Environment:

Pollutants:

Careless and lavish use of fossil and other pollution producing fuels in the last century due to cheap prices has caused the world a headache . Now after so many decades we have realised that we have harmed our planet and ourselves. The air that we breath is not safe and clean enough and the pollutants from our misuse of energy are accumulating more and more in the atmosphere and covering our planet like a blanket of clouds preventing the earth from loosing its heat.

Global Warming:

Increased level of the green house gas emissions in the atmosphere causes global warming. This global warming which increases the atmosphere temperature only a few degrees (i.e. 4 degrees celcius) in a century has devastating effects such as melting of glaciers, severe and frequent droughts and storms, etc on earth. This climate change endangers humans and animals alike on the planet.

Kyoto Protocol:

Finally the world came together more than a decade ago to look for a solution for global warming and to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases to the same level of the previous decade, a decade later. Although many countries signed this protocol originally, however this was not enough to make it an international law. Fortunately later on more countries joined in and signed the protocol and now there are enough numbers that have ratified the protocol to make it a useable international protocol. Unfortunately there are still some of more polluting nations that have not signed this protocl, but hopefully in the near future they will also sign the protocol and abide by it.

Mandatory Renewable Energy Target ( MRET):

In reaction to Kyoto Protocol the Australian Government introduced the Renewable Energy Act 2000 which commenced its operation in April 2001. This legislation requires the large electricity purchasers, wholesalers and retailers, to source an additional 2% of their electricity purchases from renewable energy producers by 2010. That is to increase the use of renewable energies in Australia from 11% to 13% by 2010. This would be 9500 Gigawatt hour of renewable electricity per year by 2010. The result of this would be reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 7.3 million tons per year. There is also a financial penalty for non compliers to this Act.

This growth in renewable energy consumption should be contributed mostly by wind, as other sources of renewable like hydro, solar, tidal, geothermal, biomass and other possible forms have some limitations.