Sorry if it seems like I am dominating the conversation. However, after my last post I thought I would try a little Google fun to see if I could support my contention. I came up with an interesting link at a site for an organization called “Infrastructure Partnerships Australia”. It is an industry group that lobbies for large government supported projects like airports, highways, and water projects. Here is a talking paper that provides some of their thoughts about water.

http://www.infrastructure.org.au/newsroom/pdf/MR_Water_Restrictions_280507.pdf

As an aside about water barrels - one of the more memorable books that I read when I was growing up was Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds. As I recall, a major driver in the plot was the fact that the family homestead had no water left in the cistern after a two year long drought.

Water barrels work much of the time, but eventually they run can run dry and then what do you do?

Sometimes natural solutions simply delay the inevitable - man’s problem solving ability and use of resources like fossil fuels and uranium is what allows us able to live and prosper in inhospitable climates.

Interesting article. One question that I would have to ask is “what do the large companies that provide campaign contributions to the politicians think about the best way to proceed?”

My cynical self (I have been involved in government budgeting and purchasing for the past six years) would place a large bet on the fact that the large companies are in favor of the desalination option. If you scratch the surface of that support, I am sure that you will find a lot of “business development” types with their PowerPoints showing all of the wonderful things that will happen to the local economy if the projects get funded.

As for the issue of who ‘gets the upside’, I guess we are now talking about a more systemic issue of capitalism and socialism regarding how the money is used. There’s been plenty of failings and successes when its comes to both companies and governments dealing with civic issues.

All other issues aside, I think there’s a danger for governments that they have traditionally had a predisposition to ‘factory or plant’ style approaches to these large issues. Possibly ignoring the application of a range of smaller distributed technologies in the process.

We are seeing this currently in the water sector in Australia with multiple state governments all seeking to put in desalination plants. Scoped as full time water production facilities, rather than smaller emergency production. Rain water tanks in this case would solve many issues.

http://www.acfonline.org.au/articles/news.asp?news_id=1023&c=194841

I guess I also have to ask - if business gets the “upside to make money” based on being granted credits, can we trust them to use that money to make investments that will further improve the global environment.

As someone who does a lot of driving; often in some pretty swank neighborhoods populated by the leaders of large enterprises, I have my doubts about where all of the profits go.

I realize that 10-15 years sounds like a very long time. I guess my response is - if the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, when is the second best time to plant the tree.

My answer is NOW. If the road is long, but you know where you have to go, it is time to start walking.

I think your right in saying that in general there is a lack of knowledge about nuclear power amongst not just people in the cleantech industry but in the business community at large.

In Australia this issue is currently a sensitive one given Australia’s lack of an existing nuclear power industry, and significant uranium resources.

Recent studies in Australia have forecast a 12-15 year minimum timeframe for a working nuclear plant. This timeframe is mainly a technical and institutational timeframe from my knowledge. I dont believe it takes into account the process of achieving social acceptance.

That said countries like Sweden have a very positive societal sentiment towards nuclear, however their socialist culture I think is better suited than possibly Australia.

I think that we should be considering nuclear power both in Australia but further abroad, but it should be one of the investigations amongst a broad range of initiatives in solar, wind, wave and biomass energy research. Its the timeframe issue i have trouble with, when we could be forging ahead with energy efficiency technologies and distributed generation to reduce investments in the transmission technology.

As for the tax vs emissions trading scheme, you might want to listen to Rob Fowlers interview on The Cleantech Show #006. He explains this in more detail. A tax is actually the easiest market mechanism, because it can be passed quite quickly, however the general criticism by business is it provides no upside to make money. Also we have to ask the question, once the government has the tax revenues, can we trust them to apply those revenues in the most effective way. Possibly whats needed in the short term is a combination of both??

Thoughts?

Cheers
Nick

Very interesting show. I wonder how Tom would analyze the risk/return value of an atomic power plant that has the ability to respond rapidly to changes in power demand? What would he think about a plant that could reliably produce more power at peak hours and throttle back during less demanding times without changing its efficiency?

Clean, safe, reliable, and variable is the kind of nuclear power that I am familiar with as a former submarine engineer officer and that is the kind of atomic engine that my company has been developing for the past 14 years.

We want to engage with the clean tech and green communities to help them begin to understand that what most people “know” about atomic energy is actually quite limited. There is so much potential and the technology is just now reaching that magic point in the S-curve where rapid growth should be available for an extended period into the future.

I got a little lost in the explanations of the sophisticated permit and credit trading schemes - it seems to me that the simplest and fairest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to charge emitters a tax that will help to pay for the costs of their emissions on all of the rest of us. Since we are all emitters, we will all pay, but those of us who emit the most should pay the most.

The fossil fuel industries are some of the most profitable in the world, but some of that profit comes from the fact that they and their customers do not have to include the internal costs of waste disposal - all they have to do is build a smokestack into our common atmosphere.

In the nuclear world, waste disposal is a big issue, not because it has ever hurt anyone or damaged the environment, but because the originator has to make provisions to handle it and ensure that those statements remain true. Since most large players in the industry have roots in the fossil fuel business, they are not used to this and work very diligently to foist the responsibility on to the rest of us in the form of asking the government to take care of the long term.

At AAE, we believe that the long term atomic by-product effort is not as big of an issue as most make it out to be, and we do not really want the government to solve it for us.

Rod Adams
Founder, Adams Atomic Engines, Inc. (AAE)