Solar Power the Key to Sustainable Future says Prof Flannery

By Rich Bowden

Img left: Tim Flannery. Credit: scienceinmelbourne2007

Img right: Climate change protesters, Parliament House, Canberra 2009. Credit: Paul Hanly.

Author, environmentalist, scientist and former Australian of the Year Tim Flannery has used a keynote address at Australia's foremost solar industry conference to reiterate his support for solar power as the globe's single most useful renewable resource. Prof Flannery also called on China and the U.S. to exhibit leadership in climate talks in Copenhagen.

Speaking in an address to the ATRAA 09 [Appropriate Technology Retailers Association of Australia] Conference and Exhibition in the capital Canberra yesterday, Professor Flannery outlined how harvesting the sun could be the basis for a sustainable energy future. He said the renewable energy "...directly harvests the ultimate source of Earth’s power, the sun, and costs to deploy it are coming down," according to a report by EcoGeneration magazine.

Prof Flannery said though various attempts by the renewable energy industry to harvest the power of the sun in a sustainable way had met with problems, not least through the sometime lack of government support, he stated he looked forward to the age when solar energy was used, not only as the major source of renewable energy, but also to provide power to major projects such as the desalination of water at plants around the globe.

Moving on to the world's climate change crisis, Prof Flannery also commented optimistically on the progress he expected the world to make at the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen in December. Citing positive new leadership shown by the United States on climate change since the election of the Obama administration, he called for the U.S. and China to set an example for the rest of the world in Copenhagen.

“Between them, China and the US account for 40 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. If they were to come together with an agreed position at the table at Copenhagen then we will see advances being made and the rest of the world will have very little choice but to move forward with the initiative taken by those countries,” he said.

Meanwhile the Sydney Morning Herald has today quoted Prof Flannery as calling on the Australian Government to set up a single trading desk for farmers to sell carbon credits to the United States.

He says the government-operated single desk had the potential to earn up to 10 percent of the one billion tonnes of carbon offsets the U.S. would need to buy offshore under an U.S. emissions trading scheme expected to pass the Senate later this year, said the SMH.

Outlining the scheme, Prof Flannery said: ‘‘The Government could then buy a certain amount of permits from farmers for carbon soil storage … at, say, $15 a tonne and sell them on to the US at $20 through the desk,’’ Mr Flannery said to the SMH in an interview. ‘‘If we could get 10 per cent of the US market at, say, $20 that would be about $2 billion a year coming into Australia and [would] help Australian farmers expand carbon storage projects.’’

He said the single desk plan would ensure carbon offset schemes were legitimate before they were bought by the government-run single desk as government assessors would examine the offsets before purchase.


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