The growth in clean technologies, especially renewable energy seems unstoppable. The question is will Australia benefit?

The Australian Government, and more recently the Governor General, continue to spruik the virtues of "clean coal" and carbon capture and storage (CCS), even as scientists unleash enormous renewable energy potential in the Cooper Basin through hot fractured rocks, and the successful development of solar power with storage capable of delivering scaleable base load power.

Both of these technologies have the potential to become major export earners for Australia through both the supply of zero carbon fuels and their underpinning technologies.

Australia's obsession with "clean coal" and CCS is understandable given our large reserves, but we are ignoring a simple fact: a suite of renewable energy technologies exist today and are scalable at known cost, "clean coal" remains a mere possibility, an interesting laboratory experiment and at best, still many years away.

Current observed global warming is accelerating beyond the upper projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The current collapse of the Arctic ice cap 80 years ahead of schedule, and the knock-on effects of destabilization of the massive stores of methane in the Arctic permafrost and sea now place humanity at an unacceptably high risk of a very unsafe climate zone.

Re-freezing of the Arctic ice sheet and the restoration of the albedo effect, or reflectivity of the ice to the sun's radiation, is pivotal to any strategy to regain a safe climate. The physics of this necessitate near total decarbonisation of human economic activity within ten years, and the concurrent sequestration of around 200 billion tonnes of existing atmospheric carbon pollution that is driving the observed and accelerating warming, to stabilize atmospheric carbon levels between 300 and 325 parts per million.

The most confident predictions of the deployment of CCS technology are beyond this timeframe.

In contrast, genuine clean technologies (clean-tech) incorporate more than just renewable energy technologies. In addition to clean energy they include water, waste, power, recycling and efficiency in the consumption of resources.

The drivers of growth behind clean-tech are significantly different to both the recent debt-fuelled bubble and the IT bubble. The factors which are driving the growth of the clean-tech sector are also different.

Many real assets are being created which provide core services.

Demand for those services is continuing to grow due to global population growth and long term increasing wealth.

As populations grow and deplete scarce resources there is continued pressure for communities to act sustainably.

Recognition of the risks of climate change and the need for regulatory regimes such as the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme are designed to provide a regulatory demand for these goods and services, provided they are designed properly.

The growth in clean technologies, especially renewable energy seems unstoppable.

The question remaining is, which countries will be the beneficiaries?

America is an innovative and commercially expedient country. Now that George W. Bush has gone, the mood has changed. America will rapidly transform to a near zero carbon economy.

Meanwhile, Australia has been comfortably following Bush's rhetoric. However, Australia, while highly innovative, is not as commercially expedient as the USA. Australia also lacks a large domestic market.

The American economy may have been slow to see the writing on the wall, but it has a strong history of innovation and rapid scaling of new technologies. The USA will turn around rapidly and capitalise on renewable energy and other clean techs.

Already, Australian solar firms have relocated to the United States and China. Vestas Wind Systems A/S, a Danish company supplying wind power solutions, is opening a new wind turbine manufacturing plant in Oregon, USA. Despite our wind resources being among the richest in the world, Australia is the only country in the world where Vestas has closed a turbine factory.

If the question is which countries will be the beneficiaries, the answer is probably not Australia.

By Nicholas Witherow, Carbon Manager, Climate Positive.