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Damm i should have read a bit further...Here is a quote on costs from the bulletin.........
EnviroMission and SBP estimate the cost of their first 200-megawatt solar thermal tower at $670m, and say the cost of subsequent towers would fall. An engineering infrastructure, materials manufacturing plants and trained workforce would be in place and the design and construction would have been refined.
The initial cost is comparable with the $600m cost of building a new 200MW brown-coal power station and a drying plant for the coal, which is nearly 70% water by weight. A 200MW black-coal power station in Queensland would cost $440m. Davey says these prices ignore the unknown environmental and health costs of greenhouse gas, sulphur and particulate emissions from coal-fired power stations.
Each solar tower would abate between 920,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually from fossil fuels. Solar towers would help Victoria, which is heavily dependent on brown coal-sourced electricity, out of its bind in the Latrobe Valley.
The Bracks government has been criticised for its plan to create jobs by ramping up power production from the valley, where unemployment rates are among the highest in the nation. But burning more brown coal would compromise Australia’s obligation to reduce its greenhouse emissions under the Kyoto protocol, which requires it contain its emissions by 2010 to within an 8% increase of 1990 levels.
By 2010, Australia’s energy supply companies must purchase 10% of their electricity from renewable sources. The figure is now 8%, most of it from hydro-electric power. Emerging solar technologies are likely to provide much of the 2% increase.
Davey believes government support for the solar tower project would mollify both local and international critics of Australia’s greenhouse policies. After years of government neglect of the industry, he says, Australia must “stand up and be counted on its attitude towards renewable energy, especially solar energy”.
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