Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Renewable Energy Australia

Given the extravagant election promises regarding reductions of greenhouse emissions and greater renewable energy, does it come a surprise that the percentage of electricity coming from renewable resources has less than halved in the last 40 years? I guess not.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I suspect these figures actually reflect the gradual move away from hydroelectricity generation to more coal. Hydro power is considered to be renewable but it is vehemently opposed by environmentalists. In absence of any major hydro projects in Australia the relative share of renewable hydro energy has declined over the years.

It wouldn't surprise me that the drop in renewable generation (from 11% to 9%) under Howard government is due to the impact of drought on hydroelectricity generation.

Jonathan Lowe said...

100% rang tiger. Agree with you 100%. I was going to post this in the actual post, but oh well. The increasing use in electricity would also have pushed the percentage down.
Note that Rudd is saying that Australia will be 20% renewable energy by 2020.

Anonymous said...

Most renewable energy is hydro and that would show the kind of decline in your graph with or without a drought because its almost impossible to increase the amount of hydro, and hence it would represent a declining percentage of an overall increasing energy production even if the amount of hydroelectric generated hasn't changed.

BTW, most of the rest of so called renewable energy is biomass in some form. Wind and solar are tiny contributors to the total, for good reasons. They are expensive and unreliable.

Anonymous said...

What I find incredible is the way environmentalists and the Labour Party used the drop in hydro power generation as proof that Howard is an environmental criminal. They make it sound as if the Coalition have been running around the country blowing up solar plants and wind turbines built by Hawke and Keating. "Look we used to have more renewables before Howard than we have now!!!". Why haven't anyone in the media caught onto what is so bleeding obvious?

Jonathan Lowe said...

"Why haven't anyone in the media caught onto what is so bleeding obvious?"

It wouldn't be right for the media to tell the scientific truth now would it?

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