While photovoltaic cells directly use the sun’s light to create electricity, solar thermal installations use mirrors to concentrate the heat from the sun into a storage medium, such as molten salt. The high heat of this molten salt can then be used to turn a turbine by boiling water into steam, much like what happens in a coal, gas or nuclear power plant. The benefit of solar thermal over photovoltaics is that it can be relied upon as a baseload, 24 hour power source as heat is gradually drawn from the molten salt when required. The benefits of solar thermal over coal, gas and nuclear is that it requires no fuel inputs, and emits no pollution from its operations.

I’m sure I’m not the only one excited by technology such as this. I’m fascinated by the idea of energy sources that need no fuel inputs and produce no pollution or emissions. Better yet, the cost of solar thermal is comparable to coal power plants and the technology is well-suited to Australian conditions. Bring it on.

A quote from page 87 of The Ecology of Commerce (1993) by Paul Hawken:

Solar technologies are currently more expensive than coal because they internalise their costs to the environment, but coal externalises its costs.

I think it’s great that despite this situation (the costs of coal pollution to the environment being written off as ‘free’), solar thermal is still emerging as an economic challenger to coal under these ‘old rules’. When we remember that coal is only ‘cheap’ because of the incomplete way we account for its environmental lifecycle, the choice between fossil fuels and renewables is stark. Let’s make our priority supporting clean, rapidly deployable technology such as solar thermal.

That is the question asked by the Beyond Zero Emissions group, who are a part of the exciting Transition Decade movement. Better still, they think they have an answer to the question.

The plan uses current, proven, commercially available technologies in a 60/40 split between solar thermal and wind. Their plans maps the sites of the solar and wind modules to areas with appropriate sun and wind resources that are suitably close to major cities.

The upfront costs of the plan have been calculated, with a quoted figure of $35-40 billion per year for 10 years – the equivalent of 3-4% of Australia’s GDP. The group state that with the economies of scale associated with such a project, the cost of installing these solar and wind options are close to parity with that of coal power. The upside, of course, is we won’t have to deal with the many dirty consequences of coal mining and coal-fired power plants, and that we will have invested in a brand new grid of energy utilities that requires no fuel inputs.

Beyond Zero Emissions are keen to take on the might of the fossil fuel lobby, who have long run a scare campaign about renewable energy: specifically that renewables are too expensive, can’t provide baseload power, will cost jobs and will ‘wreck the economy’. Level-headed analysis dismisses those claims as scare tactics by vested interests.

T10 Launch – Mark Ogge from Transition Decade on Vimeo.

The T10 plan show that there are no resource constraints (steel, concrete, glass, labour, etc) that are holding us back from a 100% renewable energy grid in one decade’s time. Personally, I think there are just three things holding us back:

• community members who have not been informed that such economical clean energy alternatives exist and are ready to be deployed
• politicians stuck in the ‘coal, coal, coal’ mindset who have not been shown a vision of the benefits that a transition to renewable energy would provide for the economy and society
• environmentally informed citizens who are not doing all that they can do to make this plan succeed (I raise my hand to this category)

Please take ten minutes to watch the above video, and please help spread the word of this credible plan. We need this issue on the agenda in the lead-up to the 2010 federal election.

In a sort of ‘feel good’ campaign, bottles of water were freely distributed to commuters at Queensland Rail stations around Brisbane. The labels read “It’s easy being green. By recycling 17 timetables QR has saved this bottle of water. Recycling, it’s easy!”

So let me get this straight….

1. QR begins running its trains on a new timetable.
2. With the old timetables now redundant, QR bundles up its remaining supplies of outdated timetables and encourages commuters to deposit their old timetables at train stations.
3. QR recycles these old timetables.
4. QR calculates the embodied energy of this pulped paper compared to sourcing paper from freshly logged trees.
5. QR calculates the embodied energy of a bottle of water.
6. QR ‘spends’ the embodied energy value that it saved through its paper recycling program by purchasing appropriate quantities of bottled water to distribute to random commuters.

The concept behind this campaign is utterly puzzling. Though not at the ‘deceptive’/'unethical’ end of the greenwash spectrum, the logic of QR’s campaign is deeply flawed.

The campaign concept implies that QR’s resource efficiency efforts are so successful that it is able to provide commuters with ‘guilt free’ bottles of water. It has carefully measured the typical energy costs of ‘business as usual’, as well as the lower energy alternatives that it could also adopt. The problem is that QR implies that the ‘business as usual’ consumption pattern is the position to return to, rather than to point to descend from.

In other words, instead of creating genuine savings with their actions, QR are comfortable adding and subtracting embodied energy brownie points and arriving back at the very place that they started!

(I won’t even begin to elaborate upon the fact that the embodied energy of QR’s paper consumption pales in comparison to all other parts of its operations…including the trains themselves!)

To be fair, this bottled water campaign was conducted in late 2008, so these comments are not exactly timely. (I have been meaning to photograph this bottle for some time…) However, the flawed logic of the campaign serves a fair reminder of what can happen when spin doctors overstep the boundaries of common sense.

Hopefully looking back to this campaign can teach us lessons for the way forward. Can we please focus on achieving genuine resource efficiency results from our sustainability initiatives.

Don’t believe the crocodile tears of the coal industry, nor anyone else with a vested interest in status quo. These dinosaurs have had a cruisy, subsidised ride for far too long and are responsible for many toxic and deleterious side-effects. They should be forced to compete on fair terms with the cleaner alternatives that are comparatively starved of government assistance. As Dr Karl says, “When was the last time you saw a coal plant having a lamington drive?”.

Our economy is flexible, and society will benefit as we transition away from coal, and towards renewables.

The above image was drawn for, but cast-aside from my newest cartoon ‘Part of Nature‘.

Photo credit: BoyReale

Put it this way: instead of giving money to an environmental charity that pays employees to lobby government and try to change policy, GreenPower let you give money directly to an an energy company that will invest it directly in renewable energy sources. The beauty of this scheme is that GreenPower is a contract with your energy company to fund the generation of renewable energy corresponding to your usage.

My house is currently on a plan that sources 100% of electricity consumption from renewable sources. Our last quarterly electricity bill totaled $589.05, which included a $57.20 GreenPower component. Averaged across the 91 days of the billing period, this equals an extra 63 cents per day for the household (or less than 11 cents per person per day for the six people that live in the sharehouse). What a small price to pay for the satisfaction of living from renewable energy!

Photo credit: CFBSr

Switching has never been easier. All it takes is a quick phone call or email to your electricity company, and you should be signed to GreenPower by the close of business. Your consumer dollar will be directly funding the development of a local renewable energy industry, and will send a clear message about your environmental beliefs.

Some things are worth paying more for, and GreenPower is a clearly superior than the dirty coal power plants that still supply the majority of our electricity. Australian readers can learn more information on the government GreenPower website. Otherwise, just click around the website of your current energy company – you will need to talk to them to actually make the change (GreenPower is simply the government accreditor).