Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, one of Australia’s leading newspapers, aluminium smelters and other heavy industry is just not seeing what their role could be in our renewable energy powered future.
Australia’s climate future to evolve as economy is rebuilt
Just a few months ago there had been growing consensus among scientists, activists, economists and even investors that 2020 would be pivotal in the fight to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.
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But the Glasgow meeting has been cancelled and politicians are now focused on keeping citizens alive in the face of a more immediate threat.
Rather than lose the momentum that had been growing, scientists and activists groups around the world are focusing on a campaign to ensure that economic stimulus packages being adopted around the world are green.
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Leading economist and renewable energy expert Ross Garnaut says Australia’s vast capacity to generate wind and solar energy could fuel not only exports but a boom in domestic heavy industry and replace petrol for transport.
“The full emergence of Australia as an energy superpower of the low-carbon world economy would encompass large-scale early-stage processing of Australian iron, aluminium and other minerals,” Professor Garnaut says.
He told the Herald and The Age that Alcoa and Rio Tinto had already signalled they did not see a long-term role for the nation’s three largest aluminium smelters in their portfolios under current electricity supply arrangements due to their high electricity cost and emissions output.
He believes that if such plants made use of Australia’s advantages in low-cost renewable energy, they could expand their output to meet demand during a global revival in aluminium demand.
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Those fools, if only they had a little more faith, and saw past the needs of today to embrace the wonderful opportunity green energy presents to the world’s energy intensive industries.
via Watts Up With That?
May 17, 2020 at 12:33PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 