Within seconds of being sworn in, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd signed documents to bring Australia into the Kyoto Protocol.
"This is the first official act of the new Australian government," he said.
Within seconds of being sworn in, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd signed documents to bring Australia into the Kyoto Protocol.
"This is the first official act of the new Australian government," he said.
According to news reports his signing brought cheers to at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia.
Australia’s entry into Kyoto leaves the United States as the lone rogue state refusing to sign. US delegates at the Bali conference repeated this position, once again saying no to Kyoto.
While it’s too soon to predict accurately what Kyoto will mean for Australia, it does seem likely that the nation will be the next hot spot for growth in green energy. Clean, renewable and efficient energy has been steadily growing there for some time without Kyoto.
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With the sun being Australia's largest potential energy source, solar energy is likely to expand. Over 90 percent of the nation receives more than 1,950 kilowatt hours per square meter (kWh/m2) per year of sunshine, almost as much sunshine as, say, Arizona, but over most of the country.
Wind energy, already increasing, should continue its upward climb. At the end of 2006, Australia had installed wind capacity of 817 MW. Nationally wind farms contribute about 1 percent of total electricity production. But the nearly 7000 megawatts of new wind capacity that has been proposed would likely be pushed forward under Kyoto; this would increase that percentage.
Australia has large volumes of identified high heat producing granites within five kilometers of the surface. A few companies have been exploring and testing the potential for hot dry rock (HDR) geothermal energy in the Euromanga and Cooper basins. These sites are estimated to contain energy equivalent to the nation's electricity needs for 800 years.
The new Minister for Environment, Heritage and Arts Peter Garrett (formerly lead singer of the Australian rock band Midnight Oil) said earlier in 2007 that the government should subsidize putting the necessary drilling rigs in place to get HDR technology moving.
"There are some technical difficulties and challenges there, but those people who are keen on getting Australia into geothermal say we've got this great access to resource and one of the things, interestingly, that's held them back is not having the capacity to put the drilling plants in place. And so what we intend this $50 million to go towards is to provide a one for one dollars. Match $1 from us, $1 from the industry so that they can get these drilling rigs on to site and really get the best sites identified and get the industry going,” said Garrett.
Perhaps energy efficiency technologies too will continue to expand. Already the country has taken the bold move of working to phase out conventional incandescent light bulbs by 2010.
And the country is also concerned about the energy consumed and greenhouse gases from its large aluminum industry.
This is the single largest consumer of electricity in Australia, using about 10 percent of national capacity that is about 80 percent derived from coal.
Australia is the world's largest producer of bauxite, about 36 percent of world production in 2006. It is the world’s largest producer and exporter of alumina, 28 percent, and the world’s fifth largest producer of aluminum.
Its dependance on coal, the energy consuming aluminum industry and the aluminum smelting process, which in itself emits carbon dioxide, adds up to make Australia the highest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita in the developed world.
You can bet Australia will be working with the aluminum industry to remove itself from the top of that list.
Finally, there’s more than renewables, energy efficiency and greening up the aluminum industry that Australia might bring into the international pact - technological innovation.
Though it’s not quantifiable, Australia is a very innovative country. I can only say this through years of covering technical innovation in energy. I’m always surprised how much innovation comes out of the land down under. Some years ago, in an interview with an Australian designer of fuel efficient power catamaran yachts, I asked why Australians were so inventive. He said that with their small population (21 million) innovation was the only way Australian business and industry could compete internally and globally. Makes sense to me.
