we need one or more of - more expensive power, cheaper solar panes, government policies to encourage them (subsidies and/or feed in tarrifs)

Well, there are heaps of ways to do it. I mean, solar panels for example are a classic instance of something which may save you money in the long-term, but which you'll not do because of the high start-up cost. $20 a week for 20 years may be $20,000, and $15,000 straight-up may be cheaper, but if I don't have $15,000 in cash to blow then... it's $20 a week for me. The whole hire-purchase industry is based on this fact.

So you can do things like mandate the energy company putting panels everywhere which they'd own, and passing the costs spread over all the customers, or else let people pay the panels off through their regular account over ten years, and so on.

There are a zillion ways to do it, you just have to want to do it.

Dick Cheney (curse him) was probably right when he remarked about conservation being a virtue but not the basis for sound energy policy - not because it isn't sensible, but because its too hard to get people to do it

I disagree. By that reasoning, Vic and Qld would have had desalination plants twenty years ago. Instead we had conservation. There are three basic things you can do,

- information - advertising the reasons to conserve
- carrot - progressive pricing, so that very high users pay a lot more per unit than very low users, the carrot being money savings
- stick - also the progressive pricing, but also regulations about use

We've done that with domestic water use. And basically it seems that information alone gives 5-10% reduction, carrot gives 20%, stick gives 20%, and all three together give 50% or more.

People used to think there was no way we'd ever reduce our domestic water use, but we've done it. If we can do it with water, I really don't see why we can't do it with electricity, transport and so on.