The SMH has a report on the Solar Cities conference that considers the idea that suburbia may be well suited to a distributed, clean energy future, noting "spacious suburbs are perfect for household electricity generation but there are obstacles".
If it is hard to imagine a future in which the suburban streets of Mosman, or Fairfield, or Parramatta are lined with revolving wind turbines and glinting photovoltaic solar arrays, it's worth remembering that 40 years ago, three-quarters of all Australian homes relied heavily on solar and wind power.
The Hills Hoist, the metaphor for suburbia, dried clothes without so much as a puff of greenhouse gas.
Australia's response to curbing emissions will be decided in the same streets. Suburban sprawl could be the surprisingly green ace in Australia's climate pack, said some of the 800 delegates who gathered in Adelaide this week for the International Solar Cities Congress.
Our preference for large backyards, detached homes and wide streets will allow for local electricity generation, effectively turning each home into a mini power-station. There are huge obstacles - principally the cost of manufacturing, buying and almost certainly subsidising the equipment - but the consensus among local government and the renewable energy industry is that the nation's cities will be transformed within 20 years.
"The suburb is perfect for low-energy development," said the ecologist Herbert Girardet, who helped plan South Australia's first sustainable suburbs and works on Dongtan, a Chinese city next to Shanghai that will be powered exclusively on renewable energy.
"Low density is good for wind and solar power because there's more space to generate locally," Girardet says. "I would like to see the spaces between houses, and the roofs, all being used to power the homes and cars."
The conference presented a curious mix of optimism, because most of the technology needed to slash Australia's greenhouse emissions has been proven to work, and frustration, because far too little money has been allocated to roll it out on a massive scale.
Rapid urbanisation has been the key driver of escalating greenhouse gas emissions. Professor Peter Droege, the chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy, Asia Pacific, said: "Cities have become humankind's illusory safety blanket, shielding it from grasping the advent of a man-made terrestrial calamity: the climate tipping point … Renewable energy needs to be central to mainstream thinking on infrastructure planning and the very design of cities."
Six cities around Australia, including Blacktown in NSW, are running experimental renewable energy projects designed to both clamp down on energy demand and supply the rest from renewable sources. These projects and others have shown mixed, but generally encouraging, results. ...