Friday 29 May 2009

Re-powering our cities

This week I was delighted to meet one of my heroes, Allan Jones, former CEO of the London Climate Change Agency. Allan was speaking at an event in Sydney. He talked about his "show by doing" approach and he updated us on on the work at Woking and in London. Allan does not wait for the future, he creates it, by taking technology that is proven and using that to develop low emission projects that link to other projects. In Woking and London, these projects are based on cogeneration and photovoltaics and they deliver energy savings in very short time spans, and he designed this for both new buildings and for retrofit of older ones.

There is no one solution to the new energy era - it's a combination of renewable utility level power and local decentralized systems, smart grids and energy efficiency. We are now in the deployment phase and every organisation can "show by doing". In Allan's words, "the barriers to this (a sustainable low carbon future) are not technical but regulatory, mindset and vested interest".

The City of Sydney has an ambitious plan to reduce CO2 emissions by 70% by 2030 - so we need lots of Aussie people to follow Allan's example of the Power of One and to be part of this new future!

Thursday 28 May 2009

Beautiful sea holds the power

Yesterday I attended a full day Alternative Energy forum in Sydney. One of the speakers was Dr Tim Finnigan from BioPower Systems. Tim is passionate about wave and tidal power from our coastal seas, and equally passionate about an unobstructed view across the water. His systems are designed around natural movements and are resident on the sea floor.

Tim spoke about the two 250KW pilot programs being developed off King and Flinders Islands, Tasmania, and about his vision of plants ranging from 40MW up to 100MW. Waves and tides are considerably more consistent than wind, so it's an interesting option to power coastal cities in countries where coastal conditions are favourable.

BioPower Systems is one of the companies exploring this option in Australia. Hopefully, in a not too distant future, Australia's beautiful and powerful beaches will be famous in one more way, the power generated from under the waves.

Monday 25 May 2009

Sunshine is NOW Deployable

"Now is the Time for Deployment of Emission Free Dispatchable Power"

This week I will be presenting a Global snapshot of Large Scale Solar Power Generation -looking at the larger systems operating in both PV (photovoltaic) and Solar Thermal and also taking a peek at what's on the drawing board around the world.

When I first began preparing this talk for the Sydney Group of ANZSES, there was very little to say about Australia. Other than one system under development in Victoria, we do not come close to having any operational system that could be deemed commercial. Fortunately, the recent budget proposals make Australia's utility level solar power scene much more interesting. It's not a technical discussion - this talk is about deployment, what's happening and what's planned. If you are interested to attend the session at 6pm Tuesday May 26th at UTS in Sydney, then see details here.

pic by Sun ex Flickr by onlinewoman

Friday 8 May 2009

Taking on Coal in the USA

In the US, there is a ground swell against building more coal fired coal power plants, and this is leading to some interesting advertising campaigns. Essentially, these campaigns are making it much more difficult for the coal industry, and makes long term investment in new coal fired power plants a high risk venture. Mark Kresowik, Corporate Accountability Representative for the Sierra Club, comments: “Coal plants are simply a poor investment, no matter where in the country you are building them. We need to be investing wisely, especially in these economic times, and that means looking at energy efficiency and renewable energy projects that can create jobs and help fight global warming, without the drawbacks of coal.”

If you want to see why we need to re-power with truly clean energy sources, see Al Gore's latest TED TALK. The seven minute video also includes some rather strange coal company promotion attempting to convince us that coal is not only clean, it's cute?