Author: admin

  • Qld Democrat Senator pulls the plug on new dams

    Queensland Democrat Senator, Andrew Bartlett, has launched a petition for the people of South East Queensland to show the State Government they want water recycling rather than dams.

    What if it was your valley? "The people of Brisbane and surrounding areas need to show their support for those communities in the Mary Valley that face being destroyed by the Traveston Dam," Senator Bartlett said. "They can show the courage that Peter Beattie lacks by voicing their willingness to use recycled water to address our water needs.

    Govt backing off real issue: "Recycling Brisbane’s waste water will provide more water than the Traveston and Wyaralong Dams combined, yet the Premier and Local Councils seem to believe people won’t accept it.

    Toowoomba litmus test for rest of state? "This petition is a chance for people to show State and Local Governments that they will accept recycling. The Premier has supported the Toowoomba Mayor’s push for recycled water consumption in that community, yet he doesn’t have the guts to promote the same option for the rest of the South East.

    Govt dodging recycling question: "Recycling for domestic consumption is clearly the fairest, most reliable, cost effective and environmentally sound option to combat our water crisis, yet the Government can’t or won’t show the courage necessary to sell this fact to Queenslanders.

    Anything but the wastewater solution: "Instead we have the Government upgrading existing dams, building new dams and now an energy intensive desalination plant to solve the crisis."

    Reference: to sign the petition go to http://www.andrewbartlett.com.au

    Erisk Net, 26/7/2006

  • 14 US States fund renewables through power bills

    Project information includes:

    – project location;
    – resource type (e.g., wind, geothermal, etc.);
    – nameplate capacity;
    – project participants (e.g., developer/owner);
    – project status (i.e., online, pending, or cancelled);
    – online date (if applicable); and
    – power purchase agreement (PPA) counterparty (if applicable).

    Incentive information includes:
    – supporting clean energy fund;
    – incentive type (e.g., grant vs production incentive vs loan);
    – original and revised incentive amount;
    – date of incentive award;
    – solicitation name (if any); and
    – treatment of the project’s tradable renewable certificates (TRCs – i.e., whether the fund places any restrictions on the sale of TRCs from the project).

    Broad comparisons: In addition to reporting the incentive as it is actually structured, the report also normalises all incentives to their equivalent 5-year production incentive value in order to facilitate broad comparisons across projects, technologies, and clean energy funds.

    Reference: Mark Bolinger, Ryan Wiser; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; The Impact of State Clean Energy Fund – Support for Utility-Scale Renewable Energy Projects.

  • Reader asks government to back Solar

    A correspondent to the Sydney Morning Herald this week suggested that the government should provide interest free loans to householders to invest in solar panels. The loans could be repaid with the $1100 per annum that most houses spend on electricity. "Imagine the effect of one million less homes being reliant on coal-fired power generation," the letter said.