There is a controversy building in Queensland around proposals to introduce Feed-In Tariffs.

Why should it be controversial, after all they've worked well in Germany and California to boost demand for solar and other renewables to get the volumes up to where they will be able to compete with Fossil Fuels (with all their hidden subsidies).

The controversy revolves around the form of the tariff. South Australia, earlier this year adopted a feed-in tariff in name only - offering 44c/kwh but only on net metered power. This means that for 99% of residential installations there is no benefit at all, because they are never producing more power than the home uses.

Queensland made an announcement on 11th March, that appeared to suggest it was going to be "Gross" metered, i.e. the owner of the solar system would be paid for ever kwh they generated, whether they consumed it themselves, or fed it back to the grid. Many organisations congratulated them for getting it right. But then the details emerged and Department of Mines and Energy are writing a "Net" metered Feed In Tariff after all.

Queensland Conservation are one such group that is more than a little annoyed at this backtracking, and have published graphs showing how most households will get no benefit.

It remains to be seen whether Queensland's government will revise this to actually have some effect rather than be just greenwashing, and now is a good time to tell any Queensland politicians you know that a REAL feed-in tariff is needed to stimulate Renewables in Queensland.

I heard Ross Garnaut speak at the excellent Solar Cities conference in Adelaide last month, so I wasn't totally surprised when a couple of days later his proposals for Emission Trading in Australia were released.

However there is a huge difference - as we see with Queensland's Feed-In-Tariffs - between an announcement that looks great; and the implementation.

The Federal Labor government started by minimising the report, which - prior to its release - it claimed was critically important.

Since that time, the political jockeying has started. This is only to be expected, since it is cheaper to influence politicians than to fix the emissions problem.

The Australian covered Ross Garnaut's call to ignore the political fixers, and in particular not to grant free permits to the worst polluters - duh, first they trash they atmosphere then they want a free pass to keep doing it. These are the very people who need to be adjusting their industries, and if they can't find a way - as many of their competitors will - to find a solution that benefits their business then they could, and should, suffer "readjustment". The NSW government, that wants to sell off the state-owned electricity business are putting in their pitch for the money.

It is the employees of polluting businesses we should be looking to support (e.g. retrain) through the transition, rather than the businesses that we should be propping up. This is where we also have to watch for the fixers, the significant pot of money from auctioning permits needs to be used for this re-adjustment, to support the lower-income households likely to be effected by for example the necessary down turn of some industries. One of the first grabs for this money has been from Malcolm Turnbull (Opposition Treasury Spokesman) (printed in the Australian, and reported in the Melbourne Age )

This article is to draw your attention to the twin challenges facing our culture, that of Peak Music, and Global Noise caused by the impact of Cumulative Emissions of Rhythm.

All natural resources reach a peak, and music is not an exception, after approximately half of the talent has been used up it is predicted that annual production of music will decline. While experts argue as to when this peak will be reached, few now disagree with the overall hypothesis that music is, or will soon, be in decline.

Continue reading "Peak Music and Global Noise"

This 1 minute video - entitled Metaphormosis asks whether we, like the caterpillar, will devour our environment before changing into something beautiful

I like this one-minute inspiration from Van Jones and his pitch not to leave anyone behind as we deal with Climate Change

One of my investments just paid off, it was to a business called Fotu Levi. First the numbers - Amount invested, $25; Period of investment: 1 year; ROI 0%; Satisfaction: 100%.

I made the investment through www.kiva.org, who match investors - of a variety of sizes, but mostly small, with micro-enterprises in developing countries.

Fotu is one of the few people that has the ability and the recipe for creating one of the oldest Samoan delicacies, traditional pudding. Because of the time, lack of knowledge and effort involved, this pudding is rarely made or sold any more. Fotu's business will attract locals who will love the pudding, and tourists who will be able to sample this delicious dish. Restaurants may also be interested in buying her pudding so they can offer this tradtional dish on their menu. Fotu is requesting a capital loan in the amount of $650.00 to purchase the ingredients that will help her to produce enough pudding to grow her business.

I think this is an easy way to make a small contribution, that has a big impact. After all, the cost to me over a year must be about $1.50.

I'm going to double the money, and find something else to invest in - and encourage others to as well.

This video is worth watching, it sets a vision for a sustainable city in a desert - its got some impressive goals, and one that sets a line that other city-scale developments would do well to match.

In one of the other posts I refered to the case being made for Zero Emissions. The article I was refering to is in New Scientist, but I'll post it below in case it expires.

From a business perspective you have to start asking the question, "What is the trend in targets", e.g. what do we expect the 2050 target to be IN 2050.

If we extrapolate from firmer policy to proposals i.e. last years (business as usual) to Labor (50% by 2050) to Ross Garnault (70-90% reduction by 2050) to new Scientist (100% reduction) then a prudent business would have to presume that the tougher targets are going to come into place sooner or later.

I think this means that businesses should be looking at planning for a zero-carbon-emissions world, because it will come sooner or later, and being ahead of the curve is likely to bring opportunities, while being behind the curve gets expensive - especially at the carbon prices likely to be needed to get emissions down quickly.

Continue reading "Zero emissions - scientific study"

This is fun, and shows the power of a simple idea replicated by a lot of people - from you tube.

Salon has an article that asks when solar power makes sense, quoting papers by Wheeler and Borenstein. "figuring out the carbon dioxide price point at which a particular renewable source of energy becomes cost-competitive with a fossil-fuel energy source is critical. If it's $600 per ton, forget about it. If it's $30, full speed ahead."

The thing missing from the article is the cost-curves of the different technologies. If you look at CURRENT cost of the technology, and CURRENT price of carbon then much of renewable energy is uncompetitive.

The trick is to watch the cost-curve, what is the price decline in the technology. For example large-scale Wind is currently cheaper than distributed Solar. BUT wind is only decreasing in cost slowly, while solar is decreasing quickly (both through changes in technology, and volumes of production.

With Ross Garnault (Australian equivalent of the Stern report) calling for cuts of 70-90% by 2050; and other scientific studies saying zero emissions is the only way to avoid dangerous climate change, we could be estimating that carbon gets very expensive indeed.

The question then becomes at what point in the future does it become competitive presuming massive production volumes of whatever the technology is.