I spent last week in New Zealand with my daughter’s family. It was interesting to discover that most of their power generation is from Hydro electric, wind and thermal power. This is logical if you think about the land of the long white cloud (has been known to rain) which is always windy (a jaundiced view perhaps as I stayed in Wellington) plus the islands are volcanic. Apparently there used to be a lot more very efficient small hydro power stations supplying local areas with minimal environmental damage because the water was already falling down waterfalls and some just went though pipes instead. Most of these have been closed in the name of greater efficiency but they actually were very efficient.
In Australia we have the world’s largest high quality coal reserves, not much rain and a lot less maintains and waterfalls. Guess what- our power generation is mainly coal powered! Logical and sensible from a historical perspective BUT we are in a new space now and we understand atmospheric pollution by greenhouse gasses. The coal industry is working hard on developing clean coal technology.
The thing is that we must not be blinded by the huge reserves we have of wind energy, geo thermal energy (less obvious but there) and wave energy as well as the obvious but at present expensive, solar energy. Time to move on Aussies!
Technorati Tags: natural resources, generate power, power, resources, New Zealand, hydro electric, wind, thermal power, wind power, solar energy
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on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 6:13 am and is filed under Global Warming, Climate Change & Energy.
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