Parliament House fails to go green

Hands up those of you who didn't see this coming! Rudd will force the Australian economy to move to "green power", but Parliament House can't even manage it, registering an almost laughable 10% energy from renewable sources. Maybe they'll eventually realise it isn't as easy to achieve such a target as acres and acres of empty rhetoric from Rudd & Co might indicate.

Before the last federal election Kevin Rudd set an objective of powering the national legislature entirely with renewable energy as part of a strategy of "leading by example" on climate change.

But the department that runs Parliament House revealed yesterday that only 10 per cent of the building's power will come from renewable sources under a new three-year electricity contract.

The secretary of the Department of Parliamentary Services, Alan Thompson, told Senate estimates it would have been too expensive to sign up to the 100 per cent "green power" option with a local electricity utility.

There's a surprise. Maybe the wind wasn't blowing hard enough for the wind turbines? Back to good ol' coal fired electricity generation, I guess.

Read it here.