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That corporate Australia would realise the business opportunities provided by aligning core business with the Millennium Development Goals, which seek to eliminate global poverty.

Rudd locks in green power plan Chris Hammer Canberra July 3, 2008 THE Rudd Government has set Australia on course for a new era of greener but more expensive electricity, pressing ahead with a plan to make 20% of ou

THE Rudd Government has set Australia on course for a new era of greener but more expensive electricity, pressing ahead with a plan to make 20% of our power come from renewable sources within just over a decade.

Today I had a phone call from a Pyrmont blogger who’d discovered PWF’s report on Australia’s first Community Owned Wind Park. His comments? “Its not everyday, that you read a story on a great community blog, and you go WOW…Why Did It Take So Long…Wake Up Australia…More of the Same Please.”

Tenders are being called for companies to design, supply and install energy and rainwater storage solutions and also to supply and install innovative, energy efficient lighting options for Government schools.

“Under the Australian Government’s National Solar Schools Program, schools are being offered grants of up to $20,000 for solar technology and up to $30,000 for solar hot water systems, rainwater tanks and other energy efficiency measures,” Mr Bartlett said.

REDUCING carbon emissions will not be cost free for Australians, Kevin Rudd has bluntly declared, as he turns the heat on the Liberals to pass the Government's scheme in the Senate next year.

Well it's hardly a surprise but the Government's green paper tells us an emissions trading scheme will be costly.It will be inflationary and could push the price of electricity up by as much as 16 per cent. But to ease the pain, the Government has promised compensation for pensioners, motorists and low income households; and assistance for high emitting businesses.The Greens aren't happy, and neither is the Opposition. But the broad outlines of the Governments design to reduce carbon pollution has been welcomed by the business community.

This report applies a full-cost economics approach to climate change adaptation, using the aluminium industry as a case study to illustrate the complexity of the policy challenge. The report examines the positive value of jobs within the upstream aluminium industry, and the negative value of carbon emissions from the sector. It estimates the value which flows from aluminium jobs to individual workers and to the wider community. The report provides a demographic survey of aluminium towns and finds that aluminium towns are less economically vibrant than the Australian economy as a whole, with lower median incomes (despite high aluminium wages), lower employment and lower workforce participation. This highlights the critical importance of aluminium to these towns, employing thousands of local workers at an average wage more than double the national median.

The term cleantech therefore tends to be a more amorphous industry group than, say, environmental services, and a less rigid investment asset class than, say, financial services.Sectors that appear to fit into the definition of cleantech without dispute include:Renewable energy – wind, solar thermal and photovoltaics, wave, tidal, hydro, geothermal, biomass and biogas;Water technologies that increase efficiency;Energy efficiency, green buildings and biomaterials;Waste management and recycling;Energy storage and fuel cell technologies;Low emission vehicle technologies; andEnvironmental Services