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Real power from nothing but hot air

Australia plans 1km-high convection tower to supply
200,000 houses

A one kilometre-high tower capable of producing enough energy
for 200,000 homes has been approved by the Australian
government and could be in operation within three years, subject
to approval by the New South Wales state authorities.

David Fickling in Sydney

The Guardian

In effect a giant chimney, it will generate electricity by drawing
warm air from ground level through turbines. Its developer,
EnviroMission, says the full-scale prototype, planned for a site
on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, could be
replicated in deserts throughout the world.

The company’s chief executive, Roger Davey, said: "It’s
completely silent, it doesn’t need any fuel, and the only
by-product is hot air."

The concrete tower will be more than twice as high as the
451-metre (1,500ft) Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur, and
almost twice the 555-metre CN tower in Toronto.

It will be surrounded by a circular greenhouse 7km -nearly
four-and-a-half miles – in diameter in which warm air will collect
and rise towards 32 turbines at its base. The outer fringes of the
greenhouse may be used for agriculture or fruit-drying but closer
to the tower there will be a constant 35mph wind and
temperatures rising towards 60C (140F).

The tower itself will be 130 metres wide and visible up to 80
miles from its site on Tapio station near Buronga and Mildura on
the southern reaches of the Murray river.

Work is expected to begin next year and the first electricity
should be generated in 2005. EnviroMission believes it can have
five plants up and running by 2010.

On Thursday the federal industry minister, Ian Macfarlane, put
the A$800m (£308m) project into a fast-track planning process.
It now needs environmental approval from the state government.

"This is a crucial step forward," said Don McKinnon, mayor of
Wentworth shire, the local authority. "Now all we need is for the
New South Wales government to show the same faith and vision
and things will really begin to hot up."

A 180m prototype tower built by a Spanish-German team in the
1980s managed to generate 50kW of energy before it was
closed down in 1989. EnviroMission believes the bigger version
will produce up to 200MW.

That amount of electricity from fossil fuels would produce
700,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Australia’s vast open spaces and abundance of sun and wind
make it ideal for renewable energy, but its government has often
seemed to be lukewarm on the issue: Australia is one of the few
developed countries not to have ratified the Kyoto protocol.

The protocol allows Canberra to increase greenhouse gas
emissions 8% by 2010, whereas other developed countries are
required to cut gases by the same amount. But last week
Canberra announced that it would miss the target by 3% – a
figure which the prime minister, John Howard, hailed as "within
striking distance" of the Kyoto target.

In June he joined the US in rebuffing calls to ratify the protocol,
saying its measures would harm Australian jobs and industry: a
stance which went down particularly badly with Australia’s
low-lying Pacific neighbours, who are expected to be the first to
suffer from rising sea levels in the coming century.

None the less, Australia generates about 10% of its energy from
renewable sources and eco-friendly power stations such as the
14-windmill windfarm at Codrington, on the Victoria coast, which
has become a popular tourist attraction.

The tower’s designers say it will overcome one of the main
problems with wind and solar power stations: it will run all the
time. But Cham Nayar, director of the centre for renewable
energy and sustainable technologies at Curtin University in
Perth, said existing sources were likely to be more reliable.

"These things have to be cost-effective. The technology may
work, but compared to a conventional wind farm this is an
expensive way of generating electricity."

Wentworth residents are more positive. "It would be good for the
tourism here and would hopefully bring some jobs in," said
Alisha Fichtner of the Edge motel in Buronga.

Nettie Jones, at the riverside tourist park, said her visitors would
not mind the tower intruding on their view of the countryside.
"Yes, they’re going to see it but I don’t see why it would put
people off. That is, providing they do it properly and it’s not an
absolute eyesore."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,12070,776776,00.html

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