renewable energy

Hydro Tasmania unveiled plans last night to a public meeting on King Island in Bass Strait for Australia's largest proposed wind farm - a 200 turbine wind farm project called TasWind. The wind farm will produce 600MW of power, enough to supply power for nearly half a million households. The project is estimated to be worth $2 billion.

After the success of the campaign launch in Morwell last month the Earthworker Cooperative is now launching the 100,000 Australians Campaign nationally.

“We are going to grow Australian manufacturing jobs which produce the renewable energy goods and work our way out of the climate emergency,” says Dave Kerin, national coordinator of the 100,000 Australians Campaign.

Victorian Premier John Brumby has announced a feed in tariff for large scale solar thermal power plants to start the transition from coal-fired power to renewables as part of its forthcoming policies for action on climate change. The target of 5 per cent of the state's electricity from solar by 2020 is in addition to the 20 per cent power from wind by 2020. The announcement comes as a new report confirms that Victoria could supply more than 100 percent of it's electricity from renewables. Friends of the Earth, Environment Victoria and the Greens have all welcomed the changes.

In April Conservation groups on the South Coast of New South Wales called on the Keneally Government to immediately reject a proposal for a Wood Fired biomass Power Station, nick named by them as 'Dead Koala Power', at the infamous Eden Woodchip Mill. South East Fibre Exports, a Japanese owned company, plans to use chipmill timber waste to generate electricity in a 5.5 megawatt $20million plant. The power station would be an environmental disaster for native forests and a climate disaster with greater CO2 pollution than coal fired power. Public submissions online on the assessment for the biomass power station can be made until April 22.

Related: Traditional owners, Conservationists Protest far South Coast Logging |
SEFE BioEnergy Project | Chipstop: Forests in the Furnace | Online Petition