Friday 2 February 2007

Climate a chance to profit

Bendigo Advertiser
Thursday 1/2/2007 Page: 5

Bendigo City and LaTrobe University Bendigo will team up to host a conference on renewable energy in regional Australia in Bendigo in September. Organisers are looking for key business and community speakers to join national and international experts to tease out ideas on developing a renewable energy industry outside Australia's capital cities.

The driving force behind the conference is Cr Keith Reynard, who said yesterday he hoped that the ideas discussed would be able to reduce country Victoria's reliance on greenhouse gas-emitting coal. "It's going to be a cocktail of different technologies that will replace the reliance on coal," he said.

Cr Reynard sounded a dire warning for those who doubted the veracity of climate change. "We can't afford to sit on our hands on this issue any longer," he said. "We are at the tipping point, where if we do delay taking action it's going to be too late. "We will experience climate change over the next 50 years that is a result of what we are doing now, which will have major implications for rural Australia." Cr Reynard said the drought was but one effect of climate change.

Professor John Martin, from the Centre for Sustainable Regional Communities at La Trobe University, said the conference was a chance for rural communities to take advantage of the economic opportunities of a renewable energy industry.

"From manufacturing solar panels to developing materials and refitting houses and so on, there is a major economic opportunity for regional Australia to find out how to do this," he said. "In crisis there is both threat and opportunity. "You can say the world is getting hotter and we will all be doomed. "But we are thinking that the glass is half full and this is a great opportunity.

Speakers already booked for the conference, from September 16 to 18, include Bendigo Bank chief executive Rob Hunt, and the chief executive of the federal agency responsible for renewable energy policy, David Rossiter.

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