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.