get it. Massive taxpayer subsidies for brown coal is a humanitarian initiative to tackle global energy poverty. I'm not even joking... that's the excuse the coal industry and politicians have used.
Sigh. We have all the uranium we need. We have some of the most deserted and desolate geologically stable land in the world, here in SA and also in WA we have plenty of it that is already irradiated thanks to British nuclear tests. Coal plants have put out more radiation than all the radiation released by all the nuclear power accidents combined thanks to radioactive carbon-14. Epidemiological studies will tell you that coal plants kill people every year through various pollution effects and poisonings. Australia is going to be one of the countries most deeply effected by global warming and one of the first countries to suffer in terms of productivity due to high energy prices, if we agreed to reprocess fissile material we could have electricity too cheap to meter in the host state as well as creating a huge industry employing many many thousands in highly paid high skilled and semi-skilled jobs in an industry on the rise. With our local processing and reprocessing base the power in other states might be cheap enough to desalinate water en masse (plus if we're going to suffer through 44 days on a more regular basis I don't want to feel guilty or imminently poverty stricken for running the air conditioner). If you added up all the radiation leaks from western nuclear power plants it wouldn't add up to anything statistically significant enough to garuntee a single death. Meanwhile new generation plants are orders of magnitude safer than those in use all over the USA right now and are fail-safe meaning they can't melt down. Of course we should be increasing solar and wind fractions but a half dozen large plants across australia with a few billion in tax rebates for strategically based solar and wind in the sunniest and windiest spots could be enough to help revive Australian manufacturing through cheap energy. It would also REALLY help the trade balance since we would be importing less energy and exporting more that we produce locally. My grandfather was an electrical engineer for the SA power corp for 50 years, he helped design and build the coal infrastructure here including overseeing the coal mines at Leigh Creek where our coal came from. Even he, a guy who's half century career was dedicated to coal, knows that coal has seen It's day and that LNG is just a stop gap. Whatever is done it's insane that we don't have an overarching energy plan for Australa, it's should be at the heart of policy since energy is at the heart of so many other issues whether it's household expenditures, our failing industrial base or our primary production and mining. It's a policy area begging for leadership and the political capital for the party that puts it together could last decades, just goes to show how poverty stricken leadership in our country has become.
Maybe not yet. Fukushima? Nuclear radiation is still spreading from there and has already contaminated the enviroment and food chain on other side of the world. This radiation contamination is only going to get worse/spread and it affects will out live us all. 28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima The map below comes from the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center. It shows that radiation levels at radiation monitoring stations all over the country are elevated. As you will notice, this is particularly true along the west coast of the United States. Every single day, 300 tons of radioactive water from Fukushima enters the Pacific Ocean. That means that the total amount of radioactive material released from Fukushima is constantly increasing, and it is steadily building up in our food chain. Ultimately, all of this nuclear radiation will outlive all of us by a very wide margin. They are saying that it could take up to 40 years to clean up the Fukushima disaster, and meanwhile countless innocent people will develop cancer and other health problems as a result of exposure to high levels of nuclear radiation. We are talking about a nuclear disaster that is absolutely unprecedented, and it is constantly getting worse. The following are 28 signs that the west coast of North America is being absolutely fried with nuclear radiation from Fukushima http://www.globalresearch.ca/28-sig...with-nuclear-radiation-from-fukushima/5355280 Are these new nuclear plants still "fail-safe" if they were hit by a massive earthquake or by human error like Chernobel? Personally I think no nuclear power plant could be fail-safe. Imo, they should be banned. Why risk the planet.
Fukushima was an ancient reactor with (apparently) shitty management. Newer reactors can be made much safer but the risk is that lobbyists for manufacturers of the dangerous, legacy designs may lobby to get theirs built over the much better options.
And if they can make even more by having the taxpayer subsidize them, they will buy a Prime Minister.
