From cars to renewables
**Updated 2013/12/13 14:30** Holden announced they are leaving manufacturing in Australia by 2017 and becoming a national sales company. This makes this discussion possibly even more important. What should Australia do with the engineering capacity it has? What about the billions in FBT assistance the Government retained to support the car industry, should we redirect those funds to the transition (Noted by Margo Kingston)? Any transitions are hard, the best we can do is support those through the transition. But to what, that is the question.
Holden has been making the headlines recently. It started with strategic leaks from senior Government Ministers suggesting Holden had decided to leave the country. Holden Australia CEO then told the Productivity Commission enquiry in Melbourne no decision has been made. The Minister for Industry then issued an open letter asking Holden to confirm it will remain in the long term.
Discussions about car industry funding has been going on for some time so I think the timing of the issue is to redirect attention from things which haven't been going the Government's way, e.g. Asylum Seekers and international relationships. That said, with Holden leaving, here's a thought, what's stopping us retooling the factories and reskilling and/or leveraging the existing skills, expertise and facilities into renewable energy?
For the sake of a discussion I am going to refer to two well known renewable energy options, solar and wind, although many others (tidal, biomass, etc.) could also be applicable.
Solar
Part of Germany's performance in Solar is related to its extensive local solar industry. Ingredients (for want of a better word) for photovoltaic cells include silicon, glass, and aluminium. Australia has ample supply of these, for example we have the world's second highest supply of bauxite (used for aluminium). For solar thermal solutions, again, we've got ample quantities of the raw materials (land, a national grid). The engineering expertise from our glass and aluminium folk could be applied here; as well as our expertise in moulding and general manufacturing.
Wind
We have expertise in cars for aerodynamic body design, engine design (in particular gearing and other third party products). Perfect for engineering and manufacturing wind turbines. Australia has a national energy grid and, outside plenty of areas that may be suitable for large-scale deployment. The potential is also there for the development of small-scale local/community production.
Each of the above could present an option for the existing engineering and manufacturing expertise we have in the local car industry. Not to mention each presents component opportunities for local as well as centralised energy deployments. Australia, with a locally grown engineering capability, would then be placed to remove our dependency on fossil fuels, as well as produce products that could be exported. I'm not even scratching the surface of options within the energy efficiency side of the industry; better power distribution and transport systems, secondary markets in componentry for household automation, etc. From a system wide perspective, when considering renewables, there may be plenty of scope for Australia to manufacture products.
So, what do you think? If Australia ends up not having a car industry, could we retool/reskill ourselves into a renewable industry?
Attributions
The tital image is "Solar Panels" by winnam licensed CC BY-NC-CD 2.0