The Generator’s Geoff Ebbs puts Professor Ross Garnaut in the Cage to discuss his new book RESET. A blueprint for a green, socially just future for Australia.
Professor Garnaut, outlines the technology solutions he highlighted in his previous book Superpower, noting that the government’s current technology roadmap largely follows his lead. He discusses the value of clean hyrdrogen in building a clean manufacturing and export business.
In the second part of the interview Geoff and Ross discuss his economic measures to ensure that future growth is socially just. The Australian Income Security and the tax on wealth rather than income.
In this segment, the third part of the interview, Geoff asks Professor Garnaut about the differences between Green Growth and deGrowth, the reality of decoupling economic growth from environmental impact and whether we are creating a scientific dystopia in which wilderness is a theme park.
Professor Ross Garnaut has conducted two federal reviews of renewable energy and is Chairman of Zen Energy
Australia has the opportunity to be a renewable energy superpower, Professor Ross Garnaut said last week. “Nowhere else in the developed world are wind and solar so abundant,” he told and Energy Conference in South Australia.
Separately, the renewable energy economic newspaper, RenewEconomy, predicted that the renewable energy market will explode during 2017 with the costs of domestic and industrial solar generation falling well below traditional forms of electricity.
Leigh Storr, the CEO of Biosolar, told The Cage in 2014 that this year would be a water-shed year as domestic panels and battery storage would become cheaper that retail electricity.
A number of times this month, industry and the resource sector have demanded stable, long=term energy policy from politicians.
Australia positioned to be renewable energy superpower
The economics has shifted decisively in favour of renewable energy. Professor Ross Garnaut said, “Nowhere in the developed world are solar and wind resources together so abundant as in the west-facing coasts and peninsulas of southern Australia. Play our cards right, and Australia’s exceptionally rich endowment per person in renewable energy resources makes us a low-cost location for energy supply in a low-carbon world economy. That would make us the economically rational location within the developed world of a high proportion of energy-intensive processing and manufacturing activity. Play our cards right, and Australia could become a superpower of the low-carbon world economy.”
Big solar market headed for “huge” 2017, as costs continue to plunge
Solar costs have plummeted by 58% in just five years and look set to continue to fall by somewhere between 40 and 70% by 2040. Already solar plants are delivering electricity far cheaper than new coal, gas or nuclear,
