In response to the growing impact of climate change and increased pressure to identify alternatives to conventional energy sources, the City of Greater Bendigo and La Trobe University, Bendigo Campus are collaborating to bring together interested parties through a conference aimed at defining the challenge for regional Australia and describing some of the opportunities and solutions.
SPEAKERS
The conference will bring together speakers covering a range of issues and examples of innovative approaches to renewable energy generation.
Including:
- Ideas developed for hydrogen production by solar water splitting.
- Development of dye sensitised solar cells.
- Innovative energy monitoring and load management - environmental and lifestyle sustainability.
- Food, Fibre and Fuels: Uncertain Futures for Australian Regions.
- Making a difference - reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the oceans.
- Rural and regional vulnerability to energy prices.
- Hepburn Wind Project.
- Zero emissions neighbourhoods.
- New initiatives relating to energy in regional Victoria and Tasmania.
- Beyond Carbon Bendigo - People, Planet, Profit - The case for a vibrant, connected, ecologically effective and delightful Bendigo.
- Towards zero net emissions.
- Distributed energy futures for regional Australia - lessons from Europe.
- Small business and climate change - empowering the business community to reduce their carbon footprint.
Big energy supply and cost changes ahead for regional Australia
Ever thought about the total energy bill for your town, city or community? Or what might happen if that energy supply stopped or changed or cost more? Would you have alternatives? Do cheaper alternatives exist? In fact, why rely on distant plants to provide energy? Is this efficient? What would it take to generate energy closer to where it's used? What's the job generating potential? Could Australia's power grid and regulatory system cope? What's needed to accommodate such change?
With the world poised to consider its first real global climate treaty in Copenhagen later this year, the outlook for energy is change, change, change. Smart regional leaders are already preparing, according to the Director of La Trobe University's Centre for Sustainable Regional Communities Prof John Martin.
"Regional Australia must seize the moment and grab the opportunities that are now before us," Prof Martin said. "We have the space and ability to adapt faster than sprawling metropolitan cities and we need the jobs that will come with this change."
With this in mind, the City of Greater Bendigo and La Trobe University will host a three-day conference in November. Called Energy Futures in Regional Australia: Creating Local Economic Development Opportunities, it will forecast regional Australia's energy future - what it will look like, where climate-friendly energy could be generated, how it might be generated and the costs and opportunities ahead.
Speakers will explain why traditional energy supply systems face uncertainty, and how changing national policies will impact on regional areas. They include scientists, policy makers, pricing wonks and communities with new energy projects on the ground or in the making.
