By Andrew Bolt
It’s the latest in performance art – posing as a planet saver:
An array of 1906 solar panels on the roof of The Wharf on Sydney Harbour were switched on by the company’s artistic directors actress Cate Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton today.
The rooftop solar power system is the second largest in Australia and will produce enough energy to power 46 average homes.
But it’s all just theatre, and heavily subsidised as usual – in ways that are not sustainable.
Note that first boast – that solar power will light the STC stages. No, they won’t actually – not at night when most audiences will see them, thanks to the little design flaw in solar power. As in needing the sun to shine.
And while Blanchett may boast of the power being “sustainable”, the funding needed for it is not. Check what it costs to produce the STC’s highly intermittent electricity, sufficient to power just 42 homes and only when the sun shines:
The array is just one part of STC’s comprehensive Greening The Wharf program, believed to be a first for any theatre company in the world in its scale and comprehensive approach to sustainability. The Company is engaged in extensive energy efficiency measures and is introducing an innovative rainwater harvesting, storage and reticulation system which will supply 100% of The Wharf’s nonpotable water requirements (total estimated water savings after rainwater harvesting will be more that 8 million litres per annum)…
Greening The Wharf is funded by a unique private and public partnership involving philanthropy, corporate support and Federal and State government funding. In addition to an extraordinary philanthropic donation of the Shi’s Family Foundation in partnership with the University of NSW valued at $2m, the Australian Government’s Green Precincts Fund has made a major contribution of $1.2m. A significant share of $1.17 million from the NSW Government’s Public Facilities Program (a combined application with Arts NSW which administers the grant on behalf of all tenants of Pier 4/5), supports the program and enables the rainwater harvesting project plus water and energy efficiency drives to be implemented not just at STC but within other companies at The Wharf. In addition, earlier this year, EnergyAustralia became the lead corporate partner and Energy Advisor for Greening The Wharf in a 3-year corporate partnership. Generous gifts from individuals, Cameron and Ilse O’Reilly, Peter Hall and Laura Smith and David and Claire Paradice, have also contributed towards funding total costs of the Greening the Wharf project of $5.2m.
Sydney Theatre Company has also raised significant in-kind corporate support from engineering, sciences and project delivery firm Sinclair Knight Merz, global leader in energy management and advanced metering technology Landis+Gyr, design architects Tropman and Tropman, waste and recycling companies Veolia and Packaging Stewardship Forum, bathroom specialists Caroma and KPMG, who prepared the business case for the project.
These are astonishing figures, especially when you factor in the cost of still needing traditional coal-fired power stations to keep humming in the background, to produce the electricity the STC needs when the sunlight dims.
More astonishing is that the artists running the STC should be spending so much of their time and creativity – and so many scarce millions of dollars of funding – on simply switching to another source of electricity. What has any of this to do with theatre?
Well, a lot, actually. It’s the theatre of Good Feelings. Of Seeming, not achieving.
Cate Blanchett is now (sometimes) solar powered, and the crowds who paid for it must now applaud.
Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.
Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog
Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and is a regular commentator on Channel 9′s Today show and ABC TV’s Insiders. He will be heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of new radio station MTR 1377, and his book Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.
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Posted on Sat 11/27/2010 by PA Pundits - International
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