Some Exciting Developments

I went to a conference last week on Energy Developments in my state of Victoria.

The old
Currently we produce the most carbon emissions per capita in a state that is in the country that produces the most emissions per capita. And the brown coal power stations in the LaTrobe Valley are the most polluting. Brown coal makes up between 90 and 95% of our total energy output. So everytime you turn on a light in Melbourne or most of Victoria 9 10ths of that energy comes from burning coal the remaining 10th comes from a combination of hydro, gas, wind and a tiny amount of solar. It just seems like something from the 1900's.

The new
Its funny even though the conference was about Energy - everyone who spoke at the conference focused on climate change and the Energy sector's response to it. The guys from the coal fired power stations talked about their ongoing efficiency efforts and technology they are testing to dry their coal (which reduces emissions) and capture CO2. A guy from Origin talked about the (very real) possibility of geosequestration of CO2 in the Bass Strait Oil and Gas fields (ie injecting the C02 where oil and gas used to be under the sea). A Spanish company Acciona is building their largest wind-farm near Ballarat - and also launching the largest "sostenibilidad" campaign ever by a corporate (see the link).

The future
And most exciting of all was the talk by Solar Systems - an Australian company that could revolutionise the production of solar energy. The efficiency of most PV systems is crap - so much so that to power Australia we would need to cover a good proportion of Victoria with PV cells to produce all the energy we need. These guys have developed a revolutionary system over the last 15 years which uses heliostats (funky mirrors) to focus the Sun 500 times onto very small PV cells. This can increase the efficiency of a PV cell up to 1500 times the average. Their intellectual property (IP)is really the box that surrounds the PV cell as this cools the air around the cell to 60C but still allows the reflection of the suns rays to produce energy. This revolutionary technology has the ability to be upscaled initially to be a 154MW powerstation (about 10% of the size of a large coal or nuclear plant)and depending on reducing cost and improving efficiency; Dave Holland the CEO of Solar Sytems suggests there might be 5000MW of these solar reflector power stations built in Australia in the next 25 years. And on his numbers it seems reasonably feasible - as long as we get a price on carbon. He has also been talking to the Chinese who are also very keen on the technology. Although he has reservations about the Chinese possibly stealing his IP (as they have done in the past to others). He presented the company's proposal to the Chinese Energy Minister a week before he later went with other Australian delegates and the Australian Government to a presentation by the same Chinese Minister on the future of energy. During the Chinese Minister's presentation he used some pictures from a slide that Dave had shown him a week earlier. After the presentation he went to talk with the Chinese about his problems about them using his pictures in their presentation. He spoke through an interpreter and the Chinese Minister claimed he did not understand Dave's concerns. I have attached an artist impression picture of what the power station might look like (thanks to the Chinese Energy Minister!)