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The Adelaide solar bus route appears to be that currently done by 2 smaller ICE buses with short distances and no hill climbs. If it costs a million to save a thousand is it just a feelgood PR exercise? This needs to be reviewed in a year's time.
I suspect hot rocks will be found all over the place. The hard part is making a contribution to the grid.
With climate change and expensive inputs I think the only viable oilseeds long term will be genetically modified. Thus selectively bred canola will lose out to GM varieties. That may create a niche market for 'organic biodiesel' from nonGM canola. Notice that if both oilseed biodiesel and corn ethanol fade from the scene it will only be tropical plants like oil palm and sugarcane still left for '1st generation' biofuels.
Yeah - the bus needs to be monitored, but I'm all for these experiments.
I also agree about hot rocks - likely everywhere - ubiqitous power eventually if it can be made to work. I look forward to people one day howling about the damage cause by people having too much energy :-).
First generation biofuels suck - the sooner they all disappear, the better.
I find it hard to see how any biofuel produced in the temperate zone can compete with those produced from tropical plants.
You get so much more sunlight (and often water too) per hectare, you'd think jatropha and sugar cane would leave switchgrass and corn for dead.
Which introduces the danger that a lot of tropical forests will be cleared for biofuel production.
Even if you come up with improved GM varieties with higher yields, wouldn't the tropical GM plants be better still?
Regarding hot rocks:
I used to have shares in Geodynamics. Got out (at a nice profit) because I started thinking they were going to find things a lot tougher than they expected. They have certainly had a few setbacks.
But the drawbacks for hot rocks lie in the well-drilling process. Energy loss due to long transmission lines was never going to be the big problem. Even a thousand kilometre line to the nearest grid connection isn't that big a deal.
So I think they will make an excellent contribution to baseline power once they can learn how to drill economically. That's the big hurdle.
I'm not sure they will manage that in the next 5-10 years.
But as it's mostly a matter of learning how to drill, rather than energy expended, I think sinking thermal boreholes will eventually prove to be cost effective.