Based on a set of assumptions (that I got from Mapawatt), it shows (at 4 hours/day usage) LED's beat Incandescent after 4 years, but CFL's are better than all of them from year 1, it takes 30 years for LED's to beat CFL's but then need replacing after year 35.

Obviously this depends on assumptions about inflation in electricity prices, so I've added a second tab, where I assume electricity inflates at 7% more than general inflation. This isn't unreasonable, for example NSW in Australia just authorised 60% over next 4 years, but its highly speculative how this will change over the longer term (i.e. over the life of an LED bulb).

They look really interesting, bamboo is one of the miracle plants that is still under-utilised largely I believe because of its perception as a "poor-persons" resource.

Check out the full schedule at byronbambuild.posterous.com

For example ...

The Soil Association in the UK also pointed out yesterday that the FSA left out a more rigorous report commissioned by the European Union that found a range of “nutritionally desirable compounds” like antioxidants, vitamins, and glycosinolates were present in greater amounts in organic crops, while the amount of “nutritionally undesirable compounds” like mycotoxins, glycoalkaloids, cadmium and nickel were present in lower amounts by comparison in organic crops.

There is a more detailed article here.

This speech by Greens Senator, Christine Milne is worth a read. It really holds up what we could be doing and gives a powerful argument why not to back the CPRS.

Incrementalism is worse than useless in the face of the climate crisis. Just as you can't be a little bit pregnant, you can't stop climate change by doing5% of what is necessary. Or even 25 %. If we trigger tipping points, the heating process will gather its own momentum and there will be nothing we can do to stop it. Doing too little to avoid those tipping points is functionally equivalent to doing nothing.

A video of the speech is available.

Thank you for your warm welcome. I begin by acknowledging the Ngunnawal people, the traditional owners of the land.

Gandhi once said, "The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems."

We have reached a point in human history where 'what we do' on this planet imperils our survival. Now is the moment to re-imagine and reconsider 'what we are capable of doing'.

As Kofi Annan said recently, "The world is at a crossroads. [The Copenhagen] negotiators [must] come to the most ambitious agreement ever negotiated or continue to accept mass starvation, mass sickness and mass migration on an ever growing scale. Weak leadership," he said, "is failing humanity."

So what is stopping us from achieving what we are capable of, of reaching 'the most ambitious agreement ever negotiated'?

ABARE, the Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, last year unwittingly provided me with the answer! They had sought a meeting on their latest modelling of the economic costs of climate action. I asked them what atmospheric carbon concentrations they were assuming in their models and was astonished to hear that they had modelled nothing lower than 575 parts per million - a level that every projection tells us would trigger catastrophic climate change.

When I suggested that it might be appropriate to run their models using scenarios that have some hope of constraining global warming to merely dangerous levels, even down as low as 350 ppm to deliver a safe climate, my astonishment was matched by theirs.

"But, Senator," came the reply, "that would be a different world!"

Exactly!

This is a cultural problem. It is not a lack of climate science that holds back action. It is how we respond to the challenge that the science poses, and that is deeply cultural. It is the values that we bring to bear, what we think is good for us, our religious underpinnings, our view of power and opportunity, of what is possible in the world and Australia's place in it. All these value judgements stop us from embracing change.

Machiavelli understood human nature when in the 15th Century, he said

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.

In Australia, the dominant economic, social and therefore Labor and Coalition view, is that resource extraction underpins wealth, power and influence - always has and always will. Regardless of the physical capacity of the Earth to sustain it, regardless of the collapse of the Murray Darling or the climate impact of burning more coal or logging more forests, nothing will stand in the way of that extraction continuing. All policies to address climate change are seen through that cultural lens.

That is why we did not have a Green New Deal in Australia linking climate policies with economic stimulus and it is why we engage in special pleading in international climate negotiations.

It is why, when people hear the climate science telling us that, if we do not act swiftly and decisively, the world we hand on to our children will be a very different, much poorer world, so many jump through hoops to deny it, to explain it away, or to pretend that we can compromise with the laws of physics and chemistry to suit own imperatives. It is no wonder, as Ian Dunlop observed recently, "climate policy and climate science are like ships passing in the night."

The truth is the climate nightmare is real and happening now. We are destroying the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and the snow caps. We are eroding our beaches, and our coastal cities will face managed retreat due to sea level rise. We are drying our food bowl, the Murray Darling, beyond repair, jeopardising rural communities and our food security.

Many of our Asia Pacific neighbours are struggling with rising seas and extreme weather which threatens a refugee crisis beyond anything we've ever seen.

The Himalayan glaciers, which feed all the major rivers of Asia - the Ganges and Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Yellow and Yangtze - are melting away. Once they are gone, a third of the world's people face a parched, hungry and, most likely, violent future.

Red Cross figures reveal that last year 242,662 people died because of climate related heat waves, fires and other extreme weather events and spreading tropical diseases, with at least 800 in Australia. According to Nature, 15%-37% of all species on Earth will be committed to extinction by 2050.

If the Arctic melt already underway triggers the melting of the permafrost, belching billions of tonnes of methane into the atmosphere, all bets are off as far as warming is concerned. Our planet will head into a runaway heating cycle, leading to widespread inundation, agricultural collapse, loss of drinking water for a third of the global population, and all the geopolitical and security implications that follow, particularly with nuclear armed giants sitting at the epicentre.

What is more alarming is that our governments, while claiming to take responsible action, are effectively planning to let this happen. The Rudd Government soothes critics by talking about a global target of 450 ppm CO2e while putting forward a plan that is actually consistent with 550 ppm or even higher. They also fail to say that 450 ppm would, according to the conservative and already out-of-date IPCC estimates, give us a 50-90% chance of exceeding 2 degrees warming, risking triggering the nightmare scenario I just outlined.

50 to 90%.

Would you put your son or daughter on an aeroplane if you knew that it had a 50-90% chance of crashing? If not, why would you take that risk with the whole planet?

CSIRO scientist James Risbey who came before our recent Senate Inquiry into Climate Policy told us that:

'a safer target would be something that would be closer to 350 parts per million, because that would reduce the risk of exceeding two degrees Celsius to more moderate levels.'

Dr Risbey is not a radical or an extremist. He echoes the work of great names in climate science like NASA's James Hansen and Potsdam's John Schellnhuber, who, together with 50 nations, are all calling for targeting 350 ppm.

No Australian Parliamentarian can say they were not warned.

But, as the global ecosystem impacts of climate change become clearer, policy makers are focussing more narrowly on the politics of national sovereignty. Our governance systems are not up to the challenge. Global warming has become just another issue to be managed in news bulletins. Meeting after meeting, document after document are mistaken for action. But no systemic action is being taken.

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The fact is we cannot keep a safe climate and keep burning coal, oil and gas, and logging our forests. One or the other must go.

That we may be undone by the refusal, for what ever reason, to believe that another world is possible was demonstrated again this week, with Minister Wong saying: "going further is not possible without causing economic disruption - if it is possible at all." Minister Wong, do you really want "running up the white flag" to be your legacy?

A self interested failure of imagination, courage and leadership characterises the political and business establishment in this country.

So, it is the job of those who are currently lukewarm defenders of the future, to get over fear or timidity and to move to red hot advocacy; to get behind the community and the Greens in changing the culture, in selling the dream.

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Does anyone in this room not use a mobile phone? How many of you email or update facebook with your phone?

Twenty years ago, when I first ran for Parliament in Tasmania, I was the only candidate to have a mobile phone and it took up half my car!

It was only in the second half of the 1990s that mobiles and email really took hold, with Australian early adopters leading the charge. Our lives have been utterly reshaped by these technologies. Ten years from infancy to such ubiquity that we can scarcely remember what it was like before they ruled our lives!

In 1961 as an eight year old girl, I remember sitting by the wireless on a dairy farm in north west Tasmania, listening to President Kennedy promise that, within a decade, America would put a man on the moon and bring him home safely.

Kennedy said:
I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshalled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to ensure their fulfilment.
But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon - if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

Kennedy didn't promise to get halfway to the moon, let alone 5 to 25% of the way there. He didn't promise to put a man on the moon if the economic modelling looked okay.

Instead he captured the imagination, and drove the creativity and innovative spirit of not only his own country, but of a whole generation who came to believe that anything is possible. And, sure enough, I remember as a16 year old at boarding school in Hobart watching Neil Armstrong step onto the moon. The belief that anything was possible was a gift to my generation.

Committing to delivering a safe climate means embracing the massive challenge of moving to zero emissions fast, frees you up to unleash human creativity in a wave unlike anything we've seen. Just as in 1989 we could not imagine the world of the iPhone and Blackberry, in the next 20 years we can and will create something that now seems impossible.

But, if we fail to do what it takes, we will find out the hard way what that different world will be. Whether by deliberately refusing to act or, equally culpably, by recklessly setting our sights too low, we will shut the door on opportunity and make only one future possible.

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Which brings me to the CPRS.

While the Greens have been advocating real solutions to climate change, the Government, since its election, has been standing in the way. Whether it is forests, a feed-in tariff or targets, we have simply been told to sign up to their plan which we know sets its sights so low as to actively lock out the option of success. The Greens cannot and will not support a scheme that is environmentally ineffective and economically inefficient.

Supporting the CPRS would mean Australia would have the same greenhouse gas emissions in 2013 as today making deep cuts by 2020 much more difficult and expensive than it needs to be. Rejecting the CPRS gives us hope that real solutions could be implemented in that time bringing down emissions far faster and cheaper.

A failure to agree this year is a better outcome than an agreement to fail.

But isn't it better than nothing? I say no.

Incrementalism is worse than useless in the face of the climate crisis. Just as you can't be a little bit pregnant, you can't stop climate change by doing5% of what is necessary. Or even 25 %. If we trigger tipping points, the heating process will gather its own momentum and there will be nothing we can do to stop it. Doing too little to avoid those tipping points is functionally equivalent to doing nothing.

The reason the scheme must not pass in its current form is, ironically, exactly the reason the Government uses to say it must be passed - because it will send a signal to Australian industry, the Australian community and the global community that cannot be ignored. Yes, it will send a signal, but the signal will be wrong.

The CPRS says to the rest of the world that, regardless of how much the world must do to save the climate, Australia will do as little as we think we can get away with. It is a completely unacceptable and irresponsible signal.

Which countries does Australia say should do more so that we can do less?

The UN climate change secretariat revealed on June 6th that the pledges made by rich countries total between 16-24% below 1990. This falls well short of what is needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.

A bold global agreement needs a pooling of national sovereignty - all countries of the world acting in our common interest, not in their short term, election informed, national interest as the Howard Government did in Kyoto and the Rudd Government has delivered for Copenhagen.

A bold agreement needs money on the table and an agreement to reform global governance institutions to oversee enforcement and compliance, rather than domestic legislation that gives a Minister the wriggle room to decide whether target commitments have been triggered.

If Australia goes to Copenhagen legislatively constrained from agreeing to a target higher than the 25% minimum that the world requires from rich, high-polluting countries, the only possible impact will be to lower the level of ambition from other developed countries, giving succour to other recalcitrants like Canada, Japan and Russia. This in turn makes it less likely that China, India and other large developing nations will sign up to a deal.

The CPRS may well have provided Japan with the cover it needed to announce its 8% target in Bonn. Chinese negotiators have slammed Australia's targets and conditions as obnoxious. They say that, unless countries like Australia and Japan offer targets in the order of40% by 2020, they will not accept any kind of binding targets.

Follow the CPRS scenario to its logical conclusion and the chances of agreement in Copenhagen look very grim indeed with Australia's25% conditional in the flying pig category.

The world needs a circuit-breaker - some nation to finally offer what the science requires, not another craven compromise.

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Furthermore, the Greens cannot accept a scheme which is clearly geared towards protecting the status quo, sandbagging the old resource based economy when we need transformation.

Business needs long-term investment horizons in order to make multi-billion dollar investments. The CPRS will provide such an investment horizon, but it will be the wrong one. Evidence provided to the Senate Climate Policy Committee by experts from the London Carbon Exchange, the Productivity Commission's recent report and comments from Sir Nicholas Stern all conclude that, if the CPRS is passed in its current form, Australian industry and investors will be sent a very strong signal that will drive inappropriate and misguided investments. This signal will give business the confidence to invest in ‘low pollution' infrastructure such as gas power stations and slightly less dirty coal rather than renewables. Yesterday's announcement expanding Eraring coal fired power station is a case in point.

When, in a few years, we come to our senses and decide to target a safe climate, these assets will be stranded, dropped as sunk costs and replaced with zero emissions alternatives bought overseas. That would be a very stupid and expensive mistake.

Professor Garnaut correctly warned that opening the floodgates to rent-seekers is economically unjustifiable. Handing out $16 billion in corporate polluter welfare is a grossly unacceptable transfer of wealth from the community to the polluters.

Some 50% of the scheme's revenue - or foregone revenue, thanks to free permits - is earmarked for shielding polluters from the scheme's impact, and most of the rest will shield householders from the impact through the short-sighted mechanism of cash handouts or fuel subsidies instead of the long-sighted approach of rolling out energy efficiency upgrades and public transport to reduce costs and pollution. A mere3 % of the scheme's revenue will actually directly help anyone reduce emissions let alone invest in the technologies that provide solutions and would revitalise manufacturing here in Australia.

Finally, there is the disempowering signal the CPRS would send to the Australian community.

People are angry because they understand that every dollar handed over to the polluters is a dollar less to spend on community solutions. By putting a floor under pollution levels, ensuring that Australia's emissions cannot fall below that level no matter how hard some of us try, the scheme has been attacked for undermining voluntary efforts to reduce emissions, making them helpful only in reducing the price pressure on polluters.

The root cause of that problem, and the only solution, is the target itself. The 5% target sends a signal to give up in despair, disempowering the whole of Australia, from householders to State Governments. And if the Government aims so low but still manages to convince a majority of Australians that it is doing something worthwhile, it takes the pressure off everyone to actually do what needs to be done.

The Government's plan locks in the nightmare. The Greens' plan would inspire the dream.

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First we need a global target that can deliver a safe climate. We must preserve the functioning of the planet's ecological systems, its biodiversity, without which we cannot survive.

To stabilise at 350 ppm in any safe timeframe, Bill Hare of the Potsdam Institute has calculated that the whole world economy must be carbon neutral by2050 . That is undeniably a massive task. Prime Minister Rudd and Minister Wong say it can't be done. But, as the ecologist Paul Hawken said recently:

"Forget that this task of planet saving is not possible in the time required. Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was possible after you are done."

Last week I visited the Newcastle CSIRO Energy Centre and the University. I saw technologies ready to be scaled up and commercialised - technology that will see solar hot water systems powering air conditioners and solar thermal towers able to power the whole of Australia from an area as small as 50 kilometres by 50 kilometres. Technologies that will see solar energy delivered in flexible fabrics like curtains and awnings. I saw technologies that can capture energy from the vibrations of bridges and cars, not to mention capturing energy from walking to charge mobile phones. I saw work on new community scale wind turbines, the intelligent grid and devices that can automatically manage household energy demand, saving huge amounts of energy and dollars.

We humans are capable of amazing things when we set our minds to it. Setting a zero emissions safe climate target would inspire the community and unleash a wave of creativity, of innovative job creation that is right now champing at the bit. Just as JFK's belief that we can do anything was his gift to my generation, this would be our gift to generations living now.

The political, social and economic make over required is so transformative that it the creates the opportunity to go green fields; to identify what we don't like about our lives and, in moving to the zero carbon future, fix those things.

This is the silver lining in the storm clouds of the climate crisis.

By rethinking what is important to us and the way we live our lives, we will reshape the spaces we live in and the way we are governed to build a happier, healthier, safer community.

We can overcome our time poverty, our social isolation and loneliness, our unhealthy sedentary lifestyles, our disconnection from nature, our sensory overload. We can face the anxiety in the back of our minds that we are the first generation to hand on to our children a planet in worse repair than we have enjoyed.

Our wealth has not brought us happiness and governments are now analysing scientifically demonstrated ways to improve well-being in everyday life and the policy interventions that would enable them. They are exactly the interventions that need to be made to address climate change and peak oil. Last year, the New Economics Foundation conducted a study for the UK Government, identifying "five ways to well-being": connect, be active, take notice, keep learning and give.

By re-designing our cities around people instead of cars, with green spaces, cycleways and pedestrian paths, with rapid transit linking urban villages, we will reinvigorate communities, reconnect to each other and be more active in our daily lives.

By taking jobs to communities rather than the other way around, we can increase work flexibility. Instead of being stuck in traffic for hours, we can spend more time with our family and friends and in our communities building supportive and lasting relationships.

By growing some of our own food in community gardens, by supporting seasonal locally grown food and by relocalising services from health to education we can build community resilience, health and well being.

By making our homes and offices more energy efficient and making ourselves more aware of the energy we use, we connect, take notice and learn.

By setting ourselves the massive task of reaching carbon neutrality as fast as possible, we all give - to each other locally to globally in the spirit of climate justice and the Millennium goals, and to the generations that will follow us. As the NEF said, we are "hard wired to enjoy helping one another"!

The Greens have concrete proposals to make this transformative vision a reality: a new politics for a new century, reengaging the community and restoring trust through transparency, equity and participation in decision making from the local to the global.

Our policies start and end with a whole of government, systemic approach that uses every tool at the government's disposal in a mutually reinforcing cycle, rather than an internally inconsistent and counterproductive one. For example, with the recent stimulus package, the Greens negotiated a $300 million Local Green Jobs package which has been widely praised for creating jobs while protecting the environment and heritage and revitalising communities. This has been so successful that we will be pressing the Government to make it part of the Budget every year.

While putting a price on carbon is a critical part of reducing emissions, it is far from the only tool in the toolbox. If it is to be a useful tool, it has to be well designed. A Greens-designed emissions trading scheme would lock in serious emissions targets and cap the use of overseas CDM permits. It would auction all permits and recycle the revenue into driving emissions reductions through energy efficiency, an intelligent electricity grid, research, development and commercialisation of renewables, and rolling out public transport infrastructure. By implementing the polluter pays principle, we would raise the resources to build that vision in Australia.

Importantly, we would also use some of the revenue for the urgent task of training and redeploying the million-strong workforce we will need to make our vision a reality. Far from climate action being a jobs destroyer, the lack of trained workers is actually our biggest obstacle - after the lack of political will. People who work currently in the sunset industries have skills that we need urgently in the sunrise industries, and the Greens would make sure that those communities transitioning from the old, polluting economy become the first to gain. Newcastle is a case in point. The Hunter can transform from carbon pollution hub to the powerhouse of a carbon neutral Australia.

Contrary to the naysayers, the labour market actually has an extraordinary capacity to handle structural change. For example, in the decade to November2007, employment in rural industries dropped by almost 100,000, employment in manufacturing dropped by almost 50,000, and employment in wholesale trade dropped by 35,000. Yet, over this period, the unemployment rate fell from 8 and a half percent to 4%. Similarly, over a million workers employed in February 2005 were no longer with the same employer a year later, and over half of these changed industry.

The Government must conduct a full jobs audit of Australia -matching the skills of workers whose jobs are at risk with the skills we so desperately need, and filling any gaps with targeted job creation, education and training initiatives.

In addition to the multi-billion dollar direct investment program we could afford if we auctioned all permits, the Greens have an array of specific programs which can and should start immediately, cutting emissions straight away, regardless of whether or not we can agree on emissions trading this year.

The Greens want to see renewable energy providing 40% of our electricity by 2020, driven by a stronger Renewable Energy Target, supplemented by a gross national feed-in tariff that would pay a premium rate for all renewable energy - bold, but achievable on current global growth trajectories for many renewable energy technologies.

Farming renewable energy would no longer be a dream but a reality for those farmers desperate to supplement their income and stay on the farm. Every home and business could become a mini power station.

Our Energy Efficiency Access and Savings Initiative is the boldest policy yet for retrofitting all 8 million existing homes across Australia. We are developing new legislation to drive commercial building efficiency, and at the industrial scale, we will again move to require the largest energy users to not only audit their energy use but to implement the findings of those audits. We would introduce new standards for appliances and buildings and vehicles to maximise energy efficiency, and support them with government procurement.

An aggressive energy efficiency rollout together with the RET, would mean we could begin retiring coal fired power plants, something that leading Australian climate scientists recently called for in an open letter to Australian coal generators.

Around the world there is a deep and rising concern about biodiversity loss and the need to give species their best chance of survival by habitat protection and restoration. The Greens would protect the carbon stores in our magnificent forests and native vegetation, creating thousands of jobs in environmental stewardship in regional communities, including remote indigenous communities. This would also improve water supplies and increase the well being that comes from being able to enjoy the wonder of nature. Feel Blue, Touch Green.

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I know this will not be easy.

But I also know that, in the face of vested interests, we have the strongest possible allies - the people!

Politically, the Greens are at a turning point in Australia and globally. The Global Greens are the only international political force united around strengthening local communities and building global citizenship. Our representation is steadily growing, with big swings in recent European elections taking us from 35 MEPs to 46 in a Parliament shrunk by 49 seats. In Australia, we are the third political force, with 26 State and Federal MPs - half of them women - and over 100 local government representatives, numbers that are steadily increasing.

Outside politics, the groundswell is even faster. In kitchens, classrooms, offices, factories, farms, campuses and communities a powerful people's movement is burgeoning.

Addressing the Climate Summit here in Canberra in January was inspiring - seeing some 500 people from 140 communities across Australia come together to demand that our democratic institutions respond to the climate crisis. Their work continued with rallies in capital cities last weekend.

More recently, I became an ambassador for the one million women campaign to inspire women across Australia to reduce their emissions. Not since the women's movement in the1960s and '70 s has the call gone out to women of all ages and all backgrounds to unite around one cause. The Baby Boomers are retiring and radicalising again, ready to take up where they left off! Another driver for new politics.

In just a few weeks, the wonderful young people from the Australian Youth Climate Coalition will be holding their Powershift conference, bringing together more than 1500 to engage in skills-sharing and inspiring discussions before returning to their communities to drive change. That they can do it is indisputable. Remember that the average age of those working on the Moon Mission was 26. They were the space generation. Old Parties and Old Polluters beware, here comes the solar generation with a power shift in Canberra.

Philanthropists are opening their purse strings ever wider. Institutional investors are waiting in the wings. Scientists and technologists are beavering away across the country, coming up with brilliant ideas most of which are yet to be tested because government and industry have not pressed the Go button.

We are standing at an extraordinary moment in history. We must choose the dream or face the nightmare? Hope and fear are powerful emotions, one shrinks the space for action the other amplifies it.

If we try, we may still fail. But if we do not try, we cannot possibly succeed.

The Greens intend to try. The community is with us. We intend to make the difference between what we humans do now and what we are capable of doing.

As Thoreau said:
I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

Of course, the writing was on the wall, the government had announced the system would be brought to an end, but had promised to keep it going until the expanded Solar Credits (RECS multiplier) scheme came into effect, which was expected around August or September

I haven't seen the official figures, however, I understand that in May there were 30,000 applications for the rebate, that is $240 million in one month for a scheme budgeted at $150m per year, over 5 years!

Eighteen months ago, (November 2007) we launched Beyond Building Energy, with a product priced at $499 (after rebates and RECS), when most competitors were priced at about $5,000. We did this by engineering the business model to a model based on volume.

When putting the model together I believed that there was a market for green products IF the price was right, i.e. the pent-up demand to live a sustainable life is there, but people believe they can't afford to. The demand proved that, in my street 50% of the houses installed solar, in the nearest town (Mullumbimby) it was 10%.

I guessed BBE had up to a year's lead. The rest of the industry said BBE couldn't possibly be able to supply at that rate - but gradually they came around to believe it was possible, and then to copy it. Which is how so many systems were sold last month. In that last month the systems were being sold by several companies (including BBE) for as low as zero, so of course there was no limit to demand.

What now?

The rebate has been replaced by a solar credit scheme, which gives 5x the number of RECS, this works out at about $5,000 for a 1Kw system in this area, but bigger systems are also supported. There are problems with the model, firstly the total support is $4,000 per kw less than currently, and secondly that the RECS price fluctuates, so with the multiplier it could mean a substantial difference in out-of-pocket cost between application and installation. The good thing is that the wait - often a couple of months for DEWHA to first approve the application, and then another delay after installation should be one, since companies can create the RECS themselves.

Each of the competitors is likely to announce new pricing soon. I heard BBE announce on the local radio that they would now supply a 1.5kw system for about $2,500. At current electricity rates this should repay in about 7 years, so its still a good deal, though not as good as before. I don't know if that will be the final price, and there isn't one on BBE's website. The only competitor I've seen pricing for is Rezeko who are pricing at from $2,999 for 1kw. I haven't seen prices on any of the competitors sites yet (e.g. Nickel or AusEnergy)

Insurance companies are starting to re-assess their risk based on climate change, with specific reference to these storms.

As the big polluters complain about costs, and job losses, they neglect of course the cost of doing nothing, and the jobs that will be created in a new green economy.

The Green Party rightly criticised it as not being green enough, and even the Chinese got into the criticism.

ABC says that it funnels $4.5b to clean energy, but closer inspection reveals that the bulk ($2.4b) will be wasted on so-called "Clean Coal".

At least the solar power rebates haven't been axed just yet, as recommended by the Wilkins report, but that creates the strange anomaly with the industry rushing to get as many rebates pre-approved as possible because no-one knows just how long the scheme will last.

Unfortunately petrol is being kept out of the scheme till 2014, which means that we won't see the necessary reductions in consumption, nor the pricing pressure towards public transport, and of course any change in 2014 will be at the whim of the next government.

The bills for the CPRS have been introduced to the house which at least will give some certainty - uncertainty being the biggest barrier to investment (except for a shortage of money ! ), the worst part is that the fixed price of $10/tonne for the first year means that almost nothing will happen as industry will find it cheaper to pay the penalty than to reduce costs - something closer to $60/tonne is going to be needed according to at least one Australian power retailer.

Of course, as expected the big polluters will get most (up to 95%) of their permits for free (an extra $1bn bringing it to $12.5bn), creating little incentive for structural change to the economy.

Better Place has been promoting the idea of Battery Swapping as a way to get around the range problem with electric cars.

Last week a roll-out starting 2012 was announced.

Earth2Tech has some good photos of the technology.

I've blogged before on the significant flaws in CPRS, and why it won't reduce emissions by even 5% which won't keep CO2 levels to 450ppm which wouldn't keep temperature rise to 2 degrees, which wouldn't stop dangerous change ...

The trouble with the changes is that they look good, while failing to commit the government to actually make significant changes. Rather than analyse it myself, I'd suggest looking at David Spratt's (Code Red) article, and Ian Lowe's (ACF) response.

I respect both of these environmental leaders, and their are Pro's and Con's of passing a scheme - i.e. its a terrible scheme, but its arguably better than nothing. I suggest the focus of attention should be on the deficiencies in the scheme, rather than the position of any organisation on it.

See coverage; ASX release

Disclaimer: I was acting CEO of Papyrus in 2005 before it listed.

One interesting thread was the use of bamboo - several projects are working to show that Bamboo can be a high-end material, not just something used by those who can't afford wood.

I visited the "Heart of School" building at the Green School - 2000 sq meters, and 20 meters high, designed by "PT Bambu", watch the time-lapse of its construction.

I visited Indo Bamboo who are also working on making bamboo into a high-end material.

Conversations with local (balinese and ex-pat) permaculture and development professionals varied significantly from their western counterparts. In particular the emphasis on local materials was key, given that local wages are about US$2-5 per day, Imported materials incur a duty of 50-100% which in many ways it reminds me of working with Brazil 20 years ago, where a duty supposedly imposed to foster local development created real hold-ups for anyone wanting to use computers. It makes components of a project which would already be expensive into unaffordable.

I was particularly impressed by some work to use low-head hydro, which would be particularly appropriate in Bali.

Some key requirements that need to be met include: low-cost water storage and filtration; fuel-efficient stoves and micro-credit.

Its to be hoped its done better than previous efforts, there are some really good people in Queensland government, committed to sustainability, but as their is a pretty bad track-record in Queensland of great ideas ending up looking less than great by the time they get through the layers of drafting.

Their was a Solar PV bulk-buy a few years ago, for a 1000 systems, but the amount of bureaucracy built into the project meant that the company I was working with would have had to add $500 to $1000 to its price to handle it, i.e. the bulk purchase would have costed MORE than our standard price. Also by bulking it up in one go, rather than allowing competing tenderers to carve it up, it prevented smaller companies from participating as you had to take all 1000 (from Fraser Island to Gold Coast - about 400km)

Then there was a solar feed-in-tarif, that as announced promised a Gross Feed-In-Tariff, that would have boosted solar installations in Queensland, but got converted by the Department of Mines and Energy into a Net Feed-In which does almost nothing. See what I wrote at the time., and what the government's own report says. This is even more significant now that the Federal government has halved the support for solar PV from $8000 for a 1kw system to about $4000

The current scheme promises 200,000 systems (about twice the current install rate of 90,000 a year, largely driven by replacing old broken systems).

Its received flack from existing manufacturers, though that is often misplaced as we've seen with Solar PV, and there are a lot of inefficiencies in the current sales-pipeline.

A more valid criticism is that pre-announcing the scheme in effect puts all current installations on hold, as consumers wait for the scheme to start. This story has been picked up by the Courier Mail, and isn't helped by there being rumors in the press, and election promises, but nothing that I can find on Queensland government websites to clarify things.

To confuse things, from the customer point of view, there is a separate rebate of $400 in Brisbane, a current $750 state rebate, and a $1600 federal rebate, and almost none of the web sites covering this line them all up or are up to date.

I would suggest the best way to tackle this would be to post a target price, pool the customers, and allow tenders from companies that can meet that price. Then - and most importantly - keep the bureaucracy down to a minimum, unlike last time.

This could still be done as a tender, just allow losing tenderers to match the winner's price, which would allow companies with for example a narrower geographic reach to participate.

Some recent coverage included the Australian: Companies must not put green projects on hold: investors.

IT would be easy for troubled companies to put their green schemes on hold while they deal with effects of the financial crisis, but investors have warned directors that such a move would be short-sighted and could cost them more in the long run.

And also by the Age: Shining a light on sustainability of sustainability

THE view that sustainability and corporate responsibility are only important during "the good times" would suggest we are entering a "sustainability downturn". But there are many reasons to think the opposite may be true. Alongside the possibility that the triple bottom line will be separated, via an economic focus that takes precedence over environmental and social concerns, is the potential for it to be further integrated by today's economic issues.