01/07/06 How many people does it take to change a bulb and save the globe?, - Liz Minchin, The Age - United Nations' International Energy Agency - New South Wales July 06

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PM's vision of Australia as energy superpower

Misha Schubert, Canberra, The Age
July 18, 2006

A PUSH to increase publicly funded mapping of the seabed to narrow the hunt for new oil deposits in the remote reaches of Australia's oceans is being considered by the Federal Government.

As Prime Minister John Howard yesterday declared Australia was poised to become an "energy superpower" as a supplier to an increasingly energy-hungry world, fresh incentives to expand deep-sea quests for new petroleum deposits were in development.

Mr Howard told business leaders that he would look at further measures to expand high-cost, high-risk "frontier" exploration more than 100 kilometres offshore.

"While known oil reserves are declining, Australia remains relatively unexplored, particularly for petroleum in frontier offshore areas," he said, speaking at the Centre for Economic Development of Australia in Sydney.

"Encouraging further exploration is a high priority for the Government."

Government sources told The Age there was a push to extend the work of Geoscience Australia, which provides vital geological and seismic data free to companies considering oil exploration in Australian waters.

A push from industry to loosen the strict conditions on exploration licences and give companies more flexibility to renegotiate where they will drill is also being assessed.

Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association chief executive Belinda Robinson applauded Mr Howard's comments.

"He's hit the nail on the head," she said. "The energy debate has been not much more than an energy beauty pageant in the past few months, but these are welcome developments."

With war in Iraq and hostilities in the Middle East having a major impact on petrol prices, Mr Howard said, the influence of energy in global politics was likely to grow.

"Man's hunger for energy, and all this involves, will profoundly shape geopolitics this century, perhaps even more so than last century," he said. Petrol prices are edging nearer to the $1.39 a litre all-time high reached last month.

Two years after the release of his energy white paper, Mr Howard made the case once again for nuclear power, and flagged the potential for Australia to convert black and brown coal to transport fuels such as diesel and hydrogen.

And with China and India on a growth trajectory that could see them together consume three times as much energy as the United States by 2030, there were huge opportunities for Australia.

"As an efficient reliable supplier, Australia has a massive opportunity to increase its share of the global energy trade," he said. "With the right policies, we have the makings of an energy superpower."

But Labor and green groups attacked Mr Howard's "backward looking" vision, that they said failed to give the nation a real alternative to oil and coal.

Opposition Leader Kim Beazley attacked Mr Howard's rejection of carbon trading schemes. "John Howard has no plan for the future, he has attitudes," he said.

Greenpeace spokeswoman Catherine Fitzpatrick said the speech was a reflection on "10 years of inaction … with an energy speech that harks back to the 19th century. He's stuck in the past and addicted to coal."

Mr Howard also pressed for a revolution in Australia's approach to water policy, talking up water recycling and storm water catchment.

Calling on the states to put forward proposals for major "transformative' water projects, he said water restrictions were unacceptable.

"Having a city on permanent water restrictions makes about as much sense as have a city on permanent power restrictions," he said. "We would not tolerate it with electricity. We should not tolerate it with water."

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How many people does it take to change a bulb and save the globe?

Liz Minchin, The Age, our highlighting
July 1, 2006

THE world's reliance on old-fashioned light globes drains more power than is produced by all the world's 441 nuclear plants.

In the first detailed analysis of global energy use from lighting, the United Nations' International Energy Agency has found that if every old light globe was replaced with an energy-efficient one, it would avoid more than 16,000 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions between now and 2030.

The equivalent would be to take every car in the world today off the road for six years.

Saving energy would even be good for the global hip pocket, saving $3500 billion through lower energy and maintenance bills over the next 25 years.

Launching the book Light's Labour's Lost: Policies for Energy-efficient Lighting in Paris, the International Energy Agency's executive director, Claude Mandil, warned that governments and businesses could not afford to ignore its findings.

"Without rapid action the amount of energy used for lighting will be 80 per cent higher in 2030 than today," he said. "However, if we simply make better use of today's efficient lighting technologies and techniques, global lighting energy demand need be no greater at that time."

Electric lighting consumes 19 per cent of total global electricity production, slightly more than is used by all of Europe, and 15 per cent more than is generated by either hydro or nuclear power.

NSW residents can receive free energy-efficient light globe packs from retailers and environment groups, which earn carbon credits in return, under the NSW Government's mandatory greenhouse gas abatement scheme.

But there are no such schemes in other states because NSW is the only state to have carbon emissions trading.

Business Council for Sustainable Energy spokesman Richard Wise urged the federal and state governments to act on the International Energy Agency's findings, and follow NSW's lead.

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