Green energy and the Renewable Energy Bill

[finella_c]

I've just realised that the passing of the Renewable Energy Bill, widely praised as an environmental success story (with some reservations about the allegedly favourable treatment for carbon-intensive energy providers) has a somewhat unexpected result for me personally (and maybe for some other readers of this journal). When I moved to Australia

Comments

[reverancepavane]

The old scheme was filled with rorts which reduced their effectiveness. For example, most of the carbon credits in Australia were in the form of Land Clearing Certificates rather than something that actually created a carbon dump.

[finella_c]

Srsly? That is so rubbish!!! Well, if the new bill at least removes some of that murkiness, then I consider that to be a positive development.

I'm getting really cross though about the lack of transparency (in what I'll lump together as "all this energy stuff"), vis-a-vis the average consumer.

Despite all my initial research, I didn't even understand (or maybe Origin just kept it very very quiet) that they didn't actually produce renewable energy themselves. :-(

I'd naively imagined that Origin had invested in its own solar farms. Happy hillsides, filled with happy solar panels (and prancing wombats, thriving rain gardens, or Choose-Your-Own-Pre-lapsarian-Fantasy).

Renting's difficult, too, because I have limited options in terms of how I access energy.

I feel crestfallen.

[reverancepavane]

I found it particularly amusing that most of the schemes worked on the principle of "we could have produced more atmospheric carbon dioxide, but we didn't; we shall use the amount of carbon dioxide we could have but didn't produce as an offset against the carbon dioxide we did."* I'm sure you can see the potential problems with that sort of idea. Then again, I tend to find most economic theories violate my sense of thermodynamics. [Heresy!] But I'm sure some accountant can come up with a reason why the scheme works. Or why the next scheme will work...
[Personally I think we are approaching the problem from the wrong direction. We really need to make expensive infrastructure changes to decrease our footprint. Something that will never happen. After all, if climate change** does occur after all, the people with money will be able to resettle somewhere habitable, won't they? I don't have great faith in humanity, I'm afraid (some humans yes, humanity as a whole, no).]
* This isn't to say that the schemes didn't do some good.