Coal emissions far exceed bushfires

Bushfires do not emit more CO2 than burning coal for electricity.

The acting Opposition Leader and Leader of the National Party Warren Truss is a man expecting to be a Minister, if not Deputy Prime Minister, by the end of the year.

Australian citizens are entitled to expect someone in that job to make decisions based on science and good advice, not ideology.

Mr Truss is reported as stating: "Indeed I guess there'll be more CO2 emissions from these fires than there will be from coal-fired power stations for decades", (January 9 2013).

Philip Gibbons, senior research fellow at ANU, and a specialist in biodiversity and forest science, decided to check that claim.

He stated, in The Conversation, January 10, that coal fired power stations in Australia collectively emit 200 million tonnes of CO2 per year.

When bush burns, it emits about 30 tonnes of CO2 per hectare in an intense fire in forested areas.

That means all the bushfires in Australia up until January 10 had released four million tonnes of CO2 - equal to two per cent of one year's output of coal fired power plants.

Furthermore, Dr Gibbons is right to point out that as the forest regenerates (sadly some may be so damaged it will take years to do so) the growing eucalypts and other plants reabsorb some of the carbon which was emitted when they burnt.

Power plants never reabsorb carbon.

It seems extraordinary to me, and many others concerned for the current environment and health of the future planet, for our grandchildren's sakes, that politicians like Warren Truss continue to talk about climate change and carbon emissions using incorrect information and as if there is no problem.

Even if we only talk about money, it costs money, and a lot of it, to dig up every tonne of coal to feed to a conventional power plant.

Once a solar-thermal plant is built (same capital costs more or less as a mine), then the fuel is free.

Forever.

We can protect our agricultural land, stop polluting the lower atmosphere with coal particulates and the upper atmosphere with carbon, and still power our country, on 100 per cent renewables.

Beyond Zero Emissions' resource economists have done the sums.

For $8 per house hold per week for 10 years to fund the capital costs of construction (think of all those jobs in depressed rural areas), we could be 100 per cent renewable and our power bills would be going down, not up.

Email, 14 Jan 2013

Kate da Costa, Umina