The document proposes a plan to transition Australia to 100% renewable energy within 10 years. It argues renewable energy technologies like solar and wind could provide baseload power and are now cost competitive. The plan involves building large solar thermal plants and installing thousands of wind turbines across Australia to meet its energy needs. It asserts the transition would create jobs, improve national and regional security, and save money compared to fossil fuels over time.
Solar Power Construction Project Engineer in NYCalvinarnold843
The Wesson Group offers Alternative Energy Construction including Wind Power Engineering, Hydroelectric Construction, and Solar Power Construction Projects.
Renewable Energy Innovation - Disruptive Decade Part 1 - Jan 2019Keith Timimi
The first part of the disruptive decade looks at exponential s-curves in technology adoption, and what that has done to the renewable energy and battery markets.
See part two here: https://www.slideshare.net/KeithTimimi/transportation-evs-avs-and-maritime-disruptive-decade-part-2-jan-2019-129340681/
Transportation, EVs, AVs and Maritime - Disruptive Decade Part 2 - Jan 2019Keith Timimi
See part one here: https://www.slideshare.net/KeithTimimi/renewable-energy-innovation-disruptive-decade-part-1-jan-2019-129340624
In the second part of the Disruptive Decade, we look at the evolution of transportation through Electric Vehicles, Autonomous Vehicles, Transport as a Service, and the implication on the Price of Oil, Aviation and the Maritime Industry.
Renewable energy revolutionizes the energy industryDoris Capurro
“The Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil”, said Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani. Are we experiencing the end of the oil addiction?
Solar Power Construction Project Engineer in NYCalvinarnold843
The Wesson Group offers Alternative Energy Construction including Wind Power Engineering, Hydroelectric Construction, and Solar Power Construction Projects.
Renewable Energy Innovation - Disruptive Decade Part 1 - Jan 2019Keith Timimi
The first part of the disruptive decade looks at exponential s-curves in technology adoption, and what that has done to the renewable energy and battery markets.
See part two here: https://www.slideshare.net/KeithTimimi/transportation-evs-avs-and-maritime-disruptive-decade-part-2-jan-2019-129340681/
Transportation, EVs, AVs and Maritime - Disruptive Decade Part 2 - Jan 2019Keith Timimi
See part one here: https://www.slideshare.net/KeithTimimi/renewable-energy-innovation-disruptive-decade-part-1-jan-2019-129340624
In the second part of the Disruptive Decade, we look at the evolution of transportation through Electric Vehicles, Autonomous Vehicles, Transport as a Service, and the implication on the Price of Oil, Aviation and the Maritime Industry.
Renewable energy revolutionizes the energy industryDoris Capurro
“The Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil”, said Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani. Are we experiencing the end of the oil addiction?
The PPC Group of Companies has been a leader in developing the renewable resources in the country. Utilizing the power in the rivers, a total of 3017 MW of large hydro power plants and 59 MW of small hydro power plants are now in operation. There are also 16 wind parks of 59.6 MW and 1.35 MW of PV. Our vision for the future looks bright and the table below shows the dynamics of our strategic plan for more RES development.
Future RES projects Power (MW)
PV 280
Aegean wind complex 3600
Rodopi wind parks 122
Wind parks under construction 62.9
Hydro Power Plants 189.1
Small Hydro Power Plants (SHPP) 10,3
SHPP under construction 8,7
Hybrid under construction 6.85
Geothermal Power Plants 28
Biomass Power Plants 25
PPC supports the UN’s sustainability goals and is ready to take action for the RES energy global transition.
Kevin O'Donnell presentation on buildings and energy from the Wise Power Use ...Sherri Akers
Kevin O’Donnell of thread collaborative and The Climate Project spoke at the Wise Power Use Expo on why we need to worry about getting off coal and convert to renewable energy.
Executive summary for Last Chance Saloon for CSP (Concentrated Solar Power)Simon Thompson
This is the executive summary for "Last Chance Saloon for Gen 3 CSP" which is a report and forecast from Rethink Energy.
It’s about the global Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) business which, although small compared to photovoltaic or wind power, will be a $10 billion global industry by 2030. How so?
Previous CSP marquee projects such as the “tower power” plants of the Mojave Desert have proved to be expensive and R&D-hungry. Although impressive, they’ve tarnished the sector and in recent years investment has gone elsewhere.
It means that CSP has effectively lain moribund for a decade.
But in recent years a new wave of technology-driven CSP companies have brought a swathe of minor innovations, improvements on efficiency and cheaper equipment to the market.
CSP can now provide temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius, enabling the technology to play a role in the decarbonization of the cement, steelmaking, and mining industries. And in China there are plans to use CSP on the power grid as “peak-shaving” energy storage.
Does this mean that this 3rd generation of CSP activity will lead to profitable returns? What are the new technologies and who are the players? And what will be the impact of the global demand for hydrogen on CSP?
The answer to these questions and more can be found in Last Chance Saloon for Gen 3 CSP in this 30-page report, illustrated with graphs and accompanied by an Excel spreadsheet with projections.
Check out
https://rethinkresearch.biz/reports-category/rethink-energy-research/
for more details about this forecast and the Rethink Energy service
Next steps for the renewable energy industry in the UK: The case of solarJeremy Leggett
How is solar faring globally? The answer is a success story redolent with potential to inspire progress on wider fronts of the battle for a livable future. How is solar faring in the UK? That is a story incongruent with the global picture. Why? What needs to be done to set things right? My presentation for a conference tomorrow in Westminster offers some suggestions.
How sticking with coal power in SA can cost 50% of future possible direct job...leavesoflanguage
The comparison here is between Eskom’s 2100MW Arnot Power Station (800 jobs) and the Ilanga-1 Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) with storage facility in the Northern Cape (80 jobs).
Keynote Interview: Texas as a U.S. Flagship for Energy TransitionNicole Green
Texas is the U.S. state that produces the most renewable energy in terms of sheer quantity. And one that also experiences some of the most extreme weather out of all the U.S. regions. This conversation will provide a unique perspective as to how ERCOT balances a regional energy system that counts on some of the highest renewable penetration rates with reliability and resilience in a very congested transmission network throughout its most challenging season, reflecting on Summer 2018 data.
Hans-Josef Fell is our special guest at the Beyond Zero Emissions discussion group held in partnership with the University of Melbourne Office of Environment Program
BZE monthly Monday discussion group, presented by Matthew Wright and Patrick Hearps with pictures, vedio of SolarPACES conference in France and Torresol SENER’s Gemasolar solar power tower in Spain.
The PPC Group of Companies has been a leader in developing the renewable resources in the country. Utilizing the power in the rivers, a total of 3017 MW of large hydro power plants and 59 MW of small hydro power plants are now in operation. There are also 16 wind parks of 59.6 MW and 1.35 MW of PV. Our vision for the future looks bright and the table below shows the dynamics of our strategic plan for more RES development.
Future RES projects Power (MW)
PV 280
Aegean wind complex 3600
Rodopi wind parks 122
Wind parks under construction 62.9
Hydro Power Plants 189.1
Small Hydro Power Plants (SHPP) 10,3
SHPP under construction 8,7
Hybrid under construction 6.85
Geothermal Power Plants 28
Biomass Power Plants 25
PPC supports the UN’s sustainability goals and is ready to take action for the RES energy global transition.
Kevin O'Donnell presentation on buildings and energy from the Wise Power Use ...Sherri Akers
Kevin O’Donnell of thread collaborative and The Climate Project spoke at the Wise Power Use Expo on why we need to worry about getting off coal and convert to renewable energy.
Executive summary for Last Chance Saloon for CSP (Concentrated Solar Power)Simon Thompson
This is the executive summary for "Last Chance Saloon for Gen 3 CSP" which is a report and forecast from Rethink Energy.
It’s about the global Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) business which, although small compared to photovoltaic or wind power, will be a $10 billion global industry by 2030. How so?
Previous CSP marquee projects such as the “tower power” plants of the Mojave Desert have proved to be expensive and R&D-hungry. Although impressive, they’ve tarnished the sector and in recent years investment has gone elsewhere.
It means that CSP has effectively lain moribund for a decade.
But in recent years a new wave of technology-driven CSP companies have brought a swathe of minor innovations, improvements on efficiency and cheaper equipment to the market.
CSP can now provide temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius, enabling the technology to play a role in the decarbonization of the cement, steelmaking, and mining industries. And in China there are plans to use CSP on the power grid as “peak-shaving” energy storage.
Does this mean that this 3rd generation of CSP activity will lead to profitable returns? What are the new technologies and who are the players? And what will be the impact of the global demand for hydrogen on CSP?
The answer to these questions and more can be found in Last Chance Saloon for Gen 3 CSP in this 30-page report, illustrated with graphs and accompanied by an Excel spreadsheet with projections.
Check out
https://rethinkresearch.biz/reports-category/rethink-energy-research/
for more details about this forecast and the Rethink Energy service
Next steps for the renewable energy industry in the UK: The case of solarJeremy Leggett
How is solar faring globally? The answer is a success story redolent with potential to inspire progress on wider fronts of the battle for a livable future. How is solar faring in the UK? That is a story incongruent with the global picture. Why? What needs to be done to set things right? My presentation for a conference tomorrow in Westminster offers some suggestions.
How sticking with coal power in SA can cost 50% of future possible direct job...leavesoflanguage
The comparison here is between Eskom’s 2100MW Arnot Power Station (800 jobs) and the Ilanga-1 Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) with storage facility in the Northern Cape (80 jobs).
Keynote Interview: Texas as a U.S. Flagship for Energy TransitionNicole Green
Texas is the U.S. state that produces the most renewable energy in terms of sheer quantity. And one that also experiences some of the most extreme weather out of all the U.S. regions. This conversation will provide a unique perspective as to how ERCOT balances a regional energy system that counts on some of the highest renewable penetration rates with reliability and resilience in a very congested transmission network throughout its most challenging season, reflecting on Summer 2018 data.
Hans-Josef Fell is our special guest at the Beyond Zero Emissions discussion group held in partnership with the University of Melbourne Office of Environment Program
BZE monthly Monday discussion group, presented by Matthew Wright and Patrick Hearps with pictures, vedio of SolarPACES conference in France and Torresol SENER’s Gemasolar solar power tower in Spain.
Dr. Keith Lovegrove unveiled the ANU's new solar thermal dish in September at the SolarPACES international solar thermal conference in Berlin to much acclaim. This will be the first time it will be presented in Melbourne.
It is the world's biggest solar dish that comes with a mass production system that can build one dish a day. The dish has the highest optical efficiency of any commercial solar technology in the world and a field of 500 produces 100MW electrical power. ANU's dishes can be used on undulating ground, which is difficult for current solar thermal systems that use mirror fields or troughs.
Dr. Keith Lovegrove will also talk about replacing all of Australia's energy needs with this solar technology used in conjunction with thermal salt storage.
Dr. Keith Lovegrove is a senior lecturer in Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the Australian National University (ANU). He heads the ANU Solar Thermal Group which works on a range of projects involving high and low temperature thermal conversion of solar energy. This includes looking at dish and trough concentrators and thermochemical energy storage. He is widely published in scientific journals and has advised the Australian Government on CSP . Dr Lovegrove and his team are at the forefront of International research into concentrated solar power.
Each technological age has been marked by a shift in how the industrial platform enables companies to rethink their business processes and create wealth. In the talk I argue that we are limiting our view of what this next industrial/digital age can offer because of how we read, measure and through that perceive the world (how we cherry pick data). Companies are locked in metrics and quantitative measures, data that can fit into a spreadsheet. And by that they see the digital transformation merely as an efficiency tool to the fossil fuel age. But we need to stretch further…
Why Use Renewable Energy?
Viable Alternative
Fossil fuel are more expensive
Environmental concerns/Green Technology and sustainability
Multiple/limitless fuel to turn a Renewable Energy Infrastructure like wind, solar and wastes
Increase range of Technologies
Cost effective than its alternative
Cal Marine Power & Water "straw" scam presentationFingerPointer
This document was created to entice investors into a snare - the words Nigerian Scam ring a bell - Investors Beware it screams....scam, fraud all come to mind....
Search for John Cutten Fraudster....
Senator the Honourable Kevin Ramnarine, Minister of Energy and Energy Affairs speech from the Energy Lecture Series 2015 hosted by the Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business on Wed. 12th Auguster 2015.
August 12th 2015
The Growing Interdependence of the Internet and Climate ChangeLarry Smarr
09.08.17
Invited Talk
Negotiating the Downturn: Emerging Stronger
Australian Industry Group National Forum
Parliament House
Title: The Growing Interdependence of the Internet and Climate Change
Canberra, Australia
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
Generating a custom Ruby SDK for your web service or Rails API using Smithyg2nightmarescribd
Have you ever wanted a Ruby client API to communicate with your web service? Smithy is a protocol-agnostic language for defining services and SDKs. Smithy Ruby is an implementation of Smithy that generates a Ruby SDK using a Smithy model. In this talk, we will explore Smithy and Smithy Ruby to learn how to generate custom feature-rich SDKs that can communicate with any web service, such as a Rails JSON API.
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered QualityInflectra
In this insightful webinar, Inflectra explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming software development and testing. Discover how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Learn about:
• The Future of Testing: How AI is shifting testing towards verification, analysis, and higher-level skills, while reducing repetitive tasks.
• Test Automation: How AI-powered test case generation, optimization, and self-healing tests are making testing more efficient and effective.
• Visual Testing: Explore the emerging capabilities of AI in visual testing and how it's set to revolutionize UI verification.
• Inflectra's AI Solutions: See demonstrations of Inflectra's cutting-edge AI tools like the ChatGPT plugin and Azure Open AI platform, designed to streamline your testing process.
Whether you're a developer, tester, or QA professional, this webinar will give you valuable insights into how AI is shaping the future of software delivery.
De-mystifying Zero to One: Design Informed Techniques for Greenfield Innovati...
Matt Wright - 100% Renewables by 2020
1. Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Stationary Energy: A plan for repowering Australia with 100% renewable energy in ten years
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5. Oil and Gas Coal exporters Generators The CAN'T DO campaign The CAN'T DO MANTRA “ Renewable energy cant supply baseload power” “ Renewable energy is too expensive” “ Renewable energy will wreck the economy” “ Renewable energy will cost jobs”
10. Al Gore calls for 100% clean electricity and independence from foreign oil within ten years “ a political promise to do something 40 years from now is universally ignored because everyone knows that it's meaningless. Ten years is about the maximum time that we as a nation can hold a steady aim and hit our target.”
11. Mark Jacobson: Shifting the world to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2030 The cost of generating and transmitting power would be less than the projected cost per kilowatt-hour for fossil-fuel and nuclear power. 3.8 million large wind turbines, 90,000 solar plants, and numerous geothermal, tidal and rooftop photovoltaic installations worldwide.
16. Solar Two – 1996 - 1999 Run by the U.S. DoE, Sandia National Laboratories, Lockheed Martin 10MW turbine, 3 hrs storage
17. Baseload Solar Thermal Power Andasol 1,2 and Extresol 3 Spain, operating now, 7.5 hours energy storage Torresol Gemasolar Spain, on line 2010, 15 hours energy storage 24 hour Dispatchable Power
21. What’s happening in Spain? Access to the grid request of STE projects by Oct 2009 15.561 MW
22. Electricity and Energy Demand ZCA2020 energy demand = 1,708PJ ZCA2020 electricity demand = 1,165PJ 2007 energy demand = 3,915PJ 2007 electricity demand = 822PJ
23. Modal shift: 80% (urban) and 50% (rural) shift to public transport. Electric trains and trams Electrifying vehicle fleet: biofuels reserved for heavy machinery, range extension on electric vehicles and other vehicles that can’t be electrified. Electrifying transport
24. Nissan Patrol Capacity 5 17 litres per 100km How Easy is Energy Efficiency in Transport?? Siemens Combino tram Capacity 190 16 litres per 100km (Oil Energy Equiv) The Nissan Patrol uses more energy to move 5 people around the city than a Siemens tram uses to move 190 people
28. China : 150,000 MW wind by 2020 ‘ Three Gorges of Wind ’ Project , under construction now, equivalent electricity output of Three Gorges Dam
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30. “ The review finds that the transmission scenario proposed is technically feasible in terms of capacity and reliability. In addition, the proposed transmission uses mature technology with proven capability around the world.” SKM Review of ZCA2020 transmission The National Grid
Thank whoever organised the talk, Introduce yourself and who you are, Introduce who beyond zero emissions are. “ I'm going to talk to you about climate science and how we can solve climate change by repowering Australia with 100 renewable energy in 10 years… When we are confronted by an overwhelming problem without a solution that we think can’t actually solve the problem, the effect is disempowering and demoralising- people don’t want to put energy into something they have no control over, into a fight that cant be won. With regards to energy, at the moment, the overwhelming perception in the community, and among our elected decision makers, is that it is impossible, or at least way too hard, too expensive or too disruptive to decisively transition our energy system to clean energy. The Zero Carbon Australia 2020 project is a campaign aimed squarely at shifting this dominant paralysing and inaccurate CANT DO perception, and presenting a detailed, rigorous and empowering vision of a path Australia can take to transform our energy sector. We believe it is not only necessary, but entirely possible, and indeed broadly beneficial in a whole lot of collateral ways, to act decisively to transform our energy system to clean energy. The project has at its core a series of 5 reports outlining this vision in different sectors of the economy. The stationary energy sector report is the one that is closest to completion, and I’ll be giving a brief overview of that today. Its no accident that the disempowering CANT DO perception dominates in this country. It’s the result of a very deliberate, well funded and effective campaign by a small group of industries with a very strong vested interest in a continuation of the status quo. Reference http:// www.beyondzeroemissions.org /about/history
Arctic ice is in decline, has been for several decades Recent years loss of summer sea ice has accelerated This is indication of the earth's energy imbalance Wieslaw Maslowski the US Navy’s lead oceanographer said that by 2015 it is possible that there will be complete loss of arctic sea ice cover. So the why, why zero emissions in 10 years. I'm not here to talk in detail about climate science and the greenhouse effect. Just going to show you what's been happening and the recommendations from recent studies. The Arctic Summer Sea Ice cover has been in decline since 1979. Observations by satellites and recorded by the Navy’s of many countries has not seen a substantial loss of summer sea ice like we are seeing at the moment. Normally in winter the Sea Ice extend covers 13 million sq kilometres. The sea ice normally shrinks to 7 million square kilometres in Summer an area the size of Australia. When the arctic ocean is covered in ice like this about 90% of sun light radiation that strikes the ice is reflected back out of the earths atmosphere and into space allowing the region to stay within its current cool temperature bounds. Unfortunately between 2005 and 2007 an area the size of NT was lost in sea ice cover. That’s an area the size of NT absorbing all the sunlight striking it at the suns full intensity, and heating up the region. In 2009 the sea ice extent recovered a small amount (an area the size of Victoria) versus 2007 summer ice extent. However the ice thickness across most of the Floating ice pack has reduced from 4 metre + perennial ice down to 1 year ice which is around 1 metre or less thickness. This 1 metre ice tends to not remain from season to season. Wieslaw Maslowski the US Navy’s lead oceanographer said that by 2013 it is possible that there will be complete loss of arctic sea ice cover, other experts on the ice such as scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre say that it will happen by 2020. BZE radio Maslowski: http://beyondzeroemissions.org/media/radio/dr-wieslaw-maslowski-predicted-2013-ice-free-summer-arctic-five-years-ago-now-he-says-ma
Worse that IPCC forecasts Research indicates that deglaciation is related to greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. This is in stark contrast to the IPCC that forecast worst case loss of sea ice cover 2070 and an average of 2300 before we’d see an ice free arctic with the effects of global warming. The IPCC is conservative and dumbed down the science. And remember, this is already occurring with the average 0.8 degrees Celsius global warming that we've observed so far. Yet most leaders are targeting a rise of 2 degrees warming. Evidence that this of drastic change happening right now and that we already have too much greenhouse in the atmosphere. Recent studies from NASA's James Hansen have found that over the long history of the planet, greenhouse gas concentrations above 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere have lead to deglaciation of most of the planet. We are currently at about 390ppm and rising. It's not too late, as long term deglaciation can take decades to centuries, but our ultimate target is get to zero emissions and below, so we can get back below 350ppm, some scientists say even lower (Schellnhuber says below 300ppm) Hansen's 350ppm reference: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf Discussion on ClimateProgress: http://climateprogress.org/2008/03/17/hansen-et-al-must-read-back-to-350-ppm-or-risk-an-ice-free-planet/ Schellnhuber's full report available here: http://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_sn2009_en.html Beyond Zero Radio on climate science: http://beyondzeroemissions.org/media/radio/james-hansen-no-more-conventional-coal-and-carbon-stabilisation-below-350ppm-080228 http://beyondzeroemissions.org/media/radio/professor-schellnhuber-potsdam-institute-talks-pre-industrial-carbon-levels-safe-climate http://beyondzeroemissions.org/media/radio/ken-caldeira-carnegie-institute-stabilizing-carbon-emissions-only-option-080229
The problem with the loss of Arctic Sea ice cover is that it that the Arctic Ice sits right next to Greenland and Greenland holds about 2km of Ice average, and at it’s peak has 4.3km thick ice cover. This translates into 7 metres of sea level rise if it all melted. This is a serious threat to international Trade and international shipping With just 1-2metres of sea level rise International shipping which relies on port facilities around the globe is seriously compromised. The earth’s crust that Greenland sits on is depressed around 300metres. And as melting of the Greenland ice sheet occurs this causes earth quakes which trigger Ice quakes which trigger earth quakes. The melting is occurring in a non linear way and much of the Ice is just slipping off the ice shelf and into the sea where it doesn’t float for long before getting to more mild climate and melting adding to sea level. Segway : “ considering the gravity of this issue. It is not surprising that there is a highly motivated and connected group that is in and out of political offices, talking about this issue, unfortunately this isn't us…” See mark ogge's t10 talk - http://beyondzeroemissions.org/node/255
So it's not surprising given that climate change is such an urgent and dangerous threat, that there is a large, well funded and well organised campaign to affect government greenhouse policy. Unfortunately, it's not us. It's what we call the CAN'T DO Campaign Every year the carbon lobby spends tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and PR professionals who relentlessly lobby key decision makers in government and the bureaucracy, and run a media and PR campaign that effectively sets the parameters of the debate in this country. And they spend all this money because it works. They effectively write climate and energy policy in this country. But the key thing is to understand is their messaging. When you strip all back, the underlying message is what we call the CAN'T DO MANTRA, and it goes something like this: Renewable energy cant supply baseload power Renewable energy is too expensive Renewable energy will wreck the economy Renewable energy will cost jobs The CAN'T DO MANTRA. CAN'T DO, because its designed to disempower, and MANTRA, because its repeated endlessly, and if you repeat something often enough, it becomes accepted as reality- and it has become accepted reality by almost all our elected representatives and decision makers, most of the media, the overwhelming majority of the general public, and even many in the environment movement. PH delivery style note: it is important to point out the power of the fossil fuel lobby and the Can't Do campaign. However don't spend too much time banging on about this slide, as we don't want to do their work for them, repeating “Can't Do and Overwhelmingly Hard” too much probably doesn't grab audiences References: “High & Dry”, Guy Pearse, 2007 for an Australian perspective, or his Quarterly Essay “Quarry Vision
So to counter this head on, we've formed what we call the Can Do campaign. We've got together a team of engineers, scientists and ordinary Australians to map out a vision of what it would actually take to solve climate change. The whole plan is to map out how each sector of the economy can be completely decarbonised in line with the climate science. We don't see the point of figuring out how to solve half the problem decades too late, which is why we go for target of zero emissions in ten years. These are members of the Stationary Energy team, whose report on how to achieve 100 renewable energy is to be released shortly Beyond Zero Emissions has motivated and put together a team to write the transition of each sector of the economy. Pictured here are meetings and members of the Stationary Energy 100% renewable energy team. We consist of Mechanical, Aerospace, Chemical, Renewable, Computer and Automotive Engineers. We’ve got mathematicians, PhD researchers, Physicists, Nuclear Physicists, Specialists and experts from within industry from the fossil fuel sector and from universities. This is an exciting inspiring and interesting project and we are still trying to work through the level of interest we’ve got. We’ve then got a support team to get the message out doing talks and editing and publishing our original content and making this all something that the Australian people can get behind.
- Completely accept current climate science evidence on what has to be done & by when - Renewable energy solutions exist now - Technology is not the limiting issue in moving to sustainable energy supply - We have all the tools! - 100% Renewable Energy by 2020 These are some of the main tenets of the CAN DO VISION, they may seem quite radical but they are based of world best science and are completely achievable from a technological viewpoint. The human will inputs are all that are needed As you transition to next slide (so how soon do we have to become a zero carbon australia?) Reference The ZCA plan!
So we needed a target for reducing emissions, and a timeline for it to be achieved. Our starting point was not received wisdom about what is generally considered technically or politically achievable, But what is necessary This graph by Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam institute – one of the world's most authoritative climate research institutes – shows the rate of emissions reductions for selected countries if we are to have only a 67% chance of avoiding 2 degree warming- given an equitable rate of global reductions, taking into account current per-capita emissions levels of different countries. Slide shows if every country had same carbon budget per person since 1990. (Because Australia has consumed near the most we have to reduce more quickly. Who else out there is calling for 100% by 2020? Remember two degrees is in itself a huge level of risk, given the danger of crossing tipping points within the climate system. We accept that this is as being the based on the best available science We accept that global emissions reductions need to be equitable So we accepted that for Australia, ten years was the necessary timeframe to transition to renewable energy We believe the only question worth asking is what it would take to do the whole job properly in time- not doing half the job ten years too late –
From a planning point of view, we agree with Al Gore When in the context of his inspiring call for America to move to 100% clean electricity and independence from foreign oil, he said: A political promise to do something in 40 years from now is universally ignored because everyone knows it is meaningless. Ten years is about the maximum amount of time that we as a nation can hold a steady aim and hit our target.
And we are not alone in calling for a transition on this scale The lead story of Novembers issues of Scientific American Last year, the enormously respected Stanford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Mark Z Jacobson published his Wind Water Sun scenario for the world to move to 100% renewable energy by 2030,using almost entirely solar and wind power Given that equity considerations imply a far more rapid transition for developed countries, this is entirely consistent with a ten year timeframe for Australia. Segway: “ so how are we going to get to 100% by 2020, what technologies?” http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=powering-a-green-planet
So now to talk about the Zero Carbon Australia plan. A key technology that underpins this work is solar thermal power. It's an elegantly simple technology. You use mirrors to concentrate the sun's light to create heat, boil water to create steam and run a steam turbine. Steam turbines are exactly the same technology use in fossil and nuclear power stations, except they burn coal or try and control nuclear reactions to run what is essentially a glorified kettle. There are several different configurations of mirrors used for solar thermal, but I'll talk about just two – parabolic troughs and power towers
This is not new technology. Parabolic troughs haves been proven technology since 1911. This plant was generating steam to drive pumps to irrigate cotton fields in Egypt. However it was bombed in World War 1, then they found oil, so they didn't rebuild it.
This is a more modern parabolic trough system. In the 1980s , 354 MW of parabolic troughs were built in the Mohave Desert in California. They are still operating today http://www.nrel.gov/csp/solarpaces/project_detail.cfm/projectID=28
But the really exciting technology is the molten salt power tower systems that were proven by the U.S. Department of Energy back in the 1990's. Remember the Can't Do claim that renewable energy can't supply baseload power? Solar thermal smashes that myth. For the working fluid it uses molten salt, a mixture of potassium nitrate and sodium nitrate which melts above 220degrees Celsius. In this system, you have a 'cold' tank of liquid salt at 290oC, which is pumped up a tower surrounded by a field of flat mirrors, called heliostats. These track the sun and concentrate the sun's light on the top of the tower, where the salt if heated to 565oC, the same temperature that a coal plant operates at. This is then stored in the 'hot' tank, like a big insulated thermos. Whenever you need power, the hot salt is used to generate steam and drive the turbine, then sent back to the cold tank. In this way, the heat storage allows you to generate power around the clock, 24 hours a day. Unlike Solar Photo-Voltaic which produces electricity directly, Solar Thermal concentrates the suns energy using mirrors to produce heat- which is used to create steam to drive a turbine and produce electricity. Heat is much easier and cheaper to store than electricity. The heat that is created using the these parabolic trough mirrors during sunlight hours is used to heat molten salt in these highly insulated tanks- and then dispatched at night as it is needed. This is around the clock, dispatchable solar power- and can replace inflexible baseload power from coal plants which produce the same amount of power 24/7- at 5pm when you need it- and 3 am when you don't- and the plants blow steam and waste power.
This was proven in the 1990s by the U.S. Department of Energy's “Solar Two” project, run by Lockheed Martin and a number of other national energy laboratories and energy companies. They successfully demonstrated the molten salt power tower technology for 3 years from 1996-1999. Other background The U.S. DoE was all set to scale up its solar thermal program in the early 2000s, but under the watch of the Bush Administration they had almost all of their funding cut off. Full Solar Two program was run by- Sandia National Laboratories – they do solar, nuclear and national security research, run by Lockheed Martin under contract from the U.S. DoE National Renewable Energy Laboratories
Baseload solar thermal is now in operation and being built over in Spain. - They are undergoing a solar thermal renaissance The top set of images is of the Andasol plants, which combine the parabolic trough technology with molten salt storage. They have enough storage to run at full output for 7.5 hours without sunlight. Below is the Torresol Gemasolar plant, which uses the tower technology when it's operational at the beginning of next year, will have enough storage for 15 hours. That's baseload power even in the middle of winter. This technology has a capacity factor of 75% (ie the amount of the plants capacity utilised) which is higher than NSW black coal
The central receiver tower technology that we have specified in our plan was designed by Sandia Laboratories, which are run by Lockheed Martin as part of the U.S. Department of Energy. We have based our system on the Solar 220 MW modules designed by Sandia laboratories, as mentioned before, although our plan involves a progressive ramping up from smaller systems for learning purposes. We have chosen this size because it is about the maximum size for a single tower system, as beyond that there are difficulties in focusing the mirrors on the central receiver. Thus you can maximize the economies of scale, by getting the most amount of power per tower receiver, turbine, These are some engineering drawings drawings of this particularly technology which is currently being commercialized by the US company Solar Reserve at the 50MW Alcazar plant in Spain, and two 150MW in Rice, California and Tonopah , Nevada. Some of the reasons we prefer this technology are that it produces much higher temperatures, which increases efficiency, allows more heat energy to be stored in the thermal storage tanks, and there are far lower line losses than parabolic trough plants which have kms of collector pipes running the length of the mirror field.
This is one of the tanks at the Andasol plants. It is standard steel tank – a very cheap and simple battery. Thermal storage or electric storage is equivalent to comparing a thermos mug to a laptop battery in terms of cost and reliability Solar thermal storage uses same material as industrial fertiliser.
26 April 2010 Spain has 2,440MW of Solar Thermal plant operating or under construction to be completed over the next 3 years. Enough to power about 1/3 of Victoria’s (1/5 of NSW) energy needs. This is over $20 Billion AUD worth of plant to be built by 2013 40 plants either built or under construction, mixture of troughs and towers 2440MW with old feed in tariff. 16000MW in pipeline. Next round of plants will have less feed in tariff use, showing the reduction in cost that occurs as more is built. Two main companies - solar resource, torresol have same technologies They’ve got over 15,000MW of Solar Thermal plant in planning that has received permission to connect to the Spanish Electricity Grid. This would be the equivalent of powering NSW and South Australia with Solar Thermal. The Spanish system is successful not just because it has a feed in tariff but the government is serious about making this happen. Unlike our government which pays lip service and has hobby scale projects to generally humour the public, but is not about seriously repowering our economy with renewables. Spain currently has a feed in tariff policy that backs 800MW per year of Solar Thermal with Storage (24 hour baseload solar) 500MW of direct solar photovoltaic (rooftop like PV) and 2,000MW per year of Wind Power. Spain will achieve 22.7% of Total Energy from Renewable Sources (Heat Water and Space, Transport and Electricity) and will achieve 42.3% of electricity from Renewables by 2020 http://www.la-moncloa.es/IDIOMAS/9/ActualidadHome/2009-2/07012010_SpainToSurpass_2020RenewableEnergiesTarget.htm Spanish Solar Thermal Industry Association: http://www.protermosolar.com/boletines/boletin24.html#destacados03 Use Google Translate! http://translate.google.com
So the first step for the Zero Carbon Report was to look at how much energy and electricity we need to use. We've projected that our current uses for electricity will get more efficient, but we also include switching current uses of natural gas and oil to electricity. The results is that in 2020, we use less than half the overall energy, but our electricity consumption goes up by over 40% How we generate the electricity is one side of the equation, but the other side of the equation is the demand side, how much energy we use. This is essentially half of the report, but I can only touch on this today. Under the ZCA2020 scenario, we take an integrated approach to the energy system across transport and stationary energy. Essentially our approach is to provide the energy services we currently with natural gas, so heating, cooking and many industrial processes, and oil for transport, with electricity generated from renewable sources. The fortunate thing is that for most applications, electrical systems are far more efficient . For example, in transport where electrical engines use around 1/8 of the energy to move a vehicle per km, compared to internal combustion engines, but also in heating, where an efficient electrical heat pump systems will deliver the same amount of heat for a third the amount of energy as ordinary gas heaters. So the switch of fuels itself, from oil and natural gas represents huge energy savings We also have ambitious, but very achievable electricity E E targets, mainly involving retrofitting Australias commercial and residential building stock, which would reduce our per capita electricity consumption from current very high levels at the moment, to about the same levels of other industrialised countries like Germany The end result is that we would significantly increase the amount of electricity we need to supply, but half the total amount energy use overall.
As with Mark Jacobson- Electrification of transport is central to system design Because electrical engines are so much more efficient than internal combustion engines – a factor of 5 can be made just from switching to electric motors When we include a decent shift to public transport, we can achieve massive energy savings- by a total factor of 10 or more! Obviously electrification requires a large investment in predominantly in rail and light rail infrastructure- but this small compared to the massive (and increasing) impost of of oil imports on our economy
This slide illustrates how such energy savings are achieved This Nissan Patrol takes the same amount of energy to move it as this Seimans tram. You can move 5 people in a Nissan Patrol- and 190 in a Seimans tram Taking average loadings into account- the energy use for every passenger KM you can move to a Seimans tram- is about one fortieth of that of Nissan Patrol A ford corolla has a fuel efficiency of 11.5 litres per 100km First mass produced all electric car being released in US in december – the nissan leaf - http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/index#/leaf-electric-car/index The Leaf will go on sale in a limited way in December, and be widely available soon thereafter. Production of the first-ever mass produced all-electric, zero-emissions car sold in the US will be around 50,000 a year, reports Treehugger. Nissan surprised the emerging electric vehicle industry last month when it announced a remarkably low MSRP of $32,780 for the Leaf, which drops to $25,780 with a $7,500 federal tax credit. California and other states offer rebates that can bring the price down to $20,280. Nissan says the car will have a 100-mile range on one charge.
So we designed a grid to meet Australia's projected 2020 electricity demand – this is the 100% renewable grid that we can have by 2020. It uses a combination of 23 wind sites and 12 solar thermal sites to take advantage of Australia's great natural resources. This is the renewable energy grid and generators that we CAN have in 2020 with the help of you and the success of the CAN Do campaign. By defeating the Can’t do campaign. Here you can see the ZCA 2020 23 Wind Power and 12 Solar Thermal regions. We can choose to have this, or we can choose to burn coal with all the associated local pollution (radon, thorium, mercury, birth defects, 7x national cancer rates) and global warming pollution. The Red lines are the HVDC backbone and the Green lines the additional HVAC links, while the white links behind are the existing Australian electricity grid.
So now to supply 60% of Australia's 2020 electricity demand from solar thermal with storage, we have designed 12 sites around Australia. Each of these would have 3500MW. They would be made up mainly of 220MW tower modules, with up to 17 hours storage fro round-the-clock power. They have air-cooling that reduces water consumption by a factor of 10. We link about 19 of these modules together to form a 3500MW plant or solar region, in much the same way as a coal plant like Hazelwood consists of 8 times 185 MW (net generators linked together to form a single plant. There would be 12 of these plants dispersed across Australia to supply 60% of Australia’s energy PH Maths note – each of the 12 'sites' consist of 13 x 217MWe generating units, and 6 smaller ones from scale-up in the early stages. This is why 19 units is not (19 x 217 = 4123MW) Hazelwood has 8 separate generating units. It is nominally 1600MW, but only 1480MW net due to its parasitic requirements. 1480/8=185MW The land area required per 3500MW site is the equivalent of a square 15km x 15km – the size of a decent cattle station
The other 40% of Australias energy in 2020 would come from wind. Wind is the lowest cost, most technologically mature form of renewable energy This would require around 8000 turbines to be rolled out, so an average of of about 800 per year, dispersed across Australia. In our plan we've identified 23 of the best wind regions, for good geographical diversity Interestingly, over the last decade wind power has grown by around 30% a year. If we increased this to around 40% per year for the next ten years in Australia from where we are now, we would reach our target. When wind power is dispersed over a large area it is able to deliver firm and reliable baseload power - FROM http://www.nrel.gov/wind/systemsintegration/ewits.html found that from 14%-27% of rated capacity across Eastern Seaboard is baseload. I'e so if wind turbine are operating at 30%, almost half the elctricity they produce is firm p202 for conclusions
China is aiming for 15% of all energy from renewables by 2020, with a target of 100,000MW of wind by 2020. For the past four years, the installed capacity of wind power in China has doubled every year. In 2009 they installed almost 13,000MW of new wind capacity. If they continue at this rate of installation, they'll reach their 100,000MW target by 2015. This contrasts with Australia that has NO TARGET for all energy, and has a small pathetic 20% of electricity from renewables by 2020. The EU have got a target of 20% of all energy from renewables, and Spain for instance is going 42.3% by renewables by 2020, Denmark is going 50% wind by 2025 etc.
Now it's one thing to size the system, but another to make sure it can reliably meet demand 365 days a year. We've had an actuary volunteer his time to do actual modelling on our system, using solar data from the 12 sites we've specified, and wind data from existing wind farms, scaled up to model the amount of capacity we have installed. Modelling over a 3 day period, haven't got WA in there yet, will make it more solid solar plug-in orange, wind in blue, new grid. Work done by SKM First image Here you can see actual wind output from South Australia over a 3 day period – steady for a few days but then it drops off Second image But at the same time, the wind was still blowing strong in Tassie & Victoria Third image In fact, if we switch them around you can see the really strong flat output from Tasmania's Windnorth farm. Up the top is the electricity demand. We need a power source that is flexible, and can always match the difference between demand and wind supply. This is where the solar thermal comes in. Fourth image When the wind is blowing strong, the CST plants don't have to release much electricity, and can hold more heat in their tanks for later. When the wind drops off, they can meet the difference. This modelling has been done over two years worth of data – 2008 and 2009. Our system can reliably meet 98% of demand with wind and solar. For the other 2%, a combination of existing hydro and a small amount of waste biomass is used for backup, to ensure 100% reliable supply.
Transmission map This slide shows the design of our transmission upgrade- Australia's new National Grid -that would be needed to incorporate the our new renewable energy generation. This is the High Voltage DC (Direct Current) Backbone, which efficiently transmits the electricity over long distances with low losses. High voltage AC (Alternating current) us also used, to strengthen the existing grid and interconnect the three main grids It was designed in conjunction with the generous in-kind support of Sinclair Knight Merz, one of Australia's leading engineering companies, who have reviewed the work and found it to be technically feasible, using mature technology. It also shows the spread of the Solar and wind sites we have chosen
So how would we build all this and achieve the transition in the ten year timeframe? We’ve looked at resourcing of the transition and the requirements of the build - all the major commodities and the ability to scale the labour force to meet the jobs requirements. Although it is not mandated that the materials and production would have to be met locally, we do think it is useful to be able to compare to what we do in our economy today. If you look at how much steel and concrete we'll need, it's a fraction of what we use already. We already pour 60 million tonnes of concrete a year in building, we'd need less than 7% of that production per year to be diverted towards the build-out, or grow concrete production. Similarly with steel – now if you looked at just what we produce domestically we'd need 20-30% of our steel production. But if you take into account that we one of the world's largest exporters of iron ore, we need less than 2% of all the steel that is produced from our iron ore. Now this is the really interesting stuff – the labour requirements. If you look at it, getting the job done in ten years is entirely achieveable Including manufacturing half the components domestically, we can create 80,000 on going jobs in manufacturing and operations and maintenance. That's about 4 times more jobs than currently exist in the domestic fossil fuel supply sector. And to build everything, we need a peak construction workforce of 75,000 – the construction industry during the boom times was growing at 50,000 per year and we currently have a construction workforce of 1 million in Australia.
Portugal wind turbine factory, built in one year. Both towers and blades located near wind turbines Manufacturing is not an issue
There are currently about 11 million total jobs in Australia. This graph just shows the industries that are most relevant to ZCA2020 – Construction; Manufacturing; Professional & Technical services (including engineering), and the existing electricity sector. To the left is actual jobs. It has flatlined and is projected to flatline since the GFC. The green is how many jobs we would create total
We cost our entire plan We go into great detail and use very credible sources- for instance with solar thermal we use US Department Of Energy's Sandia Lab cost projections- checked off by Sargent and Lundy- one of the oldest and Largest power engineering consultancies in the world As with technologies in general, there are enormous reductions in costs to be made with CST as the industry grows and more capacity is installed The essential point is that, it is projected that with 2600 MW (less than 2 Hazelwoods) installed globally ( Power Towers with Molten salt storage- the technology that we use in our plan) the price of this electricity will come do around the equivalent to wind And with another 6100 MW (3 and a bit Hazelwoods) The price is equivalent to that from new coal plants – about 5cents per kWh Australian
So this is another myth the Can't Do campaign perpetuates – that renewable energy will always be way too expensive to compete against fossil fuels. In reality, as we have already seen with wind power and solar PV, renewable energy consistently gets cheaper as the rate of installation grows. The single biggest factor in these cost reductions is not the ongoing R&D, but scaling up deployment of the technologies and industrial learning curves. In the short term, renewables need price support to compete. But eventually, they will be more competitive. In Spain, they have already reduced the next round of Feed-in-Tariff by 30% due to the industry reducing their costs.
We have only focused on the Environmental arguments for this type of technology but there are many other reasons why it makes sense to switch to renewable energy.
Safe climate a bargain at 3.5% GDP. $37 Bn /yr in a $1200Bn economy But to weigh against these costs, is how much we'd end up spending on keeping the existing fossil fuel juggernaut going. If you add in regular capital expenditure and buying coal & gas, the cost of ZCA2020 is only about $200Bn more than what we'd spend out to 2020 anyway – so that' s more like 2% of GDP opportunity cost. This compares to many things including gambling spend 17billion a year, Funding propping up the outer fringe housing development sector around $40 billion a year. $90 billion in two federal stimulus packages etc. And remember, this is a mixture of public and private money – we are not suggesting the taxpayer funds the whole project. As discussed with the cost reductions earlier, renewables in the short term need a price support policy to allow a level playing field. This makes it viable for private companies to invest capital.
Remember that solar thermal plants and coal plants are similar in that they use heat, to boil steam, and drive a turbine. Difference is that solar uses mirrors, whereas a fossil plant burns coal. Each 1 m sq mirror we install in our Solar thermal plants- will save burning 20 tonnes of coal over its lifetime The rest of the generating infrastructure is roughly equivalent- same turbines- smokestacks similar to towers etc For every 1 msq mirror we choose not to install- we are choosing to burn 20 tonnes of coal, and put 72 tonnes of co2 into the atmoshere.