This competition was announced a little while ago, but still has plenty of time until it closes.

Any younger readers (under the age of 31 that is, which is younger than I am) might like to try their hand at writing an essay to describe their vision for our energy future.

Young Australians are invited to help secure the nation’s energy future by presenting their ideas in an entry paper for The Warren Centre’s National Energy Essay Competition.

Entrants are competing for a total prize pool of $50,000, including two major prizes of $20,000 each (the Sumitomo Australia Prize and the Babcock & Brown Power/Wind Partners Prize).

The NEEC is about Australia’s energy future. Specifically, it is about the next phase of primary power generation and the future beyond that. The NEEC is also about the younger generation and their contribution to the future of Australia’s energy development.

The concept of an essay provides the opportunity for the contestants to create an analytic, speculative, or interpretative composition built on an understanding of the current power generation and delivery system and the influence on it of political, societal, demographic and technological changes, living patterns, technologies, transport and travel needs, existing and emerging industrial processes and other yet to emerge impacts, in a way which is understandable to the layman.

The outcome of the competition is aimed, with the media’s support, to provide a more rigorous and disciplined level of information in the public arena as a catalyst for reasoned debate on Australia’s energy future.