Like most countries Australia has started to become very worried about the way that energy is produced. There is great concern about the continued use of fossil fuels and there is a push on to develop green energy. Unfortunately in this regard they have not been as successful as they would have liked. At the current time the amount of green energy that Australia produces is quite small and is a long way short of most other countries.

While there is a lot of talk about the importance of green energy in Australia the reality is that they have not done a particularly good job of implementing it. As a result they lag far behind most of the other industrialized countries in the amount of their energy that is produced with green technology. There are a lot of reasons for this but the main one has been that there has been a lack of will to do so. Since it hasn't been necessary for Australia to switch to green energy they really haven't done it.

The main problem in getting Australia to change over to green energy has been that fossil fuels have been easily available at low prices. In addition because the production of fossil fuels is important to the economy of Australia the government actually encourages there use with tax incentives. Since it is generally not possible to produce green energy at a price that is competitive with fossil fuels there is really no incentive to do so. The only way to get this change to happen in most cases is with government subsidies but until very recently these have not been available.

Another part of the problem that Australia has had with developing green energy is that the resources they have in this regard are somewhat limited. The biggest issue that they face is a lack of rivers. Far and away the most widely used form of green energy is hydroelectricity, mainly because it is the only form that can compete with fossil fuels on price. Unfortunately as the driest continent on earth this is a problem for Australia. The result is that the electricity company has had to pursue other forms of green technology. Most of these technologies have never really caught on because of the high cost of generating power in this way.

The good news is that the government have recognized that things need to change and have established a plan to encourage the production of more green energy. The main focus of this plan is to require the energy companies to increase the amount of green energy that they produce each year or to suffer a financial penalty. This has succeeded in encouraging the development of new ways of producing electricity. The percentage of Australia's energy that comes from green sources remains very small but at least it is growing.