Saturday, November 27, 2010

A renewable Australia by 2020?


Australia can be fully powered (including baseload) with renewable energy by 2020 according to a recent report titled Zero Carbon Australia. The report was put together by around one hundred volunteer scientists and engineers without government grants or lobby group involvement. All the plans have been costed and rely on existing technologies that are ready to be implemented tomorrow. The total cost would be $8 per household per week, or $37 billion annually, an investment that would be paid back within thirty years if only direct costs are considered or within a handful of years if indirect costs are also included. The benefits would be significant: Australia becoming a global leader on something of value, providing an inspiring example to other nations, gaining energy security in the face of peak oil and an uncertain future and, by slashing carbon emissions, making a significantly contribution to a more stable and flourishing human future. How much is that worth to you?

The report is available here. It is the first of six reports outlining a pathway to a zero carbon Australia.
H/T Kathy.

8 comments:

Anthony Douglas said...

I dunno, Byron, the budget's pretty tight at the moment. If we held firm at $6, would that buy us enough time to die in peace? ;-)

Nice to hear some good news!

Alan Wood said...

I love it. This is, surely, the kind of 'direct action' for which Tony Abbot has been calling. And it can be partially funded by the $7 billion p.a. extra income from Kevin Rudd's proposed reform of mining tax and royalties. Since Julia's running the country, she can put Tony and Kevin in a room together to iron out the details, and rise statespersonlike above the fray...

byron smith said...

National Geographic: A world on 100% renewables by 2030? Technically possible; economically affordable; main bottleneck would be political.

byron smith said...

And the entire world can be 100% renewable (without increasing nuclear) by 2050, according to this report.

byron smith said...

Interesting graph: Cost of solar over time.

byron smith said...

A serious critique is here (H/T Craig). The key claim is this: "global problems cannot be solved within or by a society committed to affluence and growth." The report has to make very rose assumptions about a range of factors in order to justify its bright green vision.

byron smith said...

Greenpeace: Europe to (almost) 100% renewables by 2050.

byron smith said...

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases a new report that finds 80% of global electricity generation from renewable power by 2050 is both technically possible and economically affordable.