Passing a logistical feasibility study, the project is at the stage of securing finance – in a climate that sees Australian governments walking away from funding the country's once-pioneering alternative power industry.
The federal government recently wound up a successful Co-Operative Research Centre on renewable power generation, and state governments have scaled down the rebate scheme for private solar panel investment.
Research funding has been transferred to technologies that may reduce the impact of traditional energy sources such as geo-sequestration, pumping fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions underground. If these technologies are successful, they will allow the continued use of Australia's cheap access to fossil fuels, without building the infrastructure for long-term alternative energy production.
While the federal government has granted the solar tower initiative special project status the development needs to raise AUS$800 million, for a four-year construction process.
The tower operates on a process of harnessing wind power created by the rush of heated, less dense, air from the bottom of the funnel to the top. Warm air collects under a 7 kilometre-wide glass greenhouse skirt, passing through pressure-staged turbines at a speed of 60 km/h.
The tower is planned as the world's largest freestanding structure, standing one kilometre high. EnviroMission, the Australian company behind the project, has discussed the possibility of exploiting the agribusiness opportunities the vast greenhouse around the perimeter of the solar collector provides.
Capable of generating 800 gigawatt hours of power per annum, enough to power 200,000 houses, it would represent a saving of 700,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. EnviroMission is planning the Buronga tower, as the first of a series of 5 towers, which combined would generate enough power to replace a large nuclear power station.
The project meets the federal government’s Mandated Renewable Energy Target (MRET), an initiative that requires power suppliers to source 2% of their energy from sustainable production. Industry experts agree that the Mandated Targets have been an effective stimulus for the alternative power industry. Murdoch University's Dr Philip Jennings suggests that if they were set at 5% instead of 2% we would be seeing a large number of bio-diesel, ethanol, solar cell and tidal power stations already in operation.
However, MRET legislation is currently under review - and a report from the Council of Australian Governments has recently recommended that it be replaced by an emissions trading scheme, which would again focus on the regulating greenhouse output, rather than influencing its production.