What do you do with 5,000 tonnes of Macadamia Nut shells? Create electricity of course! Australia’s largest energy retailer, AGL, is helping to create biomass fuel from macadamia nut shells, as part of its effort to invest in sustainable energy sources.
Of all the green energy solutions solar stands out as an ideal choice. Capturing the energy of the sunrays is an environmentalist’s utopia. For a limited time generous Local and Federal Governments assistance packages make the choice even more appealing and accessible to everyone.
Like spooks in the ceiling, ghost energy is a terrifying thing. Rattling the chains of climate change, many households and businesses are using energy without even knowing it. Switches left on, for any reason and on any device, can draw energy from the electricity grid and inevitably contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
When Gordon Fraser-Quick heard the news on Tuesday, 10 November 2009, that the New South Wales Government had introduced a gross feed-in tariff for its state’s rooftop solar systems, he thought there must be something wrong with his hearing.
Israel’s bid to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020 has prompted them to participate in what are known as feed-in tariffs for electricity supplied by independent private suppliers. These feed-in tariffs apply to electricity that is supplied by renewable or “clean” sources such as geo-thermal power, solar and wind energy, and biomass energy.
Think of the BioCube as a community’s own green fuel station – just put in fruit at one end and out comes biodiesel at the other end. It even runs on its own biodiesel and the waste product from the processing unit can be used as either animal feed or a slow release fertiliser. What’s more, emissions from the BioCube engine are Euro4 compliant. Carbon emissions are reduced up to 70 per cent, greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90 per cent, with sulphur emissions, zero.
Rio Tinto’s claim that nuclear is one of the best hopes for Australia’s future energy supply makes me question whether this implies that Rio Tinto and other ‘big polluters’ know coal will soon become unviable.