Fully switching to renewable energy by 2020 should be the focus of Australia’s climate change debate, according to Beyond Zero Emissions, a grassroots advocacy group hoping to garner support for dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emission.

Analysis released by the group yesterday suggests that an investment  in concentrated solar thermal plants at 12 sites across the country would meet 60 percent of Australia’s energy demands. It estimated the price tag of the investment at $40 billion a year, with most of the money going to solar thermal power plants that use molten-salt heat storage to allow power generation to operate without sunlight.

“If every person in the world generated greenhouse gas emissions per person equivalent to those of each Australian today, the levels would quickly exceed those predicted to cause very dangerous global warming,” Victorian Governor David de Kretser told an audience at the analysis report at Melbourne Town Hall. “The consequences for planet Earth . . . would be disastrous.”