Right now Australia faces a choice: we can continue our dependence on fossil fuels, keep mining and burning coal, keep polluting our air and water. We can keep damaging our farmland and heath, be left behind the rest of the world on investment and face an uncertain future with an unstable climate. Or we can make the switch to 100% clean renewable energy, creating a safer, healthier happier future for all.

The excitement of this new era is palpable in the planning for 100% Renewable’s 2-day Big Solar Boot Camp at Port Hacking on the weekend 11-12 February 2012. The programme concentrates on community action: how to make the clean energy message heard above the ruckus of the dinosaurs.

We saw the urgent demand for renewable energy in Wingecarribee shire at CANWin’s Clean Energy workshop last year. Plans such as Zero Carbon Australia 2020 and Sustainable Energy Australia show the ways 100% clean energy can be achieved in less than 10 years.

Big Solar is about solar-powered electricity generators on the same scale as coal-fired power stations. Big solar is one of the technologies that is making coal-fired power redundant. CANWin, along with hundreds of other groups in the Climate Action and 100% Renewable networks, can force governments to learn that the coal-fired dinosaur’s day is done.

The workshops are part of the CSIRO Energymark program. They consist of eight sessions, held about two weeks apart.

You will receive your own copy of the CSIRO Home Energy Saving Handbook and build on it to:

• Identify ways to reduce your energy consumption
• Develop an action plan to save on power bills
• Learn more about energy and climate change issues
• Find and discuss how to lower our carbon footprint at home, at work and in our Highlands communities.

The groups will be small so that everyone can have their say with a minimum of pressure: local people talking about what matters to us in Wingecarribee.

Schedule and location will depend on what suits most participants.

Sign up now or ask for more information: just email Tim Edwards at email hidden; JavaScript is required

Check out the program at www.energymark.com.au

The  NSW Government Draft Wind Turbine Strategy states that it supports Australia’s commitment to deliver 20% of the nation’s energy needs by 2020. If this is true, then the primary goal of the strategy should be to establish a level playing field. Up till now, fossil fuel industries have been implicitly subsidized by allowing them to offload their environmental costs to society.

The Government’s proposed Wind Farm Strategy doesn’t just perpetuate that inequity; it exacerbates it. It proposes an elaborate system of regulations for wind farms, which is not applied in equal measure to fossil fuel industries and will eventually prove to be counter-productive. How could any reasonable person believe that a wind turbine is more unsightly than high voltage transmission towers and power lines snaking inexorably across the rural landscape?

Could Government be attempting to pick winners? Why are the regulations it proposes for wind turbines not being applied to coal seam gas installations? Apart from rupturing the integrity of the Australian Artesian Basin, the life-blood of the inland, coal seam bores leak methane into the atmosphere. Since methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the industry’s claim that it is cleaner than coal is open to question.

Is there some hidden agenda here? It beggars belief that government could be so careless or irrational. Is it possible that the well-heeled, coal-seam gas lobby sees the embryonic wind turbine industry as a potential rival? Is it lobbying government heavily to cripple the development of wind power on the grounds of trumped-up, turbine-specific public concern?

You can download the draft guidelines from the “On Exhibition” page on the Dept of Planning website. Copies are also on exhibition until 14 March 2012 at the department’s Sydney office (23-33 Bridge St. Phone 9228 6416) and its regional offices (addresses and phone numbers on the Department’s website) and regional councils.

Workshop discussion groups outlined their action proposals during the plenary session

The four featured speakers gave an eye-opening overview of the urgency, options, challenges and successes of clean energy generation in regional Australia. You can find this exciting story in the Workshop Proceedings, which are now available for download (PDF 3Mb).

In addition, Matthew Wright, founder of Beyond Zero, has made the slides of his presentation available as a PDF (7Mb).

Workshop participants identified five initial tasks, which will each be tackled by one of the working groups that are now forming. The groups and their initial terms of reference are:

Renewable Energy

Investigate and evaluate the technical feasibility of the various renewable energy options identified at the workshop.

Energy Efficiency/Saving

Evaluate the performance and track record of various energy efficiency appliances/technologies and materials that are currently available in the marketplace.

Bulk Buying Potential

Make a cost-benefit analysis of the potential for an economically sustainable, community, bulk-buying enterprise.

Information Hub

Provide the CANWin website Editor/Moderator with clean energy information and case histories that would advance the aim of a ‘Clean Energy Future for Wingecarribee’.

Community Engagement

Describe/outline the various clean energy options identified at the Workshop to local Community, Business and Council, and find out which each sector would support. Further, to establish a means for the local community to become aware of, and react to, opportunities to save energy and be more efficient with use of its energy supplies

It is expected that the groups will refine their Terms of Reference in their first meetings.

To register your interest, please fill in and send the form below. We look forward to working with you.

Clean Energy Working Group Participation

Matthew Wright, CEO of Beyond Zero Emissions, gave a summary of existing technologies capable of meeting Australia's electricity needs within 10 years. Some of these are practical for Wingecarribee.

The energy and enthusiasm of more than 100 Wingecarribee locals stored information and set ideas flowing.
Clean energy is practical now.
Keep watching this website for more information.

Updates:

Preliminary draft of the proceedings is now available here.

Press reports from the workshop:
Local champions for clean energy
Think tank yields clean energy ideas
People power behind clean energy

Tuesday, November 8, 2011 was a dramatic day in the history of Australia. On this first day of the second consecutive La Nina summer, the Australian Senate passed the Government’s Clean Energy Bills. Our party of three had succeeded in obtaining tickets to the Senate Session at Parliament House that very morning. As we sped through the lush green countryside to Canberra in the early morning air, the world had never seemed so bright. There were even pools of water in dry old Lake George.

As we entered the grand portals of Parliament House, which CanWin Secretary Philip Walker had helped design, I was bowled over by marble pillars illuminated by light streaming in through high windows city-side – pillars that resembled old growth forest giants.

Passes attached ceremoniously to our lapels, we headed for the Senate chamber, accompanied by a guide. Up grand stairs to Security, where we were frisked of half our belongings including steel tipped shoes that raised the alarm, we elevatored up to what we were told was Senate level, where we were given the run around past what seemed endless, glass-paneled doors leading to public galleries securely locked to keep us out.

Informed by another Guide that access was through “The Southern Door” we peeped through outer windows to find south and continued our endless circuit around the Senate Chamber until another Guide told us that we were on the wrong floor. Down lift to lower floor, we encountered Security Gate No 2, who frisked us of the rest of our belongings, coins, cameras, flick knives, steel-capped boots and buckle belts on loosely fitting trousers. Holding trousers up with one hand for modesty’s sake and taking off my terrorism boots with the other hand, I emerged unscathed on the other side with my two comrades.

Reaching the safety of the Chamber, we found Senators gazing lethargically at empty seats while someone read a prepared speech about the dairy industry’s role in global warming.

That somnolence was not to last. As the clock ticked past 11 towards High Noon, the Chamber began to fill and all Hell began to break loose. Like a crowd of cheerless, undisciplined school kids bent on mischief, or rival gangs with verbal knuckle dusters, the Senate descended into chaos. Adversaries at the ready, accusations, slander, lies and threats, shouting, rudeness and mayhem became rampant…

The argy-bargy was eventually gagged, but not without several childish challenges that invoked “Divisions” whose main point seemed to be to provide occasional exercise (as if the Senate had never heard of computer generated passwords); and some “Ring the Bells” to accentuate the technological sophistication of government decision making machinery and its symbiotic relationship with the New York Stock Exchange.

When the Climate Bills eventually passed, the entire gallery burst into thunderous applause, which would have provoked our summary ejection had we not decided to leave anyway, leaving our elected Senators to lick their wounds and shake their verbal fists at their opponents.

Recovering our precious metallic knuckle dusters, flick knives, bombs and modesty belts from a relieved Security, we emerged into the open air as a severe La Nina storm approached. Heading for shelter in the Getup Marquee, reserved for what one Opposition politician had so delicately called the “Hitler Youth Arm of the Greens”, we three geriatrics found a vast array of people of all ages gathered to celebrate the passage of the Climate Bills.

As the marquee filled with hundreds of people to maximum capacity the storm broke as if to reinforce the message that global warming will inevitably be accompanied by weather extremes. One by one, distinguished speakers young and old who had helped one way or another to do their bit to ameliorate global warming – the famous and the nameless – read messages to future generations which will be placed in a nearby Time Capsule to be opened in 2050 when we will have gone and our grand-children will be asking,” What did Grandpa and Grandma do to keep the earth safe for us?”

At no time during the entire day, other than in the Senate Chamber itself, did we encounter a single opponent of the Government’s initiative. Take courage people; all is not yet lost!

Corbett Gardens, Bowral
(Wet weather venue, Bowral Memorial Hall)

Learn why we must say NO to coal and gas mining in the Southern Highlands and other special parts of Australia.

Speakers include radio host Alan Jones, Senator Bill Heffernan, Drew Hutton of Lock the Gate

For more information see Shoo Cockatoo

Bowral Library (Henrietta Rose Room)

A free seminar on healthier eating, with Maria Mitzikis of The Food Muse and Jill Cockram of Moss Vale Community Garden.
All proceeds to Southern Highlands CanAssist and Moss Vale Community Garden.

During previous warming cycles, the ocean returned dissolved CO2 to the air above like bubbles from a newly opened bottle of soda water. This time, the ocean is getting more acid, indicating that both air and ocean have exceeded their capacity to absorb man-made CO2.

As a result, the best climatologists in the world are more than 90% certain that the natural warming trend is being reinforced by fossil fuel emissions – that we are faced with a double whammy which is causing arctic sea ice to recede, tundra permafrost to melt, climate patterns to destabilize, sea level to rise and, ultimately, millions of climate refugees to appear on our shores.

The Climate Commission’s Report, The Critical Decade, concludes that “Decisions we make from now to 2020 will determine the severity of climate change our children and grandchildren will experience.” This report has gained bipartisan political support in Canberra.

So what’s to be done about this unprecedented problem? Geology provides a lead. Earth’s primaeval, lifeless air was supercharged with volcanic CO2 and practically devoid of oxygen. Now it’s got loads of oxygen and little CO2. How did that remarkable transformation come about? The magic molecule chlorophyll did the trick. Harnessing sunlight energy, chlorophyll-bearing organisms removed CO2 from the air and hydrogen from water to make carbohydrates, releasing oxygen as a by-product. Step by step over the ages, blue-green algae and their plant successors decarbonized and oxygenated the primaeval air, producing a thin blue veil around the earth that was “just right” for many kinds of life. Too much CO2 and earth would overheat, too little and it would freeze; too much oxygen and organic matter would spontaneously combust; too little, and air-breathers would suffocate. A “Goldilocks” atmosphere heralding a golden age for mankind.

Where did all that primaeval CO2 go? Mostly to the underlying ocean which occupies 70% of the earth’s surface and is in direct contact with the air above. As greenhouse warming eased, the ocean cooled, allowing CO2 gas to cross the air-sea interface and dissolve. Some became buried in the earth as coal and petroleum; some transformed into wood by old growth forests.

From time to time, this fine-tuned climate equilibrium has been upset by orbital forces that move the earth closer to the sun or farther away. As the warming earth emerged from the latest ice age, so much dissolved CO2 returned to the air that Torres Strait and Bass Strait became inundated by rising seas. The bulk of the world’s people that now live beside the sea are now faced with man-made inundation.

What’s to be done about this nasty trend? An economic system that allows CO2 emitting industries to ignore the environmental costs of their operations and let society foot the bill is an unreasonable and inequitable hidden subsidy that is inconsistent with best-practice free-market principles. Industry should meet its own production costs in full and on time. The polluter pays! The proposed carbon premium addresses this malpractice by persuading polluters to pay society for their CO2 emissions, and provide money to fund households for consequent rising costs and to develop renewable energy alternatives.

And if, as a result, exports can’t compete with imports, then perhaps it would be wiser to level the playing field by means of a “Border Tax” that would encourage exporters and importers alike to be equally clean rather than equally dirty?

David Tranter

at

Kazcare, Bowral  (Corner Centennial & Kirkham Roads)

Your chance to discuss clean energy options for Wingecarribee with a panel of experts:
What clean energy options make sense for our community?
What can we learn about clean energy from other regions?
What practical steps can locals take to move to clean energy?

Speakers:

• Matthew Wright, CEO, Beyond Zero Emissions 2020
• Craig Memery, Alternative Technology Association Australia
• Professor John Martin, Director, Centre for Sustainable Regional Communities, La Trobe University, Bendigo
• Paddy Manning, Sydney Morning Herald Columnist

Cost $20 per person (Plus 30 cents booking fee)(Includes GST). Afternoon tea will be provided.
Register and pay online to secure your place now,
or
Register online, pay by cheque (registration is not final until your cheque is cleared).
(For NEW MEMBERS, registering for this event will give you one year’s subscription to CANWin.)
For a printable PDF of the workshop flyer, click Flyer: Clean Energy for Wingecarribee (about 710KB)
Need more information? Email email hidden; JavaScript is required