Strawbale House

Dear Kevin / Penny

Following the very disappointing outcome of the Conference in Copenhagen I feel disillusioned and let down by our political leaders. It seems that no binding agreement has been reached. The fluffy accord that emerged feels woefully inadequate to address the immense challenge of climate change.

Following Copenhagen it feels like many leaders have been pointing fingers at other nations arguing that nation X is not doing enough and therefore we won’t be taking bold action either. This is shameful and shows no leader ship whatsoever. A real leader would be by example, providing binding and bold action to lower green house gas emissions.

I am well aware that one nation alone, no matter what size it is, cannot avert climate change and catastrophic events induced by it. Someone has to start though, and hopefully other nations will follow.

With the elections coming up sometime in 2010 I would like hear from you:

• What binding and measurable action you will put in place to meaningfully address climate change
• What does “Think Globally, Act Locally” mean to you.
• What additional support will you provide to developing nations in their quest out of poverty

I look forward to your response

Kind Regards
Mark

James Howard Kunstler, prominently featured in the peak oil documentary “The End of Suburbia“, has written a frank and chilling assessment of where the world is at for “The Daily Reckoning“.

Unfortunately it is not all rosy, but as usual it’s all in how we look at things. Even though there seem to be many, many challenges ahead of us, James reckons that many good things will come out of the challenges we face, and I indeed concur with James in that. Our world needs to change for humans to survive and peak oil may actually force us to change towards using more sustainable practices in all we do.

The article by James Howard Kunstler is is titled: The Bottom of This Society’s Ability to Process Reality

According to news.com.au reporting about the Australian federal budget for 2009, Australia will be spending up to $1.5 billion over the next nine years to build up to 4 massive solar power plants. Plans for these solar power plants are on a scale the world has never seen before.

These massive solar power plants could produce up to 1000 megawatts of electricity. These solar power plants my be either photo voltaic plants or solar thermal power plants.

Finally the K. Rudd government seems to be honouring one of their election promises by supporting clean energy production.

Disappointingly up to $2 billion will be spent on building conventional coal power plants incorporating “Clean Coal” technology that doesn’t yet exist. NeeravBhatt has given a nice analogy for the term “Clean Coal” in one of his updates on Twitter by highlighting that “Clean Coal” is a bit like “Friendly Murder”.

The more I think about the state of solar electricity generation and government support the more I understand that gross metered feed in tariffs are a really powerful means to increase the uptake of solar panels amongst the public.

The current scheme of RECS is severely flawed as it doesn’t really increase the uptake of solar power in Australia. Currently mostly people that are already interested in solar power generation are installing photo voltaic panels and using the RECS to help with the upfront cost. The problem with this is that the RECS embody all the environmental benefits for the next 15 years and once sold, the owner of the solar system really can not claim any environmental benefits for the system.

Basically by selling the RECS the owner has sold his benefit most likely to a coal or gas powered electricity provider and as such all the electricity produced by the solar system for the next 15 years carries all the green house gases and other environmental nasties (coal sludge anyone?) that the power station is off-setting when it purchased the RECS.

The current plan of the government to offer 5 times the amount of RECS form the middle of the year only makes this situation worse as any solar electricity system is still producing the same amount of clean energy but when selling the RECS the power stations actually get to claim 5 times the offset for  their nasties than is actually being offset.

Looking at it in this way, really the only one benefiting from the new scheme are the big power generators. The public and the environment will suffer as a result of the introduction of these “phantom” RECS.

A gross metered feed in tariff on the other hand measures the actual amount of clean energy being produced and by having a gross metered feed in tariff a whole new sector of clients will be attracted to solar electricity generation. A gross feed in tariff makes it a lot easier to look at solar electricity generation from an investment perspective as it is relatively easy to work out how long the pay back period would be and what return on investment would be possible.

So please, anyone caring about the enviroment and wishing to see a dramatic increasee in power generation from renewable sources should sign the petition at http://www.feedintariff.com.au/ to show the government that we do care and that we want them to fulfill on their election promise to look after the environment.

The Australian federal government announced today that it would scrap the unpopular means-test for the rebate for installation on solar panels. This means-test restricted the rebate to households earning less than $100,000.

The means-tested rebate was worth up to $8,000 where as the maximum rebate under the new system will be about $7,500. This small decrease in the available rebate comes with a bit of a sweetener as the new rebate will now also be available to businesses and community groups.

The maximum rebate, for an average-sized 1.5 kilowatt system, will be about $7,500 and a smaller-sized 1.0 kilowatt system will attract a rebate of about $5,000.

Disappointingly, the value of the rebate will fluctuate and it will decline from 2012.

The current system will stay in place until July, when the new system will take over.

Source: The Canberra Times

As most of you are probably aware our current economy is driven by constant growth and that the success of any commercial venture is always measured by continued growth of sales, earnings, and market share. Since I have realised this myself quite a few years back I have always wondered how such continued growth can be sustained, not just in an environmental perspective.

I have recently come across this site called “The Story of Stuff” which kind of explained how the current economy works and that we can’t keep on expecting relentless, continuing growth.

The site features a 20 minute movie where Annie Leonard explains how our economy currently works and how this needs to be changed to enable a sustainable economy which in turn even helps the environment.

One scary fact that I always suspected but thought was a bit of a conspiracy theory is that world economies have been deliberately set-up for more and more consumerism in order to keep the earnings of the big corporations growing.

I do highly recomend taking 20 minutes to watch the movie on the “The Story of Stuff” website to anyone interested in sustainabilty.

Also, please share your thoughts on what Annie Leonard presents in the movie in the comments section of this article. I’d also like to hear about any ideas this movie might have inspired.

For ourselves, Rosalba and I are most likely to move our superannuation money into an super account that invests more into sustainable companies. We are currently looking at Australian Ethical Supperannuation as we believe that ethical investment includes investment into companies with sustainable practices.

So again, please share your thoughts in the comments section. Remeber every civilised and intelligent comment until the end of August 2008 goes in the draw to win the Book of House Plans.

The Channel 7 Sunrise team have started another petition to stop the means testing of the solar rebate in Australia. The Sunrise petition already has over 30,000 signatures so it looks like this petition will make an impression.

If you would like the means test for the solar rebate to be scrapped, please sign the Channel 7 Sunrise petition. I believe you should sign this petition even if you have already signed a previous petition for this purpose.

The Sunrise petition can be found at http://sunrisefamily.com.au/current/petition/

Also please do tell your friends about the Sunrise petition and get them to sign it as well, if the feel the means testing should be scraped.

We just got the most current ReNew magazine issued by the Alternative Technology Association which contained a number of interesting articles. One that I found most interesting was about “Solar Guerrillas“.

Solar Guerrillas are people that install small grid connected solar systems without approval by the utilities or respective government or council. The Solar Guerrillas reason that every little bit helps and that the monopolisation on the production and distribution of energy threatens the health of our environment and the very life of our planet.

I personally wouldn’t go quite that far but certainly agree that the monopolisation of energy production and distribution is not the best way it could be done. When we initially looked into getting electricity connected to our shed on our country block of land, the prices quoted by the local electricity provider did seem like highway robbery.

I am tempted to try my own solar grid connected system where we are now, but doing it legally is just to expensive at this time. On the other hand I don’t really feel like breaking the law which I think these solar guerrillas end up doing.

The one admirable thing about these solar Guerrillas is that they are quite happy to share the energy they feed into the grid with their neighbours without regard for financial compensation.

What do you think? Are these Solar Guerrillas doing something worthwhile or are they just some uncontrolled freaks?

Have you noticed how shopping dockets seem to get longer and longer?

I have just been to Big W to pick up a hooded kitty litter tray. That was the only item I purchased and the docket for the one item is nearly ½ metre long. (Ok, I am exaggerating a little bit here, it is actually just a tad under 40cm long.)

Now, Big W is not the only culprit producing extremely long dockets. Some BP service petrol stations produce huge dockets as well just for a simple purchase of petrol with nothing else.

You may now think, what’s the problem with a long docket? It’s just a piece of paper. The way I see it there are multiple things wrong with excessively long dockets.

1. It is wasteful. While everyone is talking about saving the environment and lowering greenhouse gas emissions shops introduce longer dockets using up more paper.
2. Some of these dockets are not even normal paper but thermal transfer paper which I would not be surprised used some kind of toxic substance.
3. You can’t stick such a long docket in your wallet without performing a little origami trick first as the dockets are too big.

If you have come across some shops that produce ridiculously long dockets why don’t you leave a comment with the shops name and maybe we can shame them into producing more reasonably sized dockets again.

Rosalba has forwarded a link to me for a petition to stop the Australian Government introducing the means testing for the solar rebate of up to $8000 towards the installation of photovoltaic panels on your home.

You may have already seen my other post about this. I invite all readers to sign the petition on-line (link below) so we can show the government that we are not happy with means testing for the solar rebate.

Following is the quote with more info in the petition.

There is a petition that you can sign to try and get the Fed Govt to remove the $100k income cap on the $8000 PV rebate. Representations have been made to Wayne Swan and the shadow Minister for the environment Greg Hunt. It would be good for individuals to send them letters and emails as this policy has already had a devastating impact on the PV industry with cancelled orders, a drastic drop off in enrolments and job losses in the industry are imminent. Given our problems with green house gases and peak oil surely the government should be encouraging the use of solar like the Queensland government.

If you too feel passionate about this issue please forward to a small group of your friends.

The reference is :
http://www.gopetition.com.au/petitions/solar-panel-rebate.html