Researcher and senior lecturer from the University of Newcastle Dr Hedda Askland was in Cobar on Monday to talk to locals about what they envision our energy sources would look like in the future.
Dr Askland heads up the Sustainable Energy Advocacy Coalition project which has been funded by the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment.
“The project seeks to understand what ‘sustainable energy futures’ are proposed and supported in NSW,” Dr Askland told The Cobar Weekly.
“It is an open study that looks at various types of energy but we are really interested in how people relate to or think about different types of energy or how they see the future of energy and the energy mix.
“We are all consumers,” Dr Askland said.
“All of us are stakeholders in the future of our energy.
“A lot of research has already been done of particular energy sources and people support for example coal, or wind or solar or nuclear but not much has been looked at of how people see those energy technologies coming together.
“Ultimately what we are trying to do is to see what people think about this; what type of information do they get; what type of information do they think is important to receive in order to make decisions around this; who do they see as being the key decision makers and who are the key opinion leaders within different communities; who are the people that essentially take the voices of the community to people that make decisions and vice versa, who are the people who inform the community but also become leaders or champions of particular types of energies.
“It’s wide raging in terms of us not limiting ourselves to one type of technology but we really try to look at this issue quite broadly.”
Dr Askland is keen to talk to people from all walks of the community and said people don’t need to have any technical experience to take part in the survey.
“We want to speak to everyday people,” she said.
An online survey can be found at:
https://bit.ly/326YzFX