Boot camp plans for big solar in 2012

Campaign group 100% Renewable Energy's key message for this year is “Let’s build big solar”. On its website, the group says: “In 2012, [we’ll] be focussing our efforts on finally doing what Australia should already be doing — building big solar!”
 
100% Renewable Energy ran a packed two-day activist training “Boot Camp" in Port Hacking, New South Wales, over the weekend of February 11 and 12. The Boot Camp attracted about 120 members of community and climate action groups from around the country.
 
“Big solar” can refer to large scale photovoltaic power plants — fields filled with solar panels similar to those used on rooftops. But it also refers to Concentrated Solar Power (CSP). CSP uses mirrors to concentrate heat from the sun on a central tower. With its clean energy source, CSP generates power in the same way a traditional coal fired power station does -- by driving turbines with steam.

The campaign will focus on the call to roll out CSP, as it can actually provide 24-hour baseload power by storing the heat in liquid salt.
 
The 100% Renewable Energy 2012 campaign will call for 2000 megawatts of big solar projects to be approved by the end of the year. It will run community polls around the country and hundreds of climate action groups will take part. Much of the weekend was taken up with training on organising community groups to run the polls, although there were also some great speeches from scientists, politicians and campaign leaders too.
 
Beyond Zero Emissions' Mark Ogge said work was needed to “bust the myth that ‘renewables can’t do baseload’ — solar thermal can!” He said campaigners were up against a $150 billion gas boom and a government plan to go entirely to gas. But he cited the success in South Australia’s Port Augusta, a community of former-brown coal workers who are now demanding jobs in renewables and not gas-fired power.
 
Greens Senator Christine Milne gave a grim picture of the current state of Australian politics, particularly the power of the pro-dirty industry MPs as well as the big electricity retailers such as Origin and AGL who are stifling the feed-in solar tariffs and wind power.
 
Justin Field from the Lock the Gate Alliance expressed his hopes that the renewables campaign can work closely with the anti-coal and anti-coal seam gas movements. “Our movement is about more than gas and coal,” he said.
 
The weekend was energising and inspiring for all who attended. It was a positive forward step for a movement that last year was weighed down by the battle for a carbon tax.