alternative push

Coal, oil lead alternative push: Siemens KELLEE NOLAN
March 22, 2010 - 3:54PM



AAP

Coal and oil companies will embrace a report which advocates spending $60 billion on alternative energy sources over the next decade, a leading technology company director says.

After a year of research, Siemens unveiled its Picture the Future: Australia report on energy and water use.

The report, released in Melbourne on Monday, says Australian business and governments should spend $60 billion on alternative energy initiatives and $23 billion on water infrastructure over the next decade.

Siemens' chairman Albert Goller says he expects coal and oil companies to be right behind it.

"I don't think that they have a problem. Just on the weekend I was with one of the managing directors of one of the leading oil companies of the world," Mr Goller said.

"You would not believe how intensive they are and involved in sustainability and they want to look for alternatives."

He said coal companies were also looking to implement sustainable carbon-capture methods.

"They are not sitting there saying they don't care about the environment; they care about the environment as well."

He said some companies did lobby against the climate change movement "to the extent where it is not rational any more", but there were not too many of these.

"People I have seen, they are all working on it and they want to be part of the solution, but of course they don't want to get told that they're going to be out of business tomorrow and I think that's understandable."

Calling Picture the Future a report for both the nation and for his own company, Mr Goller said the technology for a sustainable future already existed and that governments and corporations needed to invest in it.

"Our leadership role will be to convince as many Australians, as many corporations, as many governments, to say the picture (in this report) is the right way to go," he said.

"Not any more, like we've done in the past, where we identify the problem and then we try to find a solution and then the solution gets debated over time until it either disappears or people are in denial."

The report says that to meet 2050 carbon emission targets, all road vehicles would need to be electrically powered and all electricity would come from a mix of wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, gas and carbon-capture coal.

It says water will need to come from a flexible mix of ground water, surface water, desalination plants, waste water re-use systems and stormwater catchments, with real time metering and monitoring for both agricultural and urban use.

2010 AAP