Australia Gives Wind and Offshore Wind Some Thought

There's some progress being made towards increasing the supply of alternative energy in Australia and moving away from cheap but dirty fossil fuels, as reported here in A Mighty Wind (8/8/03). The article describes:

Australia is the highest per capita emitter of the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming, largely because of a love affair with cheap and plentiful fossil fuels such as coal. While billions of dollars in government funding are ploughed into cleaning up coal and looking for solutions to its emissions problem, environment groups argue money should also be put into developing an alternative energy industry that will, one day, be able to make a more significant contribution to energy supplies.

Consequently, Australia is looking to the lead taken by Europe with its substantial increase in wind energy, including offshore wind farms which "capture strong streamlined breezes that race over the sea." In particular, environment groups say something similar should occur in Australia and are campaigning for the Federal Government's Mandatory Renewable Energy Target, now under review, to be raised from 2 to 10 per cent by 2010.