$4.5 Billion for ‘clean energy’

The Rudd Government has revealed plans to invest $4.5 billion to support clean energy, made up of $2.4 billion for new coal technologies, $1.6 billion in solar technologies, and $465 million to establish a new organisation called ‘Renewables Australia’.
The $1.6 billion anted-up for solar represents a ten-fold increase in government funding. This new ‘Solar Flagship Program’ plans to have four new solar plants feeding the national grid, with a total capacity of 1000 MW (equal to one of Australia’s 30 giant coal-fired plants). In a joint media release with Martin Ferguson and Climate Change Minister Wong, Environment Minister Peter Garrett claimed that this ‘ambitious’ target will be three times the size of any solar project currently operating anywhere in the world. But the full capacity will not be on-line until 2017, by which time the world’s solar leaders (USA and Spain notably) are expected to have installed as much as 20 000 MW of solar plant. In fact in the same week that the government announced it’s plans, the Californian giant BrightSource Energy signed contracts to complete 14 plants generating a total of 2600 MW over the next four years while Spain plans to have another 730 MW on line by 2010, according to an article on RenewableEnergyWorld.com.
Mark Diesendorf from the University of NSW told ABC Radio National on May 13: “The kind of resources that are being directed to renewable energy here are the resources that you give if you only want to keep doing one-off demonstration projects. What renewable energy needs now is the incentives to expand the market on an on-going basis to build commercial solar power stations and large scale commercial wind farms.”
Minister Garrett claims “The Government’s commitment to establish the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute will ensure that Australia continues to be a world leader in the development of low emissions coal technology.” But many people think the government is putting it’s money into unproven technologies rather than into renewables, in a desperate attempt to green-wash Australia’s position as the world’s biggest coal exporter.