The benefits and challenges of living with
a low carbon economy were discussed last Thursday at a seminar hosted by the Climate Institute at the Armidale Bowling Club.
The seminar provided a forum free from political bias, with topics including carbon pricing, carbon farming, energy efficiency and what clean energy means for rural and regional Australia.
Discussed at the forum was the opportunity for jobs that renewable energy would bring to regional areas like the New England.
As part of the renewable energy precinct initiative established by the NSW Government, the Climate Institute was awarded a grant to assess the employment opportunities associated with renewable energy. In six precincts of which the Northern Tablelands is one, the Climate Institute has found that the New England Tablelands has a significant and diverse renewable energy source including solar, wind and bio-energy. The region has eight proposed commercial-scale projects in the pipeline, upwards of 1895MW, with a further 2920MW yet to be developed.
The Climate Institute estimates that 1704 new jobs could be created through the development of the region’s renewable resource. This includes 598 permanent ongoing jobs and a peak construction workforce of 1107 people. A key challenge will be to ensure that the local labour force has the skills to support renewable energy.
Carbon sequestration for farmers, including the Carbon Farming Initiative, were also discussed by guest speaker Kevin Goss, CEO, Co-operative Research Centre for Future Farm Industries who spoke about his research into the role of perennial pastures, fodder shrubs and tree crops going into the future.
“Our research is designed to improve profitability to farmers, provide them with systems and technologies that are better adapted to climate change,” said Mr Goss.
“And in one case, may well qualify under the Carbon Farming Initiative, which is the idea that you can harvest on a rapid cycle basis tree crops for biomass into bio-energy.
“We have people in this region working on subtropical perennial grasses, working on Lotus which is a water logging tolerant legume as well as a drought tolerant perennial legume and a grazing system called EverGraze which are all relevant to this region.”
Local Sustainable Energy advocate Adam Blakester hopes that this forum will shed some light on the complex issue of the carbon economy.
“People in the area need more understanding of what is going on both globally and nationally with the carbon price,” said Mr Blakester.
“We can get lost in the complexity of all of that, so understanding those changes, how we can make an opportunity of them locally and navigate that transition and storm is useful.”
Story: Jo Harrison
