Making ends meet has never been easy in regional Australia. But as climate change makes water even scarcer, it will get even harder and many regional communities may struggle to survive unless we can work out innovative and sensible ways of keeping them thriving. The Greens have developed a policy that will benefit regional communities twice over - making a solution to climate change part of the solution to dealing with climate change.

Farming Renewable Energy would help farmers in their struggle to stay viable by diversifying into renewable energy generation, mixing their cattle or crops with wind turbines, solar collectors or bioenergy plants.

The policy would work by bringing together governments, industry and communities to pre-permit areas of land which are suitable for renewable energy developments and are home to regional communities struggling against drought. The government would then use revenue from the emissions trading scheme to connect those areas to the main electricity grid.With additional support from Mandatory Renewable Energy Targets or renewable energy feed-in tariffs, this policy should see a dramatic increase in Australia's renewable energy capacity, delivering immediate support tostruggling regional communities, as well as long term support through reducing the impacts of climate change.

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Farming Renewable Energy.pdf	09/03/09 12:31 am	64.13 KB