There’s news and there’s shipping news. The shipping news is the local stuff – strange comings and goings, unusual cargo and celebrities in odd places. Today Real Dirt, Fast begins with such a story.
We have a lot of echidnas down here at Cudbugga Forest but normally they are on their way across the paddocks, heading directly to the bush and nothing seems to be able to distract them from the task at hand. Just before sunset on Sunday evening I saw an echidna on the lawn. At first, when I approached, he hunkered down. I sat on the grass and watched. He lifted his head and, for the first time, I looked into the beady eyes of a venerable monotreme. Did I get any great insight out of it? Not really, however, for a few minutes all the other bad environment news didn’t seem to matter so much. And that’s what’s great about shipping news stories.
So to the news. What a shocker this story is. You know when you’re at a party and you’re talking to a group of people and someone who you really like leaves and you’re stuck with the guy that supports old growth logging in Organg-utan habitat? Well that is how I felt at the news that BP Solar, the premier solar panel producer in Australia, is closing its Sydney factory. More than 200 staff will lose their jobs and the panels will now be manufactured offshore…And we are left with the coal industry, propped up with hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies. As the SMH reported:
The closure of the BP Solar plant at Sydney Olympic Park means Australia’s solar industry is now primarily a research rather than a manufacturing effort.
Although BP Solar said it was closing the photovoltaic solar panel factory to cut costs, it admitted there would be no immediate benefit to customers, and panels would not become cheaper as a result of the move.
Instead, industry believes that rooftop solar power will be the same price as electricity generated from fossil fuels within five to 10 years.
One of the big issues with installing solar panels is the energy embodied in them as part of the production process…In the grocery industry transporting stuff around the planet is called ‘food miles’. Now Australians have a new guilt to look forward to – the carbon costs of shipping and importing panels – maybe we could call this ‘sun miles’?
I too have been stunned by this crazy world. BP Solar, Badcock and Brown Wind – businesses that should be the cornerstones to Australian ecological sustainability, resilience and self reliance and they are disappearing without a trace. Of course the car industry and coal are much more important contributors to a sustainable environment aren’t they??? Where are the government bailouts when you really need them?
Germany has more rooftop PhV than Oz (even per capita) and the cruel irony is that the vast majority is/was 1980s Sydney Uni technology that couldn’t attract start-up (or even finish-off) capital to enable it to be brought to (the OZ) market.
Ya gotta lurve BP’s insouciance – admitting that they’ll make them cheaper elsewhere but the retail price won’t decrease.
That’s Ekonomics 1002.
ABC’s “Oz Talked At” earlier this week was ostensibly about feed-in tariffs but the toing & froing was well shown to be drivel by a no-nonesense mature woman who called in, sounding utterly exasperated and put the matter simply, “USE LESS”.
Now how come Kruddy & Co can’t figure that out?
The currant national policy on solar is one of the dumbest things I can think of. It makes no sense at all!!
Nice photo Jim, not often you can get an echidna’s face and a lake into the same frame!!
I cannot understand where the govt is putting its investments into… when the local council admitted to losing $9 mil due to the global crisis, but why is this money not invested in these highly desirous industries as a preference ?? for the future??