Prof Chris Greig: "I’m not sure the average person actually thinks carefully about where energy comes from and what it means.  So for example you go home, you turn a light switch on, you turn the gas cooker on, the gas flows, those molecules come down the pipe.  Now people don't connect that with a coal fired power station or a nuclear power station and they don't connect the gas to an unconventional gas field or a gas well somewhere. So people have got to get a better understanding of the fact that they call for energy, it’s available immediately and where it comes from.  Then they have to have a realistic understanding of what things cost.  So there’s a lot of advocacy groups, various technologies and so forth, try to portray that costs are much lower than they really are.  And that then influences politicians in terms of the policies they make.  But it also leaves the public with a perception that may be misinformed about what are the right solutions, what are the pros and cons of these different energy solutions.  One thing’s for sure, we take energy for granted, none of us will accept blackouts, none of us will accept fuel shortages at the bowser.  So we take it for granted, it’s very important that we actually understand the capital, the scale, the infrastructure, the resources, the development costs that go to making that energy available all the time, to all the people."

Categories: Australia Energy Issues, Coal in Australia
Author: Prof. Chris Greig