John Tennock's Blog

On Wednesday evening 27 October we attended the Brisbane Launch of the Beyond Zero Emissions Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Stationary Energy Plan.

The consequences of our increasing CO2 emissions is a concern we have been monitoring for some years and it was encouraging to finally see such a well developed plan presented to an enthusiastic audience of around 800 at the convention centre.

The detailed and fully costed plan provides a road map for Australia to move to zero carbon emissions by 2020 using proven technology that is already in use elsewhere.

Premier Anna Bligh addressed the meeting, but was unwilling to make any serious commitment to pursuing or even seriously investigating the plan, attempting to bounce the issue back to the authors demanding that they do more work to come up with a reduced cost model. The trouble with this response is it ignores the related question of the high cost of inaction. It is simply a stalling tactic while we dig more coal out of the ground.

Premier Bligh asserted the government's support for the need to reduce carbon emissions, but suggested that 'the public' were not ready yet. That is a pretty difficult position to maintain in the face of 800 smart, well informed supporters of the plan. She also spoke of the enthusiasm with which the public were taking up photovoltaics under government incentives. Not ready yet?

The Premier did not mention the Cloncurry Solar Thermal Power Station which was reported in November 2007 as follows:

The Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, yesterday announced the north-west Queensland town had been chosen as the site for a "groundbreaking" 10-megawatt plant that will use 8000 mirrors to reflect sunlight onto graphite blocks.

...but then in August 2010, in the Courier Mail:

Cloncurry in the state's northwest was meant to be the centrepiece of a radical $30 million plan to use solar energy to heat water and generate electricity, cutting carbon emissions and reliance on diesel – and eventually taking the town off the grid.

But The Courier-Mail can reveal that three years after its launch, instead of a forest of 8000 mirrors the project consists only of four test panels and a fake tower behind a locked gate.

Does anyone seriously think public interest in clean energy has waned between 2007 and 2010. I am seeing a rapidly increasing level of interest.

It is also interesting to compare images of the present state of the Cloncurry project...


With Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) projects in other locations with a similar solar energy profile to much of Queensland...
You obtain a copy of the plan on the Beyond Zero Emissions web-site. Choices are to download a synopsis or the full plan for free, or purchase a bound copy on-line.