The Baton is passed..

This week the world learned of the sudden death of Stephen Schneider, Stanford University Climate Scientist, and passionate advocate for global change. Stephen travelled the world, speaking out, sharing research and debunking theories that had no scientific basis. He also encouraged other scientists to speak about their work, their observations and the potential implications.

I met Stephen on several of his visits to Australia, and was inspired by his enthusiasm for life, and always amused by his humour and witty commentary. He was a man whose physical strength was failing, but his personal energy and passion was still strong and felt by everyone who met him.

There will need to be more than one emerging climate scientist to pick up his baton, so if that's you, then go for it, it's now passed to you..

Image cropped from Original Standford University News 2006

Sydney's New Distributed Energy Plan

Sydney City has ambitious plans, led by tri and cogeneration specialist Allan Jones, formerly of Woking and London.

At our July monthly ATA meeting in Sydney, Allan spoke about his successes and his new role to help reduce Sydney's greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by 2030. Allan ranks as one of my heroes and to have him here, in my home town, is just excellent.

Australia is highly urbanised, and with the majority of people now living in cities, I recommend watching Allan's progress at the City of Sydney over the next few years, and let's share and learn from local successes that will drive energy innovation globally.

View Allan's page here. and my previous blog entry on Allan.

Charge Up in Sydney

Leading the way, with support from the Sydney City Council, my home town Sydney, now has its first commercial electric charging point. And while this particular pole, managed by ChargePoint, is for the exclusive use of GoGet car share group, it is hoped that over time, more of these will appear in Australian cities for the use of electric car owners and car share groups.

And with green power being supplied to the charging posts, that means driving is powered by wind and sun.

Organisations such as the Alternative Technology Association, now have some members actively seeking to convert their cars to electric. Many others like myself are awaiting the manufactured fully electric cars which are expected to start arriving in Australia in 2011.

As a typical Sydney driver, 95% of my driving is for trips less than 50 km, and living centrally, I use a car only three times a week. So bring on the electric cars, electric charging posts, and car sharing which are all definitely part of my low carbon future!!

Pic of CarCharging in Glebe by Mary in Glebe 25 May 2010

My Earth, Your Earth, Future Eaarth?

At this time of year, Sydney has this wonderful writers festival where authors come to discuss and be interviewed about their most recent works, and so I ventured out yesterday to see Bill McKibben, environmental campaigner, co-founder of 350.org and author of several books, including his most recent work Eaarth.

Actually, Bill spoke less about "making a life on a tough new planet" which is the theme of his book, and more about the social changes that are happening and the inequalities of a changing environment, where the greatest impacts are often on those who live the lowest carbon intense lifestyles. Bill spoke about needing new metaphors to help everyone get their heads around what is happening, and about developing a new framework for understanding the world.

And with all the buzz of the renewable industries, it is sobering to revisit why these changes are so important and so urgent, and to commend those like Bill who become involved and take on the daunting task of setting global goals and campaigning for our Earth/Eaarth which he does with his group 350.org.

We can all only speculate what lies ahead for us in the next few decades - what we do know is that we need to consider the big picture, and to re-think how we can share one unique and beautiful planet. As someone once said, "if we rented the earth like an apartment, then we are in definite danger of loosing our deposit bond". But unlike an apartment, we have no where else to go.. so let's clean up the place, stop digging up the floorboards, work out how to limit the size of our global group, and discover new ways to share this earth-dwelling that work for everyone, not just a privileged few. And just maybe, we could rediscover ourselves in the process.

Pic of Bill McKibben taken by Mary 23 May 2010

Clean Energy Real Estate: Position = Investment

The latest post on Watthead, authored by Garrett Brennan of Focus the Nation, includes the following:

"If we’re serious about solutions, we need people in power to get serious about investment in clean energy research, development and adoption, and then empower young entrepreneurs with tools to unleash their creativity. Climate change is NOT the defining issue of our generation. After all, today’s ‘millennials’ didn’t put all that global warming pollution up there. But building a clean and prosperous energy economy that averts the risks of climate change—and leading that effort in a way that inspires people in diverse communities across the country to take part in that collective effort—this is the defining issue of our generation."

Across the US, Focus the Nation are organising events for young entrepreneurs, professionals and future energy workers to engage in Clean Energy Forums. These types of movements need to, and will go global, under a variety of locally named and locally driven groups and will be across political boundaries, engaging a generation who already connect using the mediums of social online media.

Many previously prosperous and mature industries would be wise to take heed of the potential wealth to be derived from this creativity and that the "new energy economy" is already happening, in pockets and spaces around the globe. Change is upon us - embrace the change and get serious about opening doors for those who will drive the Clean Energy industries of the next decades, and in doing so, you also open the door to solutions that are needed to adapt and to minimise the risks of climate change.

Picture from Focus the Nation http://focusthenation.org/

Farming Liquid Green

In Perth last week, at a Sustainable Energy conference, I came across this company called BioLectric, doing very interesting stuff with Algae. They claim that "algae can capture and convert CO2 into biomass at a rate higher than any land based plants" and the CO2Algae process cultivates algae on marginal land utilising poor quality water. BioLectric promote their hot house pond systems which use the natural characteristics of the algae.

Algae to biomass/biofuels is an interesting and rapidly emerging area of investigation into energy systems - and has great potential, plus uses natural processes. And this reminds me of the business opportunities of the early computer days, when everyone was interested, but only a few took up the early challenges to change. Rethinking our processes and our energy systems is what is needed, and algae farming may just be one of those opportunities staring at our global collective face.

Image from http://www.biolectric.com.au/co2benefits.html

Storms of Our Future

Last night, I attended a talk in Sydney by Dr James Hansen, highly awarded scientist and author (see his new book, Storms of My Grandchildren). James has a long career of researching and defining the changes in our climate and is a world authority on this topic.

It was a full house, yet still an informal occasion, where questions were invited. James spoke about the many challenges we face, and he also spoke about some solutions, such as a new Fee and Dividend way of promoting and rewarding energy efficiency. James is among many who are seriously concerned about the global decline in public interest in climate science, while at the same time, the data is showing more conclusively that the planet is warming. His key message was that we need to reduce the CO2 levels to 350 ppm, if we want to pass on a workable planet to the next generations. To do that, James sees that we must generate our power without burning fossil fuels, primarily coal.

For the planet, he spoke about nuclear power generation, but for Australia, he could see a future using renewable options such as large scale solar thermal, because of the ideal conditions for that technology to function.

All that is well known, but one more point came out of the evening, and that was a brief discussion about the need for a "Churchill like" leader, who would engage the world and set a course for the future. And it made me think of a Winston Churchill quote that I came across last week which said “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes, you must do what is required.”

Dr James Hansen is a brilliant scientist, not by nature a public speaker, but he is "doing what is required". And maybe that's a question for us all, "what is it that we can do, that is required for our planet and our common future".

Image : Dr. James Hansen, of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York. Credit: NASA