Great Barrier Reef under threat

Australia's Great Barrier Reef Photo: Getty Images

With all the recent stories concerning climate change and new ways to combat it, you could be forgiven for believing that the problem was beginning to disappear. However, and article on The Sydney Morning Herald website on 20/05/2009 could dent that optimism slightly.

The article, “Reef to be hit by bleaching without climate action” focuses on the threat posed Australia’s Great Barrier Reef caused by climate change:

….in 10 years’ time the reef will be hit by annual bleaching episodes, the network’s assistant convener Phillip Sutton told the inquiry.

“The bottom line is the sea is now warm enough,” he told the Senate’s select committee on climate policy.

“In 10 years’ time, the risk of bleaching becomes a certainty every year.

“We need to actively cool the earth immediately.”

The Great Barrier Reef is a world renowned attraction, and generates a huge amount of tourism for Australia. More importantly though it is home to a huge diversity of living organisms – many of which are unique to the waters off Queensland’s coast. The bleaching of coral in the reef could lead to many aquatic species in the area dying out.

Australia has recently announced it’s plans for reducing the effect of climate change, however, many believe that this is not enough – an idea expressed strongly in the article:

Australia must cut its carbon emissions by more than 25 per cent if it wants to save the Great Barrier Reef from annual bleaching episodes, a Senate inquiry has been told.

The Climate Emergency Network says the Government’s highly conditional target of a 25 per cent cut to emissions by 2020 is grossly inadequate to stop ocean temperatures from rising.

And further emphasis is placed on the raising the current government targets later in the article:

Friends of the Earth national climate justice co-ordinator Damien Lawson called for carbon cuts of 40 to 50 per cent to satisfy the ambitions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“We need 40 to 50 if we’re going to meet level climate scientists they need,” he said, adding a 25 per cent target was at the bottom end of the IPCC’s range.

The views expressed in the article are ones which are held by number of prominent figures, as well as many members of the public. Although it is commendable that the Australian Government has begun implementing strategies to combat climate change, the target date as well as the current emissions target surely isn’t enough to under threat environments such as The Great Barrier Reef.

Biodiesel plant to be constructed in the Illawarra

Soy beans could be used to reduce our reliance on oil based fuels

The Illawarra Mercury continued its recent trend of recognizing environmentally based news stories as major news rather than mere footnotes in the 19/05/2009 edition of the paper.

“Beans means jobs – Our soy-led recovery: 235 new positions” was the front page, attention grabbing headline, with a full report entitled “$243 mil biodiesel plant for region” on page 5 of the newspaper.

Like a story in the same paper the day before, regarding solar power, perhaps the main focus of the article is on the jobs that will be created by the construction of the plant. This can not only clearly be seen in the headline, but the trend continues throughout the body of the article:

The news is even better for the region’s growing legion of unemployed, with the development to create 500 jobs during construction and 235 permanent full-time jobs once complete.

“This is an exciting development for Wollongong that will breathe new life back into the port,” Member for Wollongong Noreen Hay said.

“I’m delighted that it’s come to this stage and it’s going to mean 500 jobs in my electorate.”

Obviously with the current financial crisis, dealing with unemployment is a major issue. However, the green credentials of the plant are expressed on the exert under the headline:

The nation’s fledgling soybean industry has sunk its roots into the Illawarra, with a $243 million Australia-first soybean biodiesel plant to be built at Port Kembla within two years.

Minister for Lands Tony Kelly yesterday announced planning approval for the facility, which will process soybeans and produce 288 million litres of clean fuel a year.

Green credentials at the port soared with the announcement of the plant, which will equate to taking 187,000 cars off NSW roads each year.

The green credentials of the plant are explained in more detail in the full report a few pages in – particularly in relation to Government targets:

The minister expects the plant to be completed within two years – just in time to meet government targets.

“In July 2007 the NSW Government implemented legislation to mandate the blending of all diesel fuel blended with 2 per cent biodiesel. The mandate will increase from 2 per cent to 5 per cent in 2011,” Mr Kelly said.

The rest of the article is set aside to explaining how the construction of the plant will ease unemployment in the area. Like the article on solar power the day before, it brings to the publics attention that environmentally forms of energy/fuel are being planned for the future, but also that these green technologies and policies could be a huge step in battling the current financial crisis.

South Australia investigating other forms of renewable energy

The raw power of the ocean is a potential source of renewable energy

Whilst the Federal Government has recently been focusing its attention to solar power, other renewables such as wind and wave power have not been forgotten.

This is particularly the case in South Australia, where wave energy is being investigated, as the article on the Sydney Morning Herald website, “Wave energy pilot plant planned”, would suggest:

The South Australian Government has approved a $5 million wave energy pilot plant off the Eyre Peninsula coast.

Wave technology has arguably received much less attention that other renewables such as solar and wind power. Naturally then, the technology behind harnessing wave energy has fallen behind it’s renewable counterparts, a point addressed by the South Australian Premier:

Premier Mike Rann said today that Wave Rider Energy would establish its plant off Elliston and hoped to make the technology commercially viable.

“South Australia is said to have excellent wave energy potential due to the nature of its coastline and the power of waves generated in the Southern Ocean,” Mr Rann said.

“Wave energy represents a largely untapped sustainable energy resource and is seen to be one of the most environmentally benign forms of energy generation currently available.”

So there is currently a lot of potential for wave energy to become a viable source of renewable energy. However, that potential has yet to be fully realised. Hopefully, wave energy plants such as the one planned for South Australia will increase our knowledge of harnessing energy from the waves, and thus improve the technology required.

Australia plans to become leader in green energy

Solar power plants have been promised by the Federal Government

Recently, the Australian Federal Government announced the Australian budget to the population. Naturally, during a financial crisis, a lot of the budget was focused on short to medium term solutions in that respect, however, the environment was fortunately not forgotten. The article on The Australian website on 12/05/2009, “Budget aim to ‘green up’ power generation”, investigates one area of the environmental issue which the government will be tackling:

Australia is to change the way it makes electricity, with huge new solar power plants and cleaner coal facilities to be built.

The federal government will spend billions “greening up” electricity and says it wants to lead the world in the field.

Allocating money to green technologies such as solar power is an important step forward in an attempt to combat the effects of climate change. Indeed, the Government is focusing on solar power as a main source of renewable energy:

….$1.5 billion will be spent building up to four massive solar power plants on a scale the world has not seen before.

The solar farms will pump out as much electricity as a large coal-fired power station – 1000 megawatts – and, according to the government, three times the size of any solar power plant in the world.

The commitment to solar power would seem obvious from an outsiders view of Australia, due to the large, considerably empty spaces towards the centre of the country. Also, the amount of sunlight Australia receives would make solar power seem an ideal form of renewable energy.

However, Australia currently relies on coal to produce most of its electrical power – with coal also being the major export for the country. Naturally, measures are being taken to try and utilise the current industry and infrastructure:

But the government has not forgotten coal – Australia’s biggest export – with $2 billion to be spent building between two and four industrial-sized coal-fired power plants which use cleaner technology.

The plants will use Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology, which captures the carbon emissions from power plants and stores them underground.

The technology is still largely unproven but advocates hope it will clean up coal by 2020.

Whilst this is a seemingly good intention by the government, the article makes note that the technologies needed for ‘clean coal’ are largely unproven, and even criticised by those advocating cleaner sources of energy.

Proven or not though, the current schemes being implemented by the Federal Government should begin to reduce emissions. But much more will need to be done if we are to reach the 25% target in emission reductions by 2020.

Wind power expanding

Could turbines like these be the future for producing electrical power? Photo: Dust Networks

The wind is often an overlooked source when it comes to producing green power, with much more emphasis being with using solar power to produce electricity. However, in some parts of Europe, wind power is fast becoming one of the leading sources of ‘green’ electricity.

This is shown in a recent article (20/05/2009) from the British BBC website, “Largest wind farm to be expanded”. The story refers to the largest onshore wind farm in Europe, which is located in Scotland:

Europe’s largest onshore wind farm is to be expanded further, Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond has announced.

Mr Salmond was speaking as he officially switched on the 140-turbine Whitelee wind farm on Eaglesham Moor in East Renfrewshire.

He said developers ScottishPower Renewables had been given permission to add a further 36 turbines to the site.

The fact that green sources of power are becoming more prevalent shows that governments are beginning to take a step in the right direction, concerning the future of climate change and the environment. Also, not only has ScottishPower Renewables set up a wind farm, but they are successfully trying to expand on this. The benefits of the wind farm are explained further on in the article:

That will allow the £300m wind farm to power 250,000 homes and could create up to 300 jobs, Mr Salmond said.

So, like the plan for solar power plants discussed in an earlier blog, the introduction of wind farms not only provides clean energy, but also creates jobs. An important pro in the current global financial crisis. However, wind power has it’s drawbacks – namely the size required for wind farms which is also explained in the article:

The first minister officially connected the wind farm, which covers an area about the size of Glasgow city centre…

Each turbine at Whitelee, which started producing electricity in January 2008, stands 110m high.

Dave Morris, director of ramblers Scotland, also adds more perspective – as well as his own views -  to the scale and size of a project such as erecting a wind farm:

“Hundreds of giant turbines and their associated electricity transmission lines must not be built on the land of Scotland. We cannot sacrifice the world famous wildness and beauty of Scotland in order to meet the energy demands of southern Britain.”

So wind farming has that underlying problem that many other green technologies can avoid. Unfortunately, current wind farming infrastructure is unlikely to progress dramatically in the immediate future – meaning that in order to utilise the wind as a source of electrical power, huge amounts of empty space have to be allotted. Also, the capturing and storing of wind energy is still not exactly a fine art. All of these issues though are in the back of the minds of those advocating wind farm technology:

Director of ScottishPower Renewables Keith Anderson said….more work was needed on infrastructure to develop the industry, particularly to improve power grid connections and capacity to handle even larger offshore wind farms and wave and tidal projects.

The positives to take away though are that at least green technologies are being investigated and implemented to try and curb carbon emissions. However, more research is clearly needed to make green technologies such as those in wind farming both environmentally, and economically viable.

New estimates on the effects of climate change

The Ross Ice Shelf Photo by John Anderson

The threat of the effects of global warming has been a well documented one – particularly concerning rising waters due to the ice caps melting. Most of the predictions made by scientists have been for the water levels to rise dramatically, causing some concern to many people.

A report on the Sydney Morning Herald website though could put those minds, if only slightly, at ease with an article it ran on the 15/05/2009. “Sea level rise half as much as predicted” You would think would be met with a degree of optimism – one that the first sentence hardly tries to dispel:

A rapid collapse of the ice sheet in West Antarctica would raise sea levels by an average of about three metres, half as much as previously thought, a study shows.

However, the same definitely can’t be said of the very next line which puts this news into a harsh reality:

The effect, however, would still be catastrophic, with a rise of just one metre causing devastation in coastal areas around the globe, scientists said.

So, not exactly the good news you could hope to find simply by glancing at the title. However, as doom and gloom as the article seems to be, the fact that the sea levels aren’t going to rise by as much as was originally thought provides some small glimmer of hope. If world governments begin to implement more environmentally sound policies, we may yet have a chance to minimise the damage that rising sea levels could cause.

This of course has to be taken with a pinch of salt however – one which the article serves up perfectly at the end:

Commenting on the new study, Erik Ivins, of the California Institute of Technology, said the predicted lower figure of 3.2 metres was good news, but a rise of only 0.5 to one metre would “cause catastrophic geopolitical and economic devastation in many urbanised coastal settings”.

The Sun – The Answer?

Photo: www.swpc.noaa.gov

In recent months it has been uncommon to see one environmentally based story in the front pages of The Illawarra Mercury – let alone two in the same issue as is the case with the 18/05/2009 edition. As well as an article urgently informing us of the effects climate change may have on our beaches, readers were also treated to an article outlining the federal governments plans for greener technologies.

The article entitled “Ray of light on solar job plans” delves into the governments plans for solar power. Particularly the amount of money that is being invested into the technology:

The Federal Government’s $1.4 billion investment in solar power farms could help the Illawarra forge ahead in the green jobs sector.

The funding, which was announced in last weeks budget, will provide for up to four solar power plants, with a combined power output of one coal fired power station.

This is not only seemingly good news for the environment but, as can be seen in the above extract, also joblessness in the Illawarra (which is largely due to the current international financial crisis). The article delves into this side of the story further:

South Coast Labour Council secretary Arhtur Rorris said the move was exciting, particularly on top of last month’s NSW Government pledge of $250,000 to a green jobs plan, which is expected to revolutionise employment for the region.

So, as well as being an article that increases public awareness of green technologies such as solar power, a positive spin for the financial crisis has also been found by addressing the jobs that would be created by such green technologies.

Unlike many articles on environment related issues, the tone presented is one of confidence and optimism – both for the environment, and easing joblessness in the Illawarra. And although the article tends to focus more on the news that jobs will be created, it doesn’t forget the underlying principles of solar technology as a step forward for the environment – a point highlighted and emphasised by the Prime Minister:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he wanted Australia to become a solar technology leader in the world.

Hopefully, articles such as this will begin to become more prominent as the public realises that green, environmentally friendly technologies are not only beneficial to slowing down the effects of global warming, but also could be part of the solution to the global financial crisis.