BrightSource Wins Permit for Solar Plant on U.S. Land

Bloomberg / BusinessWeek

BrightSource Energy Inc. won approval from U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the first large-scale solar energy project on U.S. public lands to use “power tower” technology.

BrightSource plans to start construction on the 392- megawatt Ivanpah plant in December and complete work in 2012. The project will use pole-mounted mirrors, or heliostats, to reflect the sun’s rays to boilers mounted on top of towers, heating the water inside to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (538 degrees Celsius). The resulting steam will then be piped to an electricity-generating turbine.

The approval comes two days after Salazar granted leases to Chevron Corp. and Tessera Solar for solar power projects on federal land in California totaling 754 megawatts.

Edison’s Southern California Edison utility in August won permission to buy 117 megawatts from the Ivanpah solar plant being developed in California’s Mojave Desert by closely held BrightSource. PG&E Corp. was approved to buy 275 megawatts from the project. A megawatt is enough power for about 800 typical U.S. homes, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The Ivanpah plant will be located on federal property controlled by the Bureau of Land Management in Ivanpah, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Needles, California, in San Bernardino County.

New Yorker Creates Nuclear Fusion with $40,000 and a Brooklyn Lab

BBC News

Extreme DIY: Building a homemade nuclear reactor in NYC

Many might be alarmed to learn of a homemade nuclear reactor being built next door. But what if this form of extreme DIY could help solve the world's energy crisis?

By day, Mark Suppes is a web developer for fashion giant Gucci. By night, he cycles to a New York warehouse and tinkers with his own nuclear fusion reactor.

The warehouse is a non-descript building on a tree-lined Brooklyn street, across the road from blocks of apartments, with a grocery store on one corner. But in reality, it is a lab.

In a hired workshop on the third floor, a high-pitched buzz emanates from a corner dotted with metal scraps and ominous-looking machinery, as Mr Suppes fires up his device and searches for the answer to a question that has eluded some of the finest scientific minds on the planet.

In nuclear fusion, atoms are forcibly joined, releasing energy. It is, say scientists, the "holy grail" of energy production - completely clean and cheap.

The problem is, no-one has found a way of making fusion reactors produce more energy than they consume to run.
'I was inspired'

Mr Suppes, 32, is part of a growing community of "fusioneers" - amateur science junkies who are building homemade fusion reactors, for fun and with an eye to being part of the solution to that problem.

He is the 38th independent amateur physicist in the world to achieve nuclear fusion from a homemade reactor, according to community site Fusor.net. Others on the list include a 15-year-old from Michigan and a doctoral student in Ohio.

"I was inspired because I believed I was looking at a technology that could actually work to solve our energy problems, and I believed it was something that I could at least begin to build," Mr Suppes told the BBC.

While they might un-nerve the neighbours, fusion reactors of this kind are perfectly legal in the US.

"As long as they [private citizens] obtain that material [the components of the reactor] legally, they could do whatever they want," says Anne Stark, senior public information officer for California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

During fusion, energy is released as atomic nuclei are forced together at high temperatures and pressures to form larger nuclei.

Scientists say devices like Mr Suppes' pose no real threat to neighbouring communities or the environment because they contain no nuclear materials, such as uranium or plutonium.

"There is no chance of any kind of accident with fusion," says Neil Calder, communications chief for Iter, a multi-national project begun in 1985 with the aim of demonstrating the feasibility of fusion power.

"There's no CO2 pollution, there's no greenhouse gases, you can't use it for proliferation [the spread of nuclear weapons] - it has so many advantages," he said.
'Mechanics to janitors'

Government-led efforts to produce power from fusion have been going on around the world for 50 years.

Iter - funded by US, Japan, Russia, India, China, and South Korea - is working on a multi-billion dollar, advanced reactor, due to be built in the south of France by 2019.

But the availability of equipment and technology has seen an increasing number of amateurs enter the fray.

"We have people in the whole gamut, from physicists to electronics people to car mechanics to even one janitor - and all these people share a common bond to do nuclear fusion in their home," said Richard Hull, founder of Fusor.net.

Some experts are sceptical that all these people are producing fusion reactions, but when he demonstrates his device, Mr Suppes says a bubble meter placed next to the reactor indicates that a fast neutron, a by-product of fusion, has been produced.

The amateur scientist began building his reactor two years ago, purchasing parts on eBay with $35,000 of his own money and about $4,000 he raised on a website that connects artists and inventors with private investors.

"Real researchers that are working at Los Alamos [US Department of Energy National Laboratory] and are working at Lawrence Livermore are following this and commenting on it, even though it's not an officially sanctioned project," he says.
Tricky situation

Mr Suppes sees his work in nuclear fusion as more than just a hobby, and he intends to try to build one of the world's first break-even reactors - a facility producing as much energy as it uses to operate.

"He now has to go out and do what everybody else has to do, which is to convince people to invest in his project - whether its government funding or private funding to carry him through," said Mr Calder.

Mr Suppes is hoping to build a break-even reactor from plans created by the late Robert Bussard, a nuclear physicist who drew up plans for a fusion reactor that could convert hydrogen and boron into electricity.

Work on a scaled up version of a Bussard reactor, funded by the US Navy, has already been taking place in California.

But Mr Suppes believes he will be able to raise the millions of dollars it takes to build a Bussard reactor because he feels someone with enough money "will feel they cannot pass up the opportunity" to find out if it will work.

Iter said it would be wrong to dismiss out of hand the notion that an amateur could make a difference.

"I won't say something that puts these guys down, but it's a tricky situation because there is a great deal of money and time and a lot of very experienced scientists working on fusion at the moment," said Mr Calder.

"But that does not eliminate other ideas coming from a different group of people."
What neighbours say

For Mr Suppes, convincing the experts is one thing. Convincing the locals is another problem entirely.

"A homemade nuclear fusion reactor being built in Brooklyn - I would have thought there would be some sort of rules and laws about messing around with nuclear fusion in your apartment," said Brooklyn resident Stephen Davis. "I'm not sure I'd like that living right next to me."

"The fact that he's trying to form a new kind of energy is all well and good," said another local, Christopher Wright. "But without the proper scientific work behind it, I don't know if it's too good of an idea."

But others had a more positive outlook on Mr Suppes' reactor.

"I think it's a good idea. If a guy can make an invention like that, it should definitely be spread around so we don't need to depend on oil," Brooklynite Chris Stephens told the BBC.

"We need to do something that's new and more creative for society."

Gates, Doerr Issue Warning about America's Future

Computer World

Join GE CEO Immelt in effort to help U.S. gain an innovation edge in the push for clean tech

 

The ever expanding BP oil spill, in a sense, provides Bill Gates the perfect backdrop for selling Congress and the White House on a proposal to increase annual U.S. spending on clean energy research and development from $5 billion to $16 billion.

Gates, General Electric Co. CEO Jeff Immelt and venture capitalist John Doerr, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer, are among the well-known business people involved in high-level lobbying effort on clean energy.

The trio discussed the need for clean energy investment at a press conference here today, and are slated to discuss it further with President Barack Obama this afternoon.

Today's message, and a related American Energy Innovation Council report listing a number of energy policy recommendations, didn't cite BP oil spill. It was about which country will lead in what may easily be the world's next big industrial push.

Gates, Immelt and Doerr are all members of the energy innovation council.

This business-driven push for a better energy plan already has some congressional support, principally from U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), who heads the House Committee on Science and Technology. He said Thursday that he plans to work with the group on legislation that implements its proposals.

At an earlier meeting with congressional leaders on the BP oil spill, Obama made note of today's planned meeting today with Gates and others.

"We can't keep our eye off the importance of having an energy policy that meets the needs of the next generation and ensures that the United States is the leader when it comes to energy policy," said Obama. "We are not yet that leader, and that's what I want us to do."

The U.S. isn't the worldwide leader in clean technology today, agreed Doerr during the press conference. America is a worldwide leader in biotechnology and information technology, he said, but "that's not the case in today's energy technologies."

Of the top 30 new energy technology companies worldwide that produce batteries, solar technologies and advanced wind energy, only four are headquartered in the United States, Doerr said.

"It's very sad that Americans spend more on potato chips than we do on investment in clean energy R&D," said Doerr.

Gates said more federal research spending is needed to spur investment in clean technologies. "The incentives aren't there to make it happen," said Gates.

"In the same way that the U.S. has led in health care, the same way we have led in IT, it takes an upfront investment," said Gates.

U.S.-based General Electric is one of the top companies on Doerr's list, and Immelt said that its revenue from clean energy products has gone from $5 billion to $20 billion.

"It's created jobs, and it's created competitive advantage," said Immelt, adding that the company plans to increase R&D spending in this area.

The timeline for producing results is years away.

It will take a decade to bring a number of technologies in the pilot stage, and perhaps take 20 years before there is a clear idea what the winning technologies look like, according to those involved in this effort.

'Green' Becoming More than Just a Marketing Pitch

Associated Press

In this April 4, 2010 photo, Wal-Mart worker Julie Buczek throws used packaging boxes into a compressor for recycling at a Cincinnati area Walmart. Retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is urging its suppliers to reduce 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions through more efficient warehouse material handling by the end of 2015, on top of its own moves to build more energy-efficient stores, using more alternative fuels for its truck fleet, and reduce packaging. (AP Photo/Tom Uhlman)

CINCINNATI — Going green has become good business.

Just look at store shelves: Sales of "green" products, such as organic foods and natural personal care items, have jumped 15 percent since 2006, according to research firm Mintel International.

A wave of promotion is hitting consumers during this week's 40th anniversary Earth Day observances: Hanes says it can put you in eco-friendly underwear, Frito-Lay offers Sun Chips from a bag you can toss in a compost pile, and Target stores invite you to use their recycling bins.

Some promotions sound more like image-buffing than Earth-saving, and big companies still have a long way to go to significantly reduce their impacts on air, water and other resources. But environmentalists say the drivers of American consumer culture are starting to make real strides.

"It's a far cry from where we were," said Elizabeth Sturcken, who manages corporate partnerships for the Environmental Defense Fund. "Companies are seeing the economic value of going green."

It's not just products. Cutting lighting and heating costs, using less packaging, streamlining transportation to save gas, recycling more instead of throwing away — those all help both the environment and the bottom line.

"It would be easy to say that companies really care about the environment only in the third week of April," said Joel Makower, a consultant and executive editor of Greener World Media Inc. "But most big companies have been taking significant steps. ... The fact is, they're doing it for all the right business reasons."

The behemoth that might drive even more serious improvements is retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. It's urging its suppliers to reduce 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2015, on top of its own moves to build more energy-efficient stores, use more alternative fuels in its trucks, and reduce packaging.

Shopper Jim Farmer, 68, voiced his approval while looking through Earth Day-themed aisles recently at a West Chester, Ohio, Supercenter.

"I think Wal-Mart is trying to help, and that's great," Farmer said. "I have children and grandchildren, and we want to make the Earth a better place for them."

While surveys show that many consumers want to buy environmentally friendly products, the Great Recession made them reluctant to pay more for them, dampening what had been rapid sales growth.

Mintel International says sales of natural and organic foods and beverages rose 24 percent in 2006-'08, then slowed to less than 2 percent last year; sales of green personal care products jumped 18 percent in '06-'08, but only 1.2 percent last year.

Wal-Mart tells shoppers in promoting its environmental moves that the cost savings are passed on in low prices: "not just Earth-friendly, we're also being wallet-friendly." And P&G's current "Future Friendly" campaign touts both the environmental and financial benefits of products such as Tide Cold Water detergent, which curtails the toll on utility bills of heating washer water. The consumer products giant also is giving coupons for its green products, and pledges to reach 50 million households with educational information.

That's only part of a sustainability drive that P&G has made companywide. In one effort, it created a unit three years ago to find new uses for byproducts and leftovers that would otherwise go into incinerators and landfills.

So now, Clairol hair coloring ingredients help make tires shine, Duracell batteries help make bricks, and materials from Pampers diapers and Always maxi pads absorb industrial leaks and spills.

Scott Burns, who heads the unit, said the program has reduced waste disposal by 30 percent, saving money and increasing recycling revenue.

One area where product makers still need to improve, activists say, is in telling consumers in detail about ingredients so they can make their own decisions.

Chris Haack, a Mintel consumer market analyst, adds that many products that claim to be green, natural or organic might have only one ingredient or material that fits the bill. And there aren't consistent standards for what qualifies as environmentally helpful.

"There is still a lot of what's called greenwashing out there," Haack said. "There are a million labels ... consumers are befuddled. They just don't know what to trust."

With the explosion in green promotional claims, the Federal Trade Commission is reviewing its guidelines for environmental marketing. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart says it has been working with suppliers to develop a "Sustainable Product Index" to help guide consumers.

David Steinman, a consumer health advocate and author, urges consumers to push companies harder for full disclosure and to vote with their pocketbooks.

And Sturcken says the companies can do more than just add the occasional green product.

"Ideally, I certainly would like to see that every product these companies offer is green," she said. "So there are no trade-offs with effectiveness and pricing and being environmentally friendly."

China Steams Ahead on Clean Energy

BBC News

Projects like Donghai Bridge wind farm in Shanghai have pushed China ahead

China overtook the US during 2009 to become the leading investor in renewable energy technologies, according to a new analysis.

Researchers with the Pew Charitable Trusts calculate that China invested $34.6bn (£23.2bn) in clean energy over the year, almost double the US figure.

The UK emerges in third place among G20 nations, followed by Spain and Brazil.

The most spectacular growth has come in South Korea, which saw installed capacity rise by 250% in five years.

Globally, investment has more than doubled in the last five years, Pew finds, with the recent economic turmoil generating only a slight dip.

"Even in the midst of a global recession, the clean energy market has experienced impressive growth," said Phyllis Cuttino, director of Pew's campaign on climate change.

"Countries are jockeying for leadership.

"They know that investing in clean energy can renew manufacturing bases, and create export opportunities, jobs and businesses."

The US still holds a marginal lead in the total amount of installed capacity, but will be overtaken by China during the course of this year if existing trends continue.

Diversification nation

China's target of having 30GW of installed renewable capacity in place by 2020 will soon be exceeded through wind alone, and new targets are in the process of being set.

"The government has taken a strategic decision that diversifying its energy supply should be a national priority," commented Steve Sawyer, secretary-general of the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), who was not involved in the Pew report.

"It is now the world's leading manufacturer of solar photovoltaic cells, and more wind turbines are made in China than anywhere else."

However, China's use of fossil fuels is also expanding fast.

So far, renewables account for a small share of its energy supply, although the overall target is a 15% share of total energy by 2020.

Wind was the dominant sector in most of the high-investing countries, the exceptions being Spain, Germany and Italy where solar technologies commanded a majority share.

US investment fell by 40% during from 2008 to 2009.

"The US's competitive position is at risk in the emerging clean energy economy," said Ms Cuttino.

Spain's investment also dropped due to the recession, following several years of rapid increases driven by the desire to cut greenhouse gas emissions very quickly in order to reach its Kyoto Protocol target.

Pew notes that the UK achieved its third place through "large offshore wind deals, backed by the government", and by being "at the forefront of marine energy investments."

Pew based its analysis on the database maintained by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the international analysis and consultancy group.

Office Depot Announces Major Environmental Initiative to Open "Green" Retail Stores

Market Watch

Success of Company's First LEED Gold-Certified Store in Austin, TX, Propels Certification for All New Stores Beginning June 2010

Office Depot, a leading global provider of office products and services, today announced that the Company will pursue Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for Commercial Interiors (CI) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) for all new Office Depot retail stores, beginning in June 2010. LEED CI is the recognized system for certifying high-performance green interiors that are healthy, productive places to work; are less costly to operate and maintain; and have a reduced environmental footprint. Realizing that the Company does not always have control of the building -- especially when occupying an existing site -- Office Depot will make sustainable choices wherever possible and seek LEED CI certification.

"As a retailer with store locations opening around the country, we have a great opportunity to make a difference on the overall environmental footprint of today's businesses," said Chuck Rubin, President of North American Retail for Office Depot. "Office Depot takes that role very seriously and have therefore decided to LEED CI certify all of our new store locations going forward. We are confident that this initiative will benefit our customers, associates, suppliers and other stakeholders."

According to Rubin, 14 new Office Depot store locations will be LEED CI certified, starting with the Company's newest location in Austin, TX, which is scheduled to open in June 2010. At each of these locations, Office Depot will look to mirror the impressive energy and monetary savings seen at Office Depot's first LEED Gold-Certified store in Austin, TX, which opened in April 2008.

"The energy savings realized at our first Austin store location has been even greater than what we had originally expected," said Edward Costa, Vice President of Construction for Office Depot. "We intend to continue to make our stores as energy efficient, water efficient and cost efficient as possible. With LEED CI we are now able to 'green' all of our store locations -- regardless of whether we build it ourselves or take over an existing building."

Office Depot LEED CI Green Store Highlights

Features of all new Office Depot LEED CI certified stores will include:

-- Preferred parking designated for low-emitting, fuel efficient vehicles and carpooling.

-- Skylights (where applicable) will be used to harvest daylight for 90% of the store.

-- Reflective roof which features a membrane that helps to prevent absorption of the heat from the sun and keeps the interior of the store much cooler.

-- Energy Star rated HVAC equipment that exceeds ASHRAE standards.

-- T5 energy-efficient lighting, which is over 30% more efficient than typical retail lighting and will contribute to over 20% reduction in energy use.

-- Daylight and occupancy sensors which reduce energy use.

-- Water conservation interior fixtures, including tankless instant hot water heaters, low flush toilets, low flow urinals, and automatic shutoff sensors in restrooms that will use over 30% less water than the typical facility.

-- Construction waste that will be recycled when waste recycling is available.

-- Construction materials that consist of at least 10% recycled content.

-- Wood, 50% of which will come from well managed forests verified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

-- All interior finishes are made up low VOC emitting materials and finishes.

-- Green Power purchases supplementing electrical use.

-- An Energy Management System that allows tracking of energy usage and trends from one central location.

-- 100% Energy Star rated building equipment and kitchen appliances.

-- Office supplies, technology and furniture featuring a range of green attributes, including recycled content, remanufactured, Energy Star rated and non-toxic.

-- An in-store Recycling Center with environmental solutions including Office Depot Ink and Toner Cartridge Recycling, Tech Recycling Service and Cell Phone and Rechargeable Battery Recycling.

Yalmaz Siddiqui, Director of Environmental Strategy for Office Depot added: "Office Depot has an environmental strategy to increasingly buy green, be green and sell green. By incorporating a leading green building commitment to this strategy, we will continue to lead our industry, and deliver environmental and economic benefits to our company."

About Office Depot

Every day, Office Depot is Taking Care of Business for millions of customers around the globe. For the local corner store as well as Fortune 500 companies, Office Depot provides products and services to its customers through 1,670 worldwide retail stores, a dedicated sales force, top-rated catalogs and a $4.9 billion e-commerce operation. Office Depot has annual sales of approximately $15.5 billion, and employs about 49,000 associates around the world. The Company provides more office products and services to more customers in more countries than any other company, and currently sells to customers directly or through affiliates in 43 countries.

About USGBC

The U.S. Green Building Council is a nonprofit membership organization whose vision is a sustainable built environment within a generation. Its membership includes corporations, builders, universities, government agencies, and other nonprofit organizations. Since USGBC's founding in 1993, the Council has grown to include more than 13,500 member companies and organizations, a comprehensive family of LEED(R) (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green building rating systems, an expansive educational offering, the industry's popular Greenbuild International Conference and Expo (www.greenbuildexpo.org), and a network of 72 local chapters, affiliates, and organizing groups. For more information, visit www.usgbc.org. The LEED Green Building Rating System(TM) encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria.

From Australia: Seize the Initiative -- the Race for the Clean Energy Economies

The Australian

SINCE before he was elected US president, Barack Obama made clear who he thought would dominate the world economy in the 21st century.

It would be, he repeated in his State of the Union address last month, the country that led the transformation in the clean-tech and clean energy sectors.

The US has watched its early dominance of the silicon solar panel industry being assumed by China and Japan.

It now fears that not only China but India, Brazil and others will seize the initiative to dominate other emerging industries and technologies.

The Copenhagen climate change talks may have ended in disarray, hopes for a binding treaty anytime soon may be in retreat and some conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may be under the spotlight, but it seems clear that the transition to a low-carbon economy and towards clean technology is inevitable and accelerating. "China is not waiting to revamp its economy," Obama said in his speech. "Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting. They are not standing still . . . They're rebuilding their infrastructure. They're making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs."

The question for Australia is how it seeks to position itself in what some are branding as the new space race.

Present policies, particularly the proposed emissions trading scheme and faltering renewable energy target, have been framed, or at least justified, with a global climate change treaty in mind.

But too little of the push to innovate has been sold on the need to maintain pace with companies equally concerned with energy security and other environmental measures as about climate change. And too little about gathering some share of the trillions of dollars that will be directed towards clean technology and investments.

In the absence of an international treaty, most leading economies are pushing for change, as a national or regional initiative, in the form of an ETS, mandated clean energy targets, green stimulus packages and a host of subsidies, taxes and financing initiatives.

"The lack of a binding international agreement on any of these issues at the Copenhagen summit last December has understandably created uncertainty in the minds of many potential climate change investors," Deutsche Bank's head of asset management Kevin Parker says in a recent report. "This is unfortunate because what matters far more is that national and local governments all over the world are not waiting for a supra-national framework. They are already pushing ahead with their own policies that will do far more than international regulation in the short to medium term to stimulate private investment."

Deutsche Bank notes that immediately before and after the Copenhagen summit ended in disarray, more than 25 significant policy announcements were made from nations and states worldwide, with some of the most notable coming from the US, China, India, Taiwan, Brazil, Japan, Britain and South Korea.

"All this new national legislation is a hugely encouraging sign that many countries not only understand the urgency of the climate change problem but see the competitive advantage of moving towards a low carbon economy," Parker writes.

He describes it as the "opportunity of a lifetime", but warns investors to focus on the quality of regulation provided by individual countries because huge differences are emerging. "We believe these disparities will, over time, translate into massive differences in the amount of investment capital countries attract and the jobs they create in renewable energy and other climate change industries. Investment capital will find the best returns, wherever they are. Countries that fail to provide them will get left behind."

In a small but symbolic sign of the changing nature of technology and established industries, the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla last month signalled it would conduct a $US100 million ($111m) initial public offering this week. It will be the first IPO in the US auto industry since Ford listed on the stock exchange in 1956.

Tesla may well be a loss maker, but its public float has attracted the support of four heavyweight financiers -- Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- which clearly have a vision of where their future bread will be buttered.

Morgan Stanley and HSBC also have taken principal positions in the $US350M raising by Better Place, the electric car battery network provider, which has completed the largest venture capital raising in the world in the past two years. And Warren Buffett, long touted as the world's smartest investor, is sitting on an eight-fold return on a $US230m investment made two years ago in BYD. The Chinese battery and EV maker has ambitions of being the world's largest car manufacturer and is already the biggest manufacturer of any sort in China.

Closer to home, Ausra, the company that began as an academic case study at the University of NSW and was then taken to the US to gain some financial backing, has been sold to Areva, the world's biggest nuclear energy group. Areva intends to use the Ausra technology as a flagship product in its push to dominate the solar thermal energy industry.

Numerous other Australian clean-tech and clean energy developers find themselves at a similar crossroads. A report by the advocacy group Beyond Zero Emissions found that Australia, in theory, could be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020. But at its present rate of progress it seems unlikely that more than a few villages and hamlets, along with a handful of desalination plants, will be renewable at that time.

Meanwhile, talented and innovative Australian developers are packing their bags for greener pastures overseas, where broader market-based subsidies, tax incentives and loan guarantees are encouraging innovation in wind, solar, marine, energy storage and a host of other areas.

The irony is that while the likes of Scotland declare their intention to be the Saudi Arabia of marine battery and energy systems, and Chile and Arhgentina make similar claims in regard to lithium ion batteries, the key technology for EVs, Australia's natural resources could give it the ambition to become the Saudi Arabia of whichever energy source it wants. It has the capacity for geothermal, solar, wind or marine energy and advanced battery technology, and to develop a corresponding industry.

So while the cadence of Australian policy continues to be directed by the pace of international agreements, what of the future of UN climate change talks? Is there any prospect that such an agreement could be enacted?

The absence of a legally binding agreement did not surprise those who followed these negotiations closely, but there was no doubt they were stunned by the chaotic and dysfunctional ending to the two-week conference in Copenhagen in December.

And there are now few who believe an agreement can be struck in Mexico later this year, or can be struck at all if under the auspices of the UN.

Even the status of the so-called Copenhagen Accord, produced at the last minute by a group including the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa, is under doubt. India and China this week indicated they were unsure if they wanted to be associated with the accord, which sets a goal of limiting global warming to less than 2C above pre-industrial times. "This does make it less likely that we will see a global agreement," says Graham Stuart, head of the European climate change practice at Baker & McKenzie. "What we will get is a bottom-up approach [from individual nations]. At some point, maybe, those national pledges will coalesce into a binding treaty."

Nevertheless, Stuart says there will be much activity in the realm of national actions, bilateral agreements between, say, China and the European Union on carbon credits and the power sector, as well as regional agreements. "We are looking at a whole set of national actions and bilateral treaties," Stuart says.

This a view supported by Freehills, another legal firm closely following the action at domestic and international levels. It says a global consensus may not be possible and smaller bilateral and multilateral treaties may be more productive.

On the domestic front, however, the positions of the government and the opposition appear intractable, and may be resolved only through an election.

"The signs still remain that some form of carbon regulation in Australia is inevitable," it says. "But the precise format is not certain."