Courier Mail - $1.7 billion Brisbane airport expansion deferred as tourist numbers fall

MORE than $1.7 billion worth of construction at Brisbane airport has been deferred due to a fall in tourist numbers. Work on a $700 million domestic terminal expansion and a $1 billion parallel runway were due for completion by 2015 but are likely to be pushed back by several years.

Brisbane Airports Corporation (BAC) spokesman Jim Carden said the airport had experienced years of 17 per cent growth in visitor numbers, but arrivals had fallen to almost zero growth. "There's been a softening of the market since, probably, two-thirds of the way through last year," Mr Carden said. "The airlines are doing it hard and obviously passenger numbers are not great."

Brisbane Times - Gladstone pilot wells a success: Arrow

Arrow Energy Ltd is increasingly confident it can deliver a reliable gas supply to the proposed Gladstone liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Queensland. Arrow said recent success at coal seam gas (CSG) exploration and appraisal wells in the Bowen Basin supported its goal of providing a large, long-term gas source for the project, a joint venture with energy giant Shell.

The Australian - Kimberley LNG deal a goer

A MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR liquefied natural gas plant is set to be developed in Western Australia's northwest after a landmark deal between Aborigines, government and business.

Kimberley Aborigines gave in-principle approval yesterday for the gas precinct to be developed on land at James Price Point, 60km north of Broome, in return for compensation worth more than $1 billion over 30 years.

Crikey - Bad news from Copenhagen: climate beyond worst case

On Tuesday 14 April Professor Will Steffen and other Australian National University experts gave an informal public briefing on key messages from the "Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions" Congress held in Copenhagen in March. The Congress was a big event: 2500 climate scientists and social scientists attended from 80 countries, and there were 1600 presentations. It set out to update findings of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4, in preparation for the intergovernmental UN climate meeting in Copenhagen in December. A 30-page agreed report of Congress findings will be disseminated in June.

Australian scientists played a large role, as the fifth-largest national representation after the US, Germany, Britain and host Denmark. ANU was one of 10 leading world universities co-sponsoring the Congress. Steffen’s team has already reported back to senior Australian Ministers and deparmental officials. The news is not good. Worst-case IPCC 4 scenarios are already being exceeded and climate change indicators are accelerating.

The world has moved into uncharted climate territory, in terms of experience of human sustainability. A two degrees centigrade average global temperature rise above the 2000 level is seen to be at the upper limit of safety -- this rise will itself cause serious human disruption in poor countries. Weak CO2 emission targets for 2020 increase the risk of irretrievable climate change tipping points being passed before 2020: accelerating polar ice melt and loss of the ocean’s efficiency as a carbon sink are two such threatened tipping points. So urgent action is needed now to decarbonise societies.

SMH - Futuristic jets put on hold by recession

THE Airbus A380 was meant to be the future of air travel in Australia: vast, fast, and - thanks to a perfect mix of capacity and efficiency - recession proof. But Qantas's decision yesterday to defer buying four of the $350 million superjumbos has raised questions about whether the planes it once described as an aviation revolution would survive the economic downturn.

SMH - No underground routes reserved for metro

THE State Government has failed to protect from development any underground corridors for a future metro network beyond its proposed seven-kilometre line between Central and Rozelle. This is despite claims the CBD Metro is only the first in a series of lines across the city.

WA Today - Bitter, ugly but so good for your health

It looks like a wart-covered zucchini and has an equally unappetising name, but experts say it could help rescue the world's population from malnutrition and disease.

Bitter melon is rich in vitamins and offers protection against diabetes, says Dr Dyno Keatinge, which is just as well because it is unlikely to win fans on appearance or taste. "It's not a sweet vegetable, and that's why I like it in salad and a whole range of things," said Dr Keatinge, head of a not-for-profit research institute which uses horticulture to fight poverty and malnutrition.

Reuters - In big green push, Australia thinks too small on solar

At first glance, a new day seems to be dawning for the overshadowed solar sector in Australia, the world's sunniest continent. The government is pushing through a carbon trading scheme that will penalise big greenhouse gas emitters; a major piece of renewables legislation is due for approval within months, setting a target of 20 percent green energy by 2020.

But supporters say these shiny targets may be undermined by policymakers who think too small -- limiting the most generous rebates for renewables to the first 1,500 watts of capacity, or about half the minimum of the 3,000-5,000 watts used by the average Australian home. "The limit of something like 5 KW would have been a really useful driver," said Muriel Watt, chair of the Australian Photovoltaic Association. "But the limit being 1.5 KW, it's not going to drive the large systems we'd like to see."

The Australian - D-Day for $435m in federal grants

WEDNESDAY is shaping up as a crucial deadline for Australia's aspiring renewable energy producers, with applications due for grants under the federal Government's $435 million Renewable Energy Demonstration Program. The grant, where the Government proposes to match private funds on a $1 for $2 basis, attracted an estimated 130 expressions of interest, with a couple of dozen projects invited to make final applications.

The grants -- each of between $50 million and $100 million -- are designed to support projects that are ready to be deployed on a commercial scale. They are expected to attract interest from geothermal, wave, solar thermal and large-scale solar PV operators. The biggest challenge, particularly in the current economic climate, has been to source financing for such projects. If it has been difficult for large-scale operators in established industries to get finance, it has been even harder for companies proposing projects that carry a large amount of technological risk.

Shares in one applicant, Perth-based wave energy producer Carnegie Corp, were put in a trading halt on Thursday ahead of an announcement expected to be linked to a an agreement on financing for its proposed 50MW wave energy facility. Carnegie has been operating a pilot plant of its CETO technology at North Fremantle.

Energy Current - KUTh finds new heat flows in Tasmania

Australia-based KUTh Energy has recorded 10 new heat flow results as part of its Tasmanian hot rock geothermal project across Tasmanian tenements SEL 26/2005 and SEL 45/2007. The new results are consistent with previously released heat flow results and the current geological model of the area, providing a further clear indication of the existence of a substantial hot rock geothermal zone.

KUTh reports that an area of 620 square miles (4,170 sq km) is estimated to have anomalously high heat flow greater than 90 milliWatts per square meter (mWm2) with a 239-square-mile (620-sq-km) zone of intensified high heat flow of above 100 mWm2.

ABC - Geothermal venture reports promising find

Geothermal company Torrens Energy says its exploration project north of Port Augusta in South Australia has detected significant heat flows.

Executive director John Canaris is hopeful that hot rocks energy could eventually supply the Davenport sub-station, a distribution node for Port Augusta power station. "The power production in Germany went from a standing stock to electricity production on the grid supplying households in just three years," he said. "I don't know whether we can mimic that effort, but certainly we'd be wanting to turn this discovery into a resource and eventually into power generation as soon as we can."

Business Spectator - Ceramic Fuel Cells: Small but powerful

Around the world enormous effort is being concentrated on generating energy more efficiently with lower carbon emissions. That work encompasses many generating techniques, but significant development expenditure is now being concentrated on decentralised power generation instead of the traditional centralised power generation facilities.

In Australia one of the leaders in power generation decentralisation is a fairly obscure company, Ceramic Fuel Cells.

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