A few notes on more effective uses of subsidies
No time now, but these ideas could be worth following up:
Based on Crikey.com.au's subscribers' article, If you had $335m to spend on making Australia greener by Thomas Hunter, with corrected numbers:
- Of the $410 million distributed from the Australian Government's Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund (LETDF) thus far, $335 million has gone to the fossil fuel industry. As The Age reported on Tuesday March 13, 2007, the majority of panel members have strong links to the fossil fuel industry.
- Alternative ideas for spending the money on renewables, water, or low-emission technologies that would benefit Australia today.
- * $335m would buy 191 wind generators, which would power 152,800 homes and reduce greenhouse emissions by 2,139,000 tonnes per year.
- * $335m would buy (8900?) new Toyota Prius’ to replace the fossil fuel burning limos used by federal politicians.
- * Biofuels create 60-95% less CO2 than fossil fuel based petrol products. $335m in subsidies for biofuels would both reduce Australia’s reliance on imported fuel products and, for every litre burned, cut the CO2 emissions for a standard Australia car from 2.4kg per litre to around 0.5kg per litre.
- * Origin Energy and the ANU are researching sliver cell solar technology, which is aimed at vastly improving the amount of energy harvested from solar panels. The government has thus far invested only a few million dollars in Origin's research.
- * $335m will buy about 42 million compact fluorescent light bulbs, or 2 per person in Australia. Lighting comprises around 10% of annual energy use in the home. Depending on the wattage and other variables, fluorescent bulbs could cut that figure to about 2%.
- * $335m will buy 507,575 flow restrictors from your local plumbing hardware store. Each restrictor could save up to 180,000 litres of water per year.
- * The Australian Greenhouse Office site's electronics page says: "A laptop computer used five hours each day generates around 40 kilograms of greenhouse gas each year. Desktop computers used the same way can generate between 200 and 500 kilograms. More than half of this is from using the monitor." $335m in subsidies to purchasers of laptops would encourage more efficient energy use in the home/office/internet café/etc. (Comment: wouldn't it be more cost effective to introduce star ratings and/or more stringent requirements for sellers of laptops, and only then give subsidies to those struggling consumers who are most affected? Possibly some for research into more efficient monitors as well, though this makes less sense for an Australian govt, and is probably best served by market pressure. --Chriswaterguy 08:16, 17 March 2010 (UTC))
Note I'm not necessarily agreeing with these suggestions - research seems more strategic (e.g. the sliver thing). --Chriswaterguy · talk 04:13, 18 March 2007 (PDT)
Other incentives to pollute?
Besides fossil fuel subsidies, what incentives to pollute are there? If there are a number, an multiple pages can be created, then we should make a category, e.g. Category:Incentives to pollute, which would contain fossil fuel subsidies either as an article or subcategory. --Chriswaterguy · talk 04:19, 21 March 2007 (PDT)