phill Parsons

“But what is really needed is to out green the Greens, now both parties agree action to avoid the dangers associated with further climate chaos are needed there is no reason to delay adopting the beat available technology, even if it entrails some economic cost [BASTESEC], which much of the domestic conversion doesn’t when viewed over the life of that conversion.”

Minister Kons has achieved a planning miracle, getting the 9 councils along the NW coast to have the same planning scheme conditions.

However, each scheme will need to adopt a new sea level or high tide line if such planning measures are not backed up with action to limit the production of greenhouse gases and thus bring the climate back to the stability we all depend on for the lifestyle we expect our descendants to enjoy after the period of limited climate chaos we have made inevitable for one and all.

What could Tasmania do at local and State government level besides watch; low rainfall rob the hydro electric system of its value, find the costs of maintaining beaches and sea wall rising astronomically as the coastline retreats, the midlands slowly descend into desert and fires rage through Tasmania’s forests destroying value and carbon storage.

The above is the result of current government sanctioned program of inaction.

There are a few precedents for mandated action in Australia.

SA has a mandated stationary energy target; NSW has limited carbon trading, Newcastle adopted a solar city program to lead their economy to recovery after the BHP steel mills closed.

Overseas we see much more activity and some of it innovative.

In San Diego a low income housing project generating all it’s own electricity has been opened. The tenants have the advantage of no energy bills to haunts their limited budgets. This is an example of affordable housing that is so lacking here in Tasmania.

WA made a comparative cost study of building an energy efficient home from the ground up and building the then current housing department model. $1200 cheaper for the energy efficient model without taking into account the savings for the tenant.

The Tasmanian government fails to have in place an integrated system for assessing the costs of a building over its life. The decision about the costs of building and the running costs are separated out. The expense of selecting a building that is expensive to run is not considered, the taxpayer can be soaked for those costs later and then the government can claim it cannot afford services.

Premier Lennon could have addressed that one in his State of the State address but chose to leave it as a lemon. Such low fruit are easy to pick, making it hard to understand how government can be so stupid unless it is inherently structural in the model.

Whilst we cannot ditch the embodied energy in the existing housing stock, consideration needs to be given to the value of upgrading that stock if it is of value to do so. [The Return on Investment.]

Berkley, California has adopted a program to fund each home wanting to become its own a solar power station, the assessment of suitability and installation contracted out and the cost repaid over 20 years on the property’s rates, making such a change in energy supply affordable for the homeowner.

Hey, Hobart you have a University to call on for expertise, why aren’t you as bright. No carbon trading?. Other Australian States have schemes. How about some pressure before a bushfire season worse than 1967.

Combined with the German program of mandated sale of surplus energy back into the grid, home and business solar power becomes a powerful tool for the displacement of dirty coal fired energy with a lower carbon model.

Real carbon trading will impact on the cost of coal fired power, a proactive intelligent forward looking government would begin planning now to address the shame of its decade of inaction. The flagged commencement of carbon trading by 2012 at the latest is one reason the coal fired states are happy to fund the alternative schemes now.

NSW is excepted from the above statement, it is looking to sell its dirty coal fired power stations to a private investor for some $15B and so will be taking measures to make them an attractive proposition . This could impact on a Rudd Labor’s government’s greenhouse abatement activities as NSW Labor looks for favours from mates in Canberra.

And before some dolt responds with where does the money to pay for it come from, stating I already pay too much in rates, consider what your electrical energy bills will be over the next 20 years as prices rise, carbon taxes are added to the Victorian brown coal quotient and the other costs of living, transport and food, also head through your solar panels and toward the sky impacting back on your energy costs as well as your household budget.

This puppy already pays $12,000 for electricity, when, at current prices that is expressed over 20 years, without the service charges and with wood heating and a low energy water heater. In the interests of stating my self interest, I may be assessed as unsuitable given my position among the combustible carbon stores, the solar hours and the life of the building not in my favour.

And what does the hydro do with any energy it manages to store in that period, if domestic use falls through solarization. Well there is that huge green energy market we were told was at the other end of the cable and they will much, much more likely than not want green power as it becomes relatively cheaper and also gains status.

Of course Tasmania’s own demands may draw it all down, that is, of course provided the hydro system receives enough rainfall to refill. [67.1% empty this week]

If that failure in the natural system continues to disadvantage us, on projection more likely than not, then some of us will be able to say how foresighted government was in taking the initial steps back then to limit the impacts of climate chaos.

And where are the sliver cell photovoltaic [solar] panels, or the next generation of solar panels after that, to be made?.

With the economy growing so strongly there may be some capacity constraints. The giant quarry is too busy emptying itself to feed the growth of greenhouse gases, accounting for that and rushing about trying to adjust the nations food bowl to adapt to long term lower rainfall.

However, the manufacture of cars has been faltering, with the 2 US companies that chose to make outdated petrol guzzlers and suffered a decline in market share as a result and with Toyota now having difficulties as the $A rises to parity with the US affecting the import – export costs, we may see more plant closures and layoffs.

I hope others wrote to Rann, the Premier of SA, when Mistubishi was looking at closing its SA plant. I did, suggesting a solar industry to replace car manufacturing.

Putting in place the 20% energy goal in SA, Rann has set up a market for investment in manufacturing and or installing alternative energy generation systems within that state. Taking a house by house approach sets up an installation industry for retrofitting even if manufacture is elsewhere.

What else can be retrofitted?.

Well beside heating the water on the roof, as is done in many places, including some cities and some houses in supposedly poor rural China, windows stand out as a heat looser for homes that are already insulated.

With the agreement of the French Parliament early next year all new windows will no longer be single pane heat exchangers, a step above the Turnbull lightglobe minimalism, and the limited, but much more effective, solar water heater program added by Garrett in the phoney election campaign.

Time for a Liberal and Labor me too there.

And then there is the design opportunity that screams out, insulating internal wall board.

The structural insulated panel does not seem to be in the lexicon of Australian construction as it is in more northerly climes of another hemisphere.

Lining the rooms and ceiling of a new house whilst insulating it with a single integrated panel must be a construction cost saving but for the many Australian homes that are brick veneer, a retrofit panel that didn’t shrink the room to below an acceptable size would be a winner in a market where energy costs are trending skyward.

But what is really needed is to out green the Greens, now both parties agree action to avoid the dangers associated with further climate chaos are needed there is no reason to delay adopting the beat available technology, even if it entrails some economic cost [BASTESEC], which much of the domestic conversion doesn’t when viewed over the life of that conversion.

However, it would seem that the old parties fail to grasp the implications of slow action in the mitigation of climate chaos, believing that the previous models of government, where all action is deferred to after the next election, where it can be delayed further with excuses about affordability, continues to be appropriate.

The masses of mug punters who government attempts to fool will not thank them as the walls of their lives crumble; food, clothing, fuel and energy costs rising rapidly under the impacts of increasing greenhouse gases. No need for interest rate rises to dampen that economy.

A Tasmanian government needs to achieve another miracle, galvanizing itself into real action to lead Tasmanians beyond the false gap between Green and mainstream climate policy to limit further climate chaos and place the State in a leading position in the nation and the world.

There are costs now for the decade of delays, not least the costs to the energy GBE’s [the Hydro]. Costs like these will increase, for example as the fire fighting budget blows out and fire insurance rises accordingly.

Apparently, to avoid a perceived stigma neither old party, whether it is labelled in the State parliament or unlabelled but party aligned in local government, has the foresight to lead, leaving the only alternative to Green action.

phill Parsons awaits a miracle conversion of the Tasmanian representatives of the old parties as the opportunities of carbon trading dawn on the business chambers. The prices for the timber from the public’s forests to Gunns are now fixed by contract. He believes the living carbon store we describe as forests will have a huge value as carbon trading takes off. The question is will Tasmania miss out again.