Climate change and the Top End ABC Radio National, Future Tense, 27 Oct 11“………Stuart Blanch: We’re looking at an Australia-Asia electricity grid connector that builds a high voltage direct current sub-sea cable from the Northern Territory, north into perhaps Timor, Indonesia and into Asia, which we would use to export renewable energy to Asia. Of course, Asia is the developing part of the world, it’s the Asian century, and they have hundreds of millions of people living in energy poverty. They need energy, but for the world’s sake, the world cannot let them develop the way we have and develop in terms of fossil fuels. So we’re saying is, build large scale solar power plants, solar photovoltaic plants around the Top End of Australia, feed that power into the grid, which would help Darwin get greener energy as well, but export it to Asia. And that would help make us a superpower in terms of renewable energy, whereas at the moment a lot of people see us as a superpower for gas, uranium and coal, and that’s, in their view, as it should be. I disagree, I challenge that. Northern Australia can do better, and get off fossil fuels and uranium onto renewables, and we can help Asia to develop, but do it sustainably….
Northern Australia’s golden opportunity to become S.E. Asia’s renewable energy hub
Stuart Blanch: The markets north of Australia are ten, 20, 50 times what they are in eastern Australia. If we build a high voltage cable across to the east cost grid, connecting up to Mount Isa, then down into New South Wales and Victoria, there’s only another 20 million people there. And those economies are trying to get off coal, and looking at solar and wind anyway. So they’re going down that path. Here in the Territory, if we turn our gaze to the north, that’s the Territory’s future. It’s where the Territory government of both political persuasions and the business sector have looked to make money and a future in terms of exporting products, which have real problems now and in the future. Gas and oil release significant carbon pollution in Asia. Let’s stop exporting things which have risks. Let’s export renewable energy. Of course, we have a lot of sun now, that we could start exporting if we can build an electricity grid into Asia….
it’s already been done in parts of the world. Perhaps not on such a scale, but it’s shown the technology and the thinking is actually working. in Europe, Norway and the Netherlands already have an almost 600 kilometre cable linking them, that moves through the Baltic Sea, it’s on the bed of the sea, and allows both countries to trade energy with each other. That’s the same sort of technology we’re talking about connecting Darwin into Indonesia and into Asia. In the Middle East and North Africa there’s a very large project proposing to build a ring of solar power plants around the north of Africa, in the Sahara, and closer to the Mediterranean coast, in countries like Morocco and Algeria, maybe Tunisia in the future, exporting that power through new subsea cables, laid on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, up to countries like Germany and Italy and other parts of Europe, who need to cut their emissions very quickly, and need reliable power, and they’re trying to get off fossil fuels and nuclear power……”
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