Science going back to dark ages writes  Ian Berryman*. |
(First published Fairfax May 28, 2014)

The Climate Commission has gone. The carbon tax is to be rescinded. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency is to be abolished. The promise of a “Million Solar Roofs” is broken. And in what can only be described as an ideological move, the Abbott government introduced bills to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, despite it making a profit last year. The Prime Minister has declared war on the Australian renewable energy industry, the environment and science itself.

The overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming is based on evidence, whether Tony Abbott chooses to act on it or not. A sceptic is someone who doubts accepted opinion; a denier is someone who refuses to accept fact. Scepticism is healthy, denial is dangerous, and intentionally dismantling the entire renewable energy industry of a country that is not only wealthy, sun blessed and windswept but also has the highest per capita CO2 emissions in the OECD is criminally reckless. Furthermore, it will cripple our future economic growth.

The global economy has embraced the renewable energy industry. Last year wind power grew by 25 per cent worldwide and solar power by 30 per cent. On May 11, Germany met 74 per cent of its electricity demand with renewable energy.

Germany, the strongest and largest economy in Europe, has only half the average solar resource of Australia yet has 10 times the capacity of solar PV panels. The Chinese economy is four times the size of ours yet they have 30 times as much wind power installed.

While we quibble about the intermittency of renewables, industries in Spain and the US have invested billions in solar thermal plants, many of which store heat and produce electricity long after sunset. Given our abundant renewable resources, we should be leading the world in research and investment, instead Abbott would have us squander our competitive advantage and destroy massive economic potential.

This budget has been decried as heartless; unfortunately, it is also brainless. The sun provides the Earth with enough energy in one hour to power civilisation for a year. There are already 19 markets worldwide where solar PV panels match or undercut fossil fuel electricity prices, without subsidy. The sun’s rays will soon dominate and underpin the entire global economy. This government’s denial of both sun and science can only be described as pre-Copernican.

The attacks on renewable energy have been performed without mandate, justified by falsehoods and are economically counterproductive. While Treasurer Joe Hockey finds wind turbines “disgusting”, the ideological overtones of the budget suggest a darker, Randian philosophy behind this offensive. I have invested my career in solar power; I am trying to build the motor that drives the world. However, Abbott is shutting that motor down. While he may talk of direct action, his only actions to date have been to direct renewable energy investment and industry overseas.

Unfortunately, it will not just be investment and industry that are driven away but people, too. I am an Australian Student Prize Winner, a first-class honours graduate of Melbourne University and a Dean’s Honours Recipient from its engineering department. I study solar power at Oxford University and despite the incredible potential of my industry I have no future in Abbott’s Australia. Instead I will be welcomed home to a non-existent industry, no unemployment benefits and an ever-increasing HECS debt. I don’t want the only carbon emissions I save Australia to be the flight I never take home. We should be exporting solar power technology, not solar power jobs.

Elsewhere, R&D is recognised as the path to future economic prosperity and not a burden on the present. The value added to British GDP by research is conservatively estimated at £30 billion ($55 billion), from a total research budget of £3.5 billion. This is why, when Britain faced a far greater debt to GDP ratio, several banking collapses and a GFC-induced recession, the level of nominal research funding was kept constant.

Cuts to ARENA, ANSTO, the CSIRO, and many other research bodies will severely damage our long-term economic health.

Perhaps then we will have a real deficit crisis. Furthermore, the multidisciplinary nature of research means that the Medical Research Fund will be ineffective without adequate support from physics, engineering, chemistry and many other scientific areas Abbott is currently de-funding at research, doctorate and undergraduate level.

Worryingly, the long payback periods of research mean that this reckless economic damage will be hard to recover from; coaxing once-betrayed investment, business confidence and research expertise back to Australia will be difficult if not impossible.

That this onslaught against renewable energy, the environment, research and science comes from a government with no science minister  is unfortunately and even predictably unsurprising. The late Carl Sagan commented, “We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

The fuse to this mix was lit on budget night, it remains to be seen whether the Australian public will allow it to blow up.

*  Ian Berryman is reading for a DPhil in engineering science at the University of Oxford.  His thesis is on solar thermal power. He is also president of the (student run) Oxford Energy Society.