Melbourne - Thursday

Thursday April 30, 2009
I got to do a little sightseeing this morning before my meetings. I went up to the Skydeck observation platform which overlooks Melbourne. The views were spectacular and I will try to upload pictures shortly.
My first meeting was with the Clean Energy Council. The Clean Energy Council is a member-based industry group that supports and encourages the use of clean (renewable) energy. This is an interesting group because the members are utilities and energy companies, many of whom have very dirty coal facilities. However, this group is not a front group looking to appear to like clean technologies but in reality preserving the coal based generation. On the contrary, the group is very active in promoting the use of renewable. The difference is that they want their member companies to be able to money during the conversion. They are technology neutral, which I think is because many of their members have investments in very diverse renewable projects. This is one of the groups that I hope to interact with on a fairly regular basis as they have the ability to give me the broader industry perspective rather than the more narrow individual company perspective.
My second meeting was with Louis Tripicorp, who works with Vencorp, which is Victoria’s energy market operator. They are shortly going to merge with NEMMCO and will become the primary gas market operator. Louis take on the issues was very similar to what I have heard in previous meetings., namely that gas is being viewed as the primary transition fuel, but that it is unclear as to what the transition will be to.