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Today, the Australian government drastically scaled back its renewable energy targets for 2020, dropping them by nearly 20 percent. The new target, 33 TeraWatt-Hours, ends an extended period of uncertainty. The Abbot government had announced its intent to lower the target, but parliamentary negotiations were required to set a new one.
Australia's initial target, 41 TW-hr, had been set in 2009 with the goal of having renewables contribute 20 percent of the nation's electrical generation. But greater efficiency and reduced manufacturing has already pushed the fraction of renewables up over 13 percent. The Abbott government, which is generally hostile to climate science, didn't feel the need to overshoot its goals and so decided to cut the renewable energy target.
The article also states that the Australian Prime Minister "will appoint a 'wind farm commissioner' to field complaints about turbines, too."
Australia's geography and weather seem to make it a good candidate for national energy independence through solar and wind. Also, given China's new moves to realize its territorial ambitions (see: Spratley Islands), not relying on ships to bring you oil would seem to be a good idea.
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @09:08PM
lol. no more free!
tbh i don't know much about wind generated electricity but i can "see" that some windturbines are HUGE and assume that they can/do generate some kind of noise. maybe just regulate them like you would a existing or future airport?
the gripes i have with renewable energy is that some people build huge complexes, be it solar or wind, to make a huge profit only to spend it on more fossile fuel destroying technology ... say some completely non-green concrete 24 bed-room mansion, non sail-boat yacht or 12 V6 "sports"cars or such.
in the case of solar: a farm sitting 200 miles away and sending/selling the electricity to a non-solar house that has a hot roof because of constant irradiation by the sun.
ofc not everybody can afford or doesn't want to install a complete solar system so there is a need for solar farms.
but they should be licensed so that a non-solar house can buy "shares" in the farm and that the farm can only be so big "that it covers the load in immediate vicinity", say 20 km? and not further.
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it is interesting, however, that australia with a lot of dessert [semi-SIC] and ofc sand isn't a hub in solar technology manufacturing.
with all the free energy and raw materials they should have production costs that could give the chinese a real run for the money.
the tech coming out the solar factory goes straight around the corner to power the factory some more?
*shrug*
i guess saying "no" is easier then "yes"?
btw i think it IS possible to calculate a point were artificially producing methane becomes feasible by extracting CO2 from the atmosphere (or just use abundant coal) and adding 4 hydrogen atoms (abundant in ocean water)... maybe around 800% solar on-grid?