Creating electricity at home: the cleanest and most sensible option under the sun
It may appear counter-intuitive, but getting millions of solar panels
onto rooftops saves more money than it costs. Feed-in tariffs enacted
by state governments have enabled ordinary Australians using their
savings to build a solar power station at home benefiting the community.
When those solar households who had saved to get their
panels installed under the solar feed-in tariff programs export their
solar production to the grid, which occurs mostly during higher demand
daytime periods, they are given a slightly higher than average retail
rate for the electricity they are selling. The prices they have been
paid are relatively meagre when compared with the ridiculously high
rates paid to big coal or gas power plants.
At the same time that little solar households who have
invested their money in a rooftop power station are being paid between
44¢ and 60¢ per kilowatt hour, the old power companies with their dirty
belching coal and gas plants are receiving as much as $12.50.
In other words, the coal and gas guys are being paid as
much as $11.90 more than a home solar generator for just one unit of
electricity...
Green fuel fails to meet emissions standards
THE NSW government's plan to ban regular unleaded fuel has been thrown into doubt by the revelation that the state's only ethanol producer, Manildra, has failed the government's clean fuel test, with its ethanol producing more greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought.
New modelling by the Productivity Commission has shown the ethanol produced by the Manildra Group is only 42 per cent more efficient than unleaded petrol, falling short of the target set by the government regulator, Office of Biofuels, which says ethanol should have 50 per cent lower greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels.
Manildra maintains its ethanol is produced from waste products and therefore virtually emissions-free, a line supported by the previous NSW Labor government which originally legislated to replace unleaded fuel with ethanol blended fuel.
But evidence has emerged to suggest Manildra's production of ethanol has increasingly relied on the use of food products grown by the company, which the Productivity Commission says accounts for the growth in emissions...
The Office of Biofuels said Manildra told it 80 per cent of its ethanol was made from waste last year but admitted that Manildra's ethanol has never been independently audited.
The new figures from the Productivity Commission contradict Manildra's estimates, which were largely relied on in the former government's decision-making process to phase out regular unleaded petrol.
From July, NSW petrol stations will no longer be permitted to sell regular unleaded petrol because the government wants to promote renewable biofuels. The decision has divided experts over its benefits...
Cheaper for power company to shut down its generators
...Macquarie Generation is traditionally the most profitable of the NSW
government-owned corporations and generates a high level of dividends,
but it expects to pay no dividends to the government from June 2014 as
profits collapse.
The carbon tax is only one factor in the foreshadowed reversal of
fortunes, as steady rises in power prices have reduced electricity
demand, while the strong Australian dollar has forced cuts to industrial
output, which is also hitting demand...
Resurgent Kia serves it up to local car makers
...Unlike Ford and GM, and not forgetting Toyota, Kia imports its cars
and is therefore not a beneficiary of the automotive industry dole that
has been handed out by successive governments. The rationales for the
payouts to car makers have always ranged from the prosaic: any
self-respecting, large economy needs vehicle making in its portfolio of
skills, to the cynical: many a seat in Parliament might swing on
thousands of direct, and indirect, job losses if the car plants ceased
output.
Government assistance and rescuing of large-scale vehicle
makers is a tried and true exercise, although history suggests that in
most cases it has merely delayed the inevitable for ultimately
uneconomic businesses...
A simple source
A new website will connect consumers with their food, writes Paul Mitchell.
Wherever you live, food co-ops, swap meets, community
gardens, farmers' markets, free-range producers, box systems and organic
retailers are likely to be mushrooming around you. But keeping abreast
and plugging into such networks can be daunting.
Enter Nick Ray, who has created a free online resource
called Local Harvest. Launching next month, it will be a hub for
consumers concerned about where their food comes from and how it's
produced. By keying in your postcode, the contact details and other
information about sustainably produced food in your neighbourhood will
appear...
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