DESERTEC AUSTRALIA Commentary:
Adam Smith to Australia: Go Solar
February 13, 2007

On energy and climate, John Howard recites from two hymnbooks.

The first is that Australia must avoid "knee jerk" reactions to climate change. The second is that domestic greenhouse mitigation efforts must not compromise the Australian economy’s competitiveness.

The good news is that there’s a renewable energy solution that meets both the Prime Minister's requirements. It's durable, proven, cheap and promises a huge upside to the Australian economy. The solution is harvesting energy from the Outback. 

In this vast, arid, largely flat and mostly uninhabited area, enough solar energy falls each day to provide the entire world all the electricity it wants -- today, tomorrow and forever. A much smaller area of 50 kilometers square (or slightly larger than greater Canberra) could satisfy ALL of Australia's electricity needs.

These are not airy-fairy estimations. They are made routinely by the International Energy Agency, Germany's Aerospace Center, America's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Australia's own CSIRO.

Australia, the southwest United States and the deserts of North Africa receive unparalleled amounts of unimpeded sunlight known as direct normal radiation. All that needs to be done is to go out and collect it through parabolic troughs, solar towers, solar dishes or concentrating solar photovoltaics. The energy is there for the taking at a flat price: free.

The United States and European Union are busily developing concentrating solar power technology. About 1,000 MW of concentrating solar power electricity generation technology is either under construction or planned for Southern California. An equal amount of capacity is either planned or under construction in Spain, the European Union’s sunniest member state.

If Australia gets on this technological solar train now as it's just leaving the station, the long-term economic benefits will be huge. Australia has a broad array of companies active in the field, from troughs to dishes to towers to solar chimneys.

What Australia needs to do now is encourage these companies to stay at home by removing discriminatory policies such as lopsided grants for fossil fuels through the Low Emission Technology Demonstration Fund and economically-distorting policies such as uncosted carbon emissions. Such policies make about as much sense as subsidising typewriters would have in the 1990s as the PC revolution swept the world.

There is no question anymore that the future lies in renewables. Renewables are the hardware. Australia’s Outback with its abundant sun is the software. Put the two together and Australia has an unbeatable combination.

Sure, lots of countries have coal. But only Australia, the United States and North Africa have very powerful sun of the kind that can power huge concentrating solar power production. Adam Smith, the famous economist, said nations should concentrate on the economic activity in which they have the greatest advantage over their trading partners. For Australia, that comparative advantage doesn’t lie in coal. It doesn’t lie in nuclear. It lies in sun. Raw, powerful, free sun.