The answer to Australia's clean energy needs could be in Canberra


Last Update: Wednesday, June 27, 2007. 1:15pm AEST
By Claire Gorman
The answer to Australia’s' clean energy needs maybe right here in Canberra. The Australian National University is home to an invention that could meet 100 per cent of Australia's energy needs.
666 ABC Canberra's environment reporter, Claire Gorman, met up with Keith and he showed her the spectacular big dish. The 400-square metre dish is the world's largest solar concentrator, which shifts with the sun to feed electricity back into the grid.
"If we covered an area a couple of times as big as the ACT with dishes like this, reasonably spaced out, we could provide 100 per cent of Australia's energy needs," Keith said.
One "big dish" provided enough power for about 100 houses, he said. Currently the ANU is working on an improved prototype which the university hopes will be finished early next year.
Keith explained that the dish followed the sun during the day. The mirrors on its surface gather up the radiation and focus it to a receiver 13 metres above. The receiver is made from tubing with water going through it. The water boils and creates super-heated steam with temperatures of up to 500 degrees Celsius.
"In the same way that in a coal-fired power station we might burn coal to make steam...ultimately we are going to use this steam for power generation without greenhouse gas emissions," Keith said.
Keith said one of the issues in the current debate about clean energy revolved around the potential collapse of coal industry. "What do we do for export income?" he asked.
One scenario, he suggested, was a transition to clean energy by using solar power for gasification of - or adding energy to - coal to create methanol.
Methanol is a petrol substitute and if it is created in this way, it is 30 per cent solar-generated and could create export income, he said.
"We're not going to beat the current price of coal-fired electricity I don't believe. Bit I think we will beat some of the other options, like nuclear power." he said.