A super idea for clean and sustainable energy
by Elliott Johnston and Frank Barbaro
The main focus to catastrophic risks from climate change must be the urgent development of clean, sustainable energy and superannuation funds are an obvious source of investment capital – people’s money for people’s interests.
Despite any scepticism about global warming there is widespread agreement that the planet needs to be given the benefit of the doubt and that human activity must become sustainable.
This demands a public interest response on many fronts in a way never before imagined and therefore places an onus on all governments.
A key and inevitable action is the move to sustainable clean energy production and this could be achieved with the federal government undertaking the large scale organization of solar and wind power, and thereby reducing coal power.
The Federal Government should legislate for a certain amount of superannuation funds to be invested in this project and define that the money invested gets a reasonable interest rate of return.
This fund should also be directed towards a retraining of people whose jobs are lost in consequence of this development and these undertakings should be organised in a variety of States and to meet demands.
Clean energy is not just the answer. There are other practical and proven measures of public investment such as in public transport and improving rail services between capital cities to reduce energy consumption.
However, fossil fuels are a major challenge because they are the current backbone of electricity production and this industry is still a source of enormous profits.
Australia’s proposed emissions trading scheme, which the Senate recently rejected, reflects the powerful interests at play and which impede an authentic public interest emerging.
However, if the risks from climate change are to be adequately tackled governments have to equally and urgently invest to harness the abundant source of clean energy - sun and wind – using available technology, which will undoubtedly improve as it becomes more commonplace.
The need to deal with carbon and other pollution from the current energy sources and production is urgent. But, it becomes extremely so in the face of inevitable demands from a growing world population and the growing majority of people who legitimately aspire to decent and modern living standards and comforts.
The world’s population since the 1950s has trebled however, climate change risks, and it cannot be stressed often enough, have been principally brought about by the activities of a minority of the world’s people.
Australians, indigenous people excluded, are part of this minority whose unsustainable lifestyles are still considered desirable.
Historically there are many aspects that differentiate this age with those of the past – energy is a key one.
As much as anything else the energy demanded, produced and consumed by industrialisation characterises the current age.
Energy drives manufacturing, agricultural production, computerisation, communication, domestic activity and cultural and recreational pursuits.
However, it has become a two edged sword. It has enabled a level of unimaginable productivity and progress to the point that collectively humans have never been so technologically advanced or so wealthy, despite growing inequality and wealth disparity.
However, there has been a cost which to date has not been registered on the expense side of the business ledger.
The result is that the world is in crisis over the lack of clean waters, over its polluted air because of its shrinking arable land and from the threats to biodiversity. Climate change is the most dramatic negative sign of human industrial practice and market mechanisms that have promoted unsustainable growth and consumption.
Government investment in solar and wind energy generation can be the pivotal point to break with the polluting energy past and develop clean and sustainable energy sources for energy-based future societies.
Investment capital
The hundreds of billions of dollars in Australian superannuation funds are an ideal source of capital for developing clean sustainable solar and wind based energy.
A government owned enterprise could provide a secure investment for superannuation funds. There have been many successful examples of successful government business enterprises which is why the most profitable ones have nearly all been privatised.
An example of what is possible is the post WWII Playford Liberal setting up the Electricity Trust of South Australia.
This in essence could be replicated except that sun and wind could be the source of fuel instead of coal and the beneficiaries would be the public and the environment instead of largely General Motors Holden.
Such an enterprise would give super funds an alternative to market based investments which risk large losses of pension income as took place recently due to the global financial crisis.
A government enterprise in sun and wind energy production can provide guaranteed reasonable returns to super funds and be competitive with potential higher returns in risky market based investments.
The benefits of such a government owned enterprise are manifold. It will kick start an industry in sustainable clean energy production, it will provide sustainable jobs, it will provide a secure investment for retirement, it will sustain current and growing energy needs and it will provide a framework for environmental and biological repair.
It would be a mistake to gamble the future safety and security of people and the planet because of a preoccupation with the assets and revenue of the E7, as global electricity companies have been referred to, which have made enough out of consumers, and at a considerable cost to the environment.
Moving away from them will not be an easy political or market move. The former is possibly the harder as witnessed by the recent turnaround in the Liberal Party’s position on an emissions trading scheme. The market and money issues involved can only be imagined but there are examples of the powerful privileges at play.
One of the fallouts of the Chernobyl disaster was contaminated food that the European community had banned but instead of being destroyed there were attempts to sell it to poor countries.
There is no doubt that coal is seen as too valuable an income stream to give up just yet and there are vested interests that would like to see it continue generating returns – at least until they shift their own investment focus to something more ethically sustainable.
However, climate change is a life dependent issue and politically must take precedent over sectional interests, which is why governments must act.
In Australia the setting up of a government owned enterprise to generate electricity from sun and wind power is doable and this is where the real leadership can be demonstrated – to Australians and the rest of the world.
It is not fanciful that Australia could become a nation known for its sustainable clean energy production as well as its Sydney Opera House and Uluru.
Source: Australian Options, Issue 59, Summer 2009/10, pp. 3-4.