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This Transition website is a meeting place for existing and future transition communities on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast Region Australia. Transition, Transition Towns, or the Transition Movement, is a grassroots network of communities, working to build local resilience in response to global economic collapse, peak oil and climate change. More ...

Transition Sunshine Coast
positive solutions to climate change and peak oil

Another Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?

I was sent this letter (see below) from a group calling itself ‘One Hundred Percent Renewable Energy’ http://100percent.org.au/

This ‘poll’ they are conducting is part of their grass roots campaign to have ordinary folk pressure politicians to fund Big Solar. This appears to be yet another ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ grass roots outfit like BZE, attempting to gain popular support for the benefit of giant corporate interests. It’s not the clean energy that’s objectionable of course. No, it’s the ‘Big’.

Maintaining and creating ‘big systems’ is of course alien to Transition and Permaculture principles. But many in the green movement have bought the big solar plan. Big means huge set up costs and grid upgrading exactly at a point in history when paying for such things becomes increasingly problematic. Big Green and Big Brown are competing for government attention and our grass roots support.

Big, (brown or green) means remote from you and I. And remote power generation means energy loss over distance. Economy of scale makes no sense for renewables. The key issue for renewables is their EROEI, (Energy Returned On Energy Invested). It’s never going to be as high as for oil or coal so you can’t afford to dissipate it by sending it on a long journey. Electricity does not travel well.

If you plan to build ‘big’ and spend ‘big’ then your investors are going to be looking for big returns. But the national grid is not only hugely expensive to upgrade, it is also costly to maintain. You can’t afford to be bleeding energy like that all the way to the end user.

Why are big corporations and central governments interested in big green tech? The real and obvious benefits are in smaller alternative power generation, where the energy is produced and used in the same place. Hello, doesn’t that sound like a good idea?

‘No, not really’, says the Big Green Corp to their friends in government, ‘We need those millions of customers. We can’t have lots of small communities generating their own power.”

For more on this see my article ‘Beyond Zero Emissions: What’s wrong with Big Green Tech?’ on The Automatic Earth Web Site: http://theautomaticearth.org/Energy/beyond-zero-emissions-whats-wrong-with-big-green-tech.html

The link to the poll is at the end of the ‘One hundred Percent Renewables’ letter. See below:

Dear friends,

The major political parties in Australia spend tens of thousands of dollars on focus groups and polling each year to try and work out what ordinary Australians are thinking.

While our campaign - and the local groups we work with - don't have money to pay for professional message testing or community polling - what we do have is something that is much more powerful. Through our deep and wide community networks we have the ability to talk to people, hear their views and then take those views to decision makers at moments in time when it counts.

Throughout the last two months, local community groups have been conducting our very own people's poll on solar energy. On street corners and at footy games around the country, we've been sharing information about big solar and asking people their views on the new $10 billion renewable energy loan fund, which will be legislated in parliament next month.

Over 8,000 people have already been polled. We want to reach at least another 2,000. Will you complete this short, two minute poll and then share it with two others? http://100percent.org.au/content/take-part-national-big-solar-poll