Light at end of coal mine

Mon, 20th June 2011

The Queensland Greens have welcomed the State Government’s commitment to renewable energy represented in the proposed solar thermal power station at Chinchilla.

“A renewable or gas power station is the only form of power station that can truly be described as transitional,” Queensland Greens energy spokeswoman Jen Gow said.

The Greens are concerned however that there is no grander vision for the development of stand alone solar power stations, although they acknowledge that the proposed plant in Chinchilla with a capacity of 250 megawatts is a substantial solar power project.

“The extent to which it represents a commitment to the development of a solar power future for Queensland is difficult to evaluate because of a lack of detail released so far by the Queensland Government and the Federal Government under the Solar Flagships program,” Ms Gow said.

"Some of the details already suggest that the project falls well short of state of the art in solar thermal technology. In particular it is described as a solar thermal gas hybrid plant where solar energy is used directly to boil water with gas as a backup energy source, to power generating turbines.

“Solar thermal power plants in other areas with a substantial commitment to solar power such as Spain and California use heat storage, usually in the form of molten salt, to buffer fluctuations in solar energy and provide generating capacity overnight.”

Queensland Greens state spokesperson Libby Connors warned that the Queensland public could not be sure how GHG intensive this station would be until a full scientific assessment of the carbon emissions of coal seam gas had been done. (By TheChronicle)