To be sure, dryland salinity and water issues will get Australia long before sea levels threaten Sydney, but IMO, there is some pretty low hanging fruit that we can gather that will address carbon in this country.
I was annoyed with the no nukes policy, as it makes no sense except in an emotional sense to some.
For about $8B, the worst three or four polluting power stations could be replaced with advanced ultra super critical plants, increasing our generation capacity by 15% for the same CO2 output.
Did you know that the last few power stations built in Australia (Queensland) are significantly less efficient than those built in the 70's and 80's ?
They are built to a beancounter's budget, and operated with all of their efficiency measure disabled to maximise revenue.
Instead of having Dilemma's Desal plant consuming 500MW of green power, that 500MW would be better served in the grid. 100ML/day could be freed up by installing partial dry cooling on three inland power stations.
Replace Munmorah with a modern design power plant incorporating flash distillation with the exhaust steam (typically 600MW of heat wasted from a 400MW unit), and this gives an effective 65-80% thermal efficiency.
