A 'leapfrog' strategy for bushfire recovery

 

A 'leapfrog' strategy for bushfire recovery

Patrick Hughes  

 

In January 2020, Australia's bushfires continue to kill, injure and displace people, livestock and wildlife and to destroy buildings and infrastructure. Currently, commonwealth and state governments are, of course, focused on protecting people and property and assisting individuals, families and communities to recover.

 

Affected communities that are being protected and assisted at present will, at some point, need to be rebuilt. Already, some individuals are planning to rebuild their lives and their properties - often by replacing buildings that the fires destroyed.

 

Writing a new future

The fires have damaged or destroyed buildings and infrastructure in affected villages and towns so extensively that they have created a 'blank slate' on which fire-affected communities can write a new future. These communities could re-create their villages and towns as 'demonstration projects', showing Australia and the world what a self-sustaining, low energy and low carbon response to climate change can look like.

 

The new villages and towns would feature cutting edge technologies such as renewable, lightweight materials for home construction and insulation, small local combined heat and power (CHP) generators, automated ventilation, sensor-based lighting and many more.

 

Fire-affected rural communities reclaiming their devastated land could capitalise on its capacity to capture carbon - creating another 'demonstration project'. Economist Ross Garnaut¹ believes that Australia has barely explored the possibility to create an industry out of capturing carbon in soils, woodlands and forests and that Australia could capture up to 1bn tonnes a year - nearly twice our annual emissions.

 

 

Bushfire recovery: a 'leapfrog' strategy

With visionary and imaginative political leadership, fire-affected communities can build new villages and towns that:

·      'leapfrog' the current national impasse around climate change and energy security

·      promote innovation in low-carbon technologies, supporting local research centres by commercialising their ideas

·      expand existing, fledgling markets in 'green' technologies and create new ones

·      upgrade the skills and experience of the existing local labour force as it installs the features and technologies required.

 

When governments grasp such opportunities, the economic benefits can be enormous². For example:

·      In the 1980s, the Danish government poured research funds and economic incentives into wind power; by 2009, Denmark produced over half the world's wind turbines.

·      The German government funded research into solar power and required generous feed-in tariffs for solar power; by 2009, Germany produced over half the world's solar panels.

 

1. Garnaut, R. (2019) Superpower: Australia's low carbon opportunity. La Trobe University Press.

2. McNeil, B. (2009) The Clean Industrial Revolution. Allen & Unwin.