What would Australia look like powered by 100% renewable energy?

Liberal party donor and coal plant owner Trevor St Baker is proposing with the help of his mates in government to build two new coal power stations in Australia at the expense of taxpayers.

However, the big four banks and the big three energy companies are not having a bar of it. Indeed the majority of Australia’s energy companies are working towards a very different future for the country’s energy system, a future powered by clean, renewable energy.

Many of the best solar and wind sites in Australia are in remote locations.

There are now at least nine studies conducted during the decade that have analysed how Australia can move from an electricity system based on polluting coal and gas to one powered by the sun, wind and waves.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) – the body tasked with making sure we have energy when we need it – found there were “no fundamental limits to 100% renewables”, and that the current standards of the system’s security and reliability would be maintained.

These studies show different pathways towards 100% renewable energy, but what they all agree on is that it can be achieved.

Read the story from The Guardian by Nicky Ison - “What would Australia look like powered by 100% renewable energy?”

In a Stunning Turnaround, Britain Moves to End the Burning of Coal

Bigger than any medieval castle, with its 12 giant white cooling towers gleaming in the sun, the Drax Power Station dominates the horizon for tens of miles across the flat lands of eastern England. For four decades, it has been one of the world’s largest coal power plants, often generating a tenth of the U.K.’s electricity. It has been the lodestar for the final phase of Britain’s 250-year-long love affair with coal – the fuel that built the country’s empire and industrialized the world.

The Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire, England.

But no more.

The coal-devouring behemoth, and the endless trains of railroad wagons feeding it with fuel from coastal ports, is suddenly a relic of the past. In one of the greatest and fastest energy turnarounds in the developed world, the country that brought the world the industrial revolution – a revolution founded and sustained by burning coal – has cut the cord.

King Coal is, almost overnight, being banished from Britain.

When Drax opened for business in 1974, Britain got 80 percent of its electricity from burning coal. As recently as five years ago, the figure was 40 percent. But last year, it was 9 percent, and this summer coal supplied less than 2 percent of Britain’s electricity. On April 21, 2017, for the first time since its inception, the British power grid went 24 hours without coal.

Read the Yale Environment 360 story - “In a Stunning Turnaround, Britain Moves to End the Burning of Coal.”

The world’s tropical zone is expanding, and Australia should be worried

The Tropics are defined as the area of Earth where the Sun is directly overhead at least once a year — the zone between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.

‘Tropics’ may conjure images of sun-kissed islands,
but the expanding tropical zone could bring
drought and cyclones further south.

However, tropical climates occur within a larger area about 30 degrees either side of the Equator. Earth’s dry subtropical zones lie adjacent to this broad region. It is here that we find the great warm deserts of the world.

Earth’s tropical atmosphere is growing in all directions, leading one commentator to cleverly call this Earth’s “bulging waistline”.

Read the thoughts of the Adjunct Professor of Environmental Geography from, CQUniversity Australia,  Steve Turton, on The Conversation - “The world’s tropical zone is expanding, and Australia should be worried."

Grasping the reality that is climate change is a 'bridge too far' for many

Intellectually grasping the reality of climate change is simply a “bridge too far” for many.

Mentally aligning yourself with the injuries our atmosphere has suffered at the hand of humans demands the surrendering of some fanciful beliefs mostly taken on, almost unknowingly, to preserve values allowing for a life that careful analysis has shown are beyond earth’s capacities to provide.

Science is almost a dirty word and even simple realities appear eschewed from the minds of many.

A report from the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science notes that “1 in 4 Americans thinks the sun goes around the earth, survey says”.

Scott Neumann reports on “The Two Way” for NPR that many Americans believe the sun goes around the earth and not the other way.