Business as usual... but for how long?

In middle class Australia, we are obsessed with our lifestyle. We strive to earn enough each day to maintain a residence with artificial climate control and steamy hot showers. We are able to transport ourselves in comfort to our destination, by car, train, boat or aeroplane, and we think no more about it. It's what we expect – the good life, that we worked for, that we believe is the norm for most of us in this lucky country. And that means we can work and run small businesses, based on that climate control, and that ease of transport, to serve our customers, and to deliver our goods. But for how long? The age of low cost energy is about to end, and it could end sooner rather than later, and we will wake one day, from this oil and coal slumber, feel the cold and the heat, and wonder how we will transport ourselves and our goods.

Is this fiction or is it real? How long can we afford to continue without alternatives, how long can we continue with business as usual as if could not happen?

To green or not to green..

A friend of mine, who is a respected professional, raised his concerns about the viability of changing our existing "coal based" economy. Part of my answer to him follows.....

Your observations were thoughtful and I think you have voiced a concern that many people have in terms of the cost factor, in particular that with change to renewable energy, your concern that “higher costs are inevitable”. In Australia, we do not want to reduce our standard of living, and very few of us want to go back to “living in small self sufficient communities as in medieval times”. I, for one, like the city life and my high tech gadgets!

My observations are that our lifestyles are best maintained by change to green energy earlier rather than later. Germany is doing this, and has made a huge commitment to renewable energy, and their economy is not just doing well, it is booming. My understanding is that the cost of electricity produced from wind farms is, at the moment, just slightly higher that that produced form coal fired power stations. If the emissions from coal fired stations were added and traded, then the cost of coal would be significantly higher. Or if the carbon produced was geo-sequestered, as is proposed, then this could add from 20% to 40% more to the cost of coal fired production of electricity. In terms of jobs, just like the computer industry, as many jobs lost in mining would be created, to build and maintain the wind and solar farms, and geothermal sites.

As you said, “we enjoy the benefits of electricity and profits from mining coal”, but if we continue to do this, it may well be at the expense of future generations. At some point, we need to make the change to renewable energy. Many professional and scientific minds in Australia and overseas believe that it is now economically feasible to begin this move, (initially to 25% renewables), and in fact, if we begin to export Aussie technology, it could well be a significant boost for the economy. Two hundred years ago, good people who had known no other system, did not see how they could run their farms without slaves. But it was possible, and took a war to change this mindset. We need a more peaceful transition to this new economy.

Happy CHAPS

Great stuff, this sunshine. CHAPS (Combined Heat and Power Solar) uses lots of it to both heat water and produce electricity from the same unit. It's still in test mode, already operational at a residential complex at ANU in Canberra ACT, but just wait until some entrepreneur takes this Aussie idea and runs with it. It's a system to convert solar radiation to both electrical energy and heat energy at the same time, and uses parabolic trough mirrors to concentrate the solar radiation. I saw a model at GREX and spoke to some very astute young Uni dudes. If you want to contact them yourself, contact the Centre for Sustainable Energy ANU Canberra, ACT Australia.

Water Water everywhere, only coal to drink

It seems to me quite ironic that, just days after the approval of yet another coal mine for the Hunter region (Anvill Hill, NSW) the area is the sad recipient of a massive deluge and flood, with tragic loss of life and huge property damage to many households, farms and small businesses. I doubt if anyone could direct link the winds and record downpours of this storm to Climate Change, however, extreme weather such as was experienced this weekend is a major predicted outcome of Climate Change, which is, we are told by scientists, being driven by the burning of fossil fuels, in particular, coal and oil.

Whether this particular storm was more intense due to Climate Change is not the real question. The insurance industry has the statistics, and, overall, claims from storm damage are increasing globally, and so extremes of weather are occurring more often and with more intensity. And so we must ask ourselves whether coal mining and burning coal is something we should be continuing to do.

Our economy depends on electricity, and yes, that’s what I am using to write and send this post, make that coffee, to kick start the day, and have a warm shower. Life would be a bit drab without that wonderful stuff. But why coal to produce it? We are using a product that drives an antique industry (antique being defined as something over 100 years). As creative mammals on this planet, we now have an IT and cell phone industry that I for one find amazing. Yet our fossil fuel driven energy production industry is a dinosaur, a linear and, at times, an environmentally damaging industry. I’m not using a typewriter, or a quill pen to write this. I’m using a silicon based system that evolved over the past 20 years.

Actually, the technology for clean energy production, and here I mean wind, solar, and geothermal, is at the stage of the early PC, and experience in many other countries has shown that green energy production is now able to replace 20-30% of our current energy production methods. The brick-wall is simply the resistance to change and the lack of motivation to invest in new infrastructure. Perhaps the floods this weekend may motivate a few more people into thinking about overcoming that resistance.

GREX Expo - where are all the peeeeple?

GREX was really great, speakers, stands, all the good stuff! I was on the ATA (alternative technology association) stand on Sunday and it was moderately busy, a lot of people asking about the RENEW magazine, and membership of the new Sydney group. Talks went on all day and I managed to get away to see the talk by Mark Diesendorf about his new book "GreenHouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy". Important stuff, so where were all the people?

For the past four years, I have run business development programs for Young Entrepreneurs, and I so often get asked about whats a great business idea. And I just point to three trends -
1. population - globally that's lots and lots more people to come,
2. technology - always look to new ideas
3. climate change - its the biggest trend and if you combine all three trends, then there's where the new emerging (and money making opportunities are) - and G-Rex was about trend 2 and 3. So where were all the people that ask me that question?