The Wire

A US business magazine has this week dubbed it one of the world’s best business ideas. A five hundred metre tall ‘solar tower’ in the middle of the Australian outback may sound like science fiction, but it’s generating plenty of international interest. The tower is one of thirty ideas competing for five hundred million dollars in federal government funding for green technology. Its backers say that, if funded, it could power a hundred thousand Australian homes. But there’s speculation renewable energy innovations will be ignored in favour of so-called ‘clean coal’ technology, meaning the solar tower may never get off the ground.