Now they tell us:
…big spending on renewables needed, says report
Australia must find $1.5 trillion by the end of the decade to meet 2050 green targets in an effort experts say would need to mirror the reconstruction of Europe after World War II.
— By Nick Evans, The Australian
Until five minutes ago (or at least the last election), wind and solar power were the future — they were unstoppable because free energy paid for itself and was getting cheaper every year. (Cheaper than free!) Now, we’re out of the mists of the fairy garden, a few passengers on the top floor of the Carbon Bus can see the cliff coming. Suddenly we’ve gone from “it’ll save money” to needing $1,500 billion dollars or 1.5 million suitcases of a million dollars each, which is quite a lot in a land of 26 million people. It works out to be $57,000 each from every man, woman, pensioner and baby, and we need it in the next 7 years. So that’s a quarter of a million dollars from every family of four.
Nevermind about a house or a holiday, if we’re serious, we need to work weekends, and send the kids to the factory after school. What’s the award wage for ten year olds?
We’re going to do “a Moonshot” apparently. Shame no one mentioned that at the last election?
The new report came out last month from the expert committee we’d never heard of — Net Zero Australia.
The largest economic transformation in Australian history is among the final conclusions of the major expert study of Australia’s path to net zero carbon emissions, conducted by interdisciplinary teams from the University of Melbourne, The University of Queensland, Princeton University’s Andlinger Centre for Energy and Environment, and Nous Group.
Australia just needs to build 230 GW of renewable energy generation by 2035, and at the moment we’ve got 50GW “committed”:
The report says that nearly 50 gigawatts of planned and committed renewable energy generation falls well short of the 230GW estimated to be needed by 2035, and that a drastic acceleration of both onshore and offshore wind developments would be needed to provide future power.
Robin Batterham – emeritus professor of engineering at the University of Melbourne and Australia’s former chief scientist – who chaired the group’s steering committee, said it was a huge task.
Just like that we will train up 100,000 engineers and tradesmen in the next 7 years:
The economic push would be enormous, even among the working population. Net Zero Australia’s modelling suggests the skilled workforce needed to install and run new generation assets, transmission lines, and associated decarbonisation efforts will need to double to at least 200,000 people by 2030 and reach 700,000-850,000 by 2060 – up to 4 per cent of Australia’s estimated total workforce.
The experts in the new committee dared to suggest we need to build a new fleet of gas plants, and keep the old coal generators running until we have new reliable supply available. They can see how a few billion-dollar blackouts will dent enthusiasm for the green renewable racket. Improbably, they say that we must keep all the options open, except for nuclear, of course, and that crazy idea of auditing the pronouncements of a foreign committee.
We shouldn’t wait for “silver bullet” technology like small modular reactors, they say, but it’s OK to wait for cheap batteries, reliable wind plants, safe disposal of turbine blades, dead eagles, beached whales, and reports on infrasound pollution from studies no one has done yet.
Don’t mention the risk reward ratio…
We need to spend $5 Trillion by 2050, build 40 times the generation, and based on dubious economic modeling with twenty-five years of extrapolated guesses about technologies that are not invented yet, we might reduce energy costs from 9% to 7% of the total economy, but we will definitely cool the world by no degrees?
Renewable energy generation would need to grow to about 40 times the current NEM generation capacity, according to previous modelling by the group – but, even under the most aggressive renewable energy scenario modelled by Net Zero Australia, the country’s total domestic energy costs would fall from just under 9 per cent of GDP to about 7 per cent by 2050.
Australians have gone gangbusters installing wind and solar in the last ten years but we need to do “40 times as much”. Plot the curve to 2050 in your head:
No one is taking the transition, or carbon emissions seriously. As long as the gravy flows…
— AI generated art by Jo
Soooo, as simple as paddling up Niagara Falls.
Nothing to worry about, piece of cake.
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The only viable solution is to pay climate nutters big $ with the only proviso being that they do and say nothing.
Its cheaper than letting them do anything.
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Wait a minute….. they already get paid big$ for doing nothing. My mistake.
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Australia is STUFFED.
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That figure for
OXOZ is interesting as it was calculated a few years ago that the UK would need around £220,000 per household to switch to renewables. Strange that this official number never seems to get mentioned by the government. Obviously just an oversight,I am sure people are so green they will be quite happy to find the money….or perhaps their enthusiasm might wane when they realise the true cost?
[Edited – typo – J]
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Should of course be OZ not OX. People have no idea of the cost of going green
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Now Oz makes a lot more sense. I couldn’t work it out.
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Oxtralia 🙂
Inoffensive and gender indeterminate.
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UK already has a dystopian “prepaid” electricity system. In many places you have to buy your electricity in advance: you remove a little memory card from your meter and go down to the local convenience store and have some prepaid energy added to the card at insane prices approaching $1 AUD/kwhr. Oh and while you are out your power is cut and remains off until you bring the card back with credit on it.
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But worry not, all the time your power is off you will still be paying the standing charge.
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Note to worry.
Things that can’t happen, won’t.
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But you can be immensely destructive along the way.
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Not likely in this case. Wasteful sure, but not destructive. Except the blackouts which will be destructive.
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And the destruction to industry, agriculture and society.
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It’s Mission Impossible and the Grifter’s Gravy Train is about to hit the buffers at the end of the track. Build Back Worse on steroids. It is not going to happen.
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Build Back Badly?
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What a surprise, their report says:
“Net zero will increase costs for all energy consumers”
“Renewables and networks will change landscapes and clear land. How can we reach net zero emissions whilst protecting and potentially even improving biodiversity and agriculture?”
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The most important statement in the whole essay ie
why is it no one stands up and says WAIT A MINUTE, you want us to pay $1,500 billion dollars or 1.5 million suitcases of a million dollars each, FOR NOTHING!!
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It might be helpful to listen to the wisdom of George Orwell on the subject. Quite early in Animal Farm we hear:
Near the end of the fable, after the animals have suffered so much and toiled so hard to build the windmill:
That’s the pattern for what we’re seeing.
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“Listen to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this thousand year:
Since Herod, Caesar, and many more, you never heard the like before.
Holy-dayes are despis’d, new fashions are devis’d.
Old Christmas is kickt out of Town.
Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn’d upside down….
“The World Turned Upside Down” ~1646
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Lots of us are standing up and saying that. As often and loudly as possible.
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Unfortunately David, not so many.
I am a member of a number of car clubs, & a couple of car forums. Many on these forums are enthusiastic converts to battery vehicles alone, or as additional fun to a number of classic cars.
None of seem to realise that battery electric vehicles are a wedge to taking cars off all lower levels of society. They do not see this danger unfortunately.
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Robber – one word answer to achieve ALL those things.
******* NUCLEAR *******
Cheers,
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But check out search results for European Pressure Reactor https://duckduckgo.com/?q=european+pressure+reactor and you’ll find a quagmire of failed projects; let’s use our massive coal reserves rather than embark on big build technologies in which we have no technical reputation but barrowloads of gullibility.
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OR…check out the success of the French nuclear powered grid,
or…the Chinese nuclear power program,…
.or..the Canadian SMR program,..
…or…
Until the CO2 fraud is exposed and corrected, major new coal generation planswill get no traction.
We have to pick our battles and our weapons to fight with.
Nuclear is the best bet in thecurrent political climate.
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Coal is still King!
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It is all a terrible case of destroying the country to save it!
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None of these experts live in the real world. All suck on the taxpayer teat and compete with one another to garner favour from socialist governments and their lackey organisations. While they expect Australians to be investing in their magic pudding there is no consideration for the other more vital infrastructure to sustain a blooming population, 40 million by 2040. Where are the new dams, the development of the North, the manufacturing base to build new weapon systems? We will have lots of wind and solar but no houses. The mongrels are mad. If ever the Coalition is elected then every one of these expert clown shows should be disbanded and the members given a ticket for Centrelink.
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1.5 Trillion eh. The superannuation fund awaits to be milked. That amount is too much candy for these shysters.
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Yes. That has been on the list of milkable funds for the greedy, inept politicians for years.
From the article…
Not to worry Jo. It’s Other Peoples Money!
I don’t know what you’re worried about. (sarc)
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Well said Lawrie, don’t forget, if we can’t keep our present mining and agricultural boom going, we will have the double whammy of no resources or credit to buy all the renewable energy technology required for Net Zero from China. Then they will just walk in and buy us out lock stock and barrel. However, if we do get to whatever Net Zero is, we will have no energy or money for luxuries such as defense, so again China takes over.
Already they own much of our key primary industries and some of our politicians – think Andrews. Thank God for stalwarts like Senator Canavan! So, if we don’t soon scrap N Z policies we are doomed as a nation, simple choice really, if they are smart enough to realize it.
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Now that we know the approximate cost let’s have a “referendumb” on climate change to see how many people really want to subject themselves to a future of WEF slavery and servitude!
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Long ago the United Nations and the World Economic Forum figured that they can never rule over strong independent countries with solid democracies.
Creating democratic chaos like we now see in the USA, eroding family values and eye watering levels of debt will enable the greatest transfer of wealth ever seen in history.
All in the name of saving the planet.
The Great Reset is happening now, in a decade you will own nothing.
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And you will be happy. According to our new definition.
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And the maintenance/disposal/replacement costs for worn out solar panels and windmills are included in the report?
Everything in operation today will need to be replaced before 2050.
Everything in operation by 2050 will need to be replaced by 2080…
(Sigh) of course, anyone wedded to the idea that we need renewables in the first place has no incentive to consider the actual costs…
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We have just about got to the end of the biggest ponzi scheme in history, off the back of the greatest scientific fraud.
https://mises.org/wire/coming-collapse-global-ponzi-scheme
And the environmental impact! A compilation by Bill Stinson of The Energy Realists of Australia
https://majorprojects.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/prweb/PRRestService/mp/01/getContent?AttachRef=SUB-36518906%2120220209T082326.052%20GMT
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Thanks for the Stinson report. However, I was hoping for a more up-to-date version because it’s a fast-moving topic. Still contains a lot of very useful information though, with links to the original research papers.
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I think that 57,000 $ from every Aussie is just a tiny fantasy of the real cost and of course ZERO change for weather, climate etc by 2100.
And the cost for our weakness and ability to DEFEND ourselves would be staggering.
But I’m sure that China and Russia, Iran etc would do the decent thing and not attack us at night or when we’re suffering a severe wind drought? SARC.
Are we really this stupid or will we WAKE UP and start to vote for SANE pollies and ONLY BASE-LOAD ENERGY before it’s too late?
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BTW the NON OECD developing countries have added another 2.68 billion tonnes of co2 since the so called Paris agreement in 2015.
And China will be increasing co2 emissions for decades and ditto India, the rest of Asia and Africa etc.
Who doesn’t understand these very simple sums?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=OWID_WRL~Non-OECD+%28GCP%29~OECD+%28GCP%29
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When you try and think how ordinary Australians will pay this huge amount, there is very little options. A govt can only raise electricity costs so far and tax so far before the good folk rebel. And if we cannot pay, then Australia’s debt increases.
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Don’t worry about it, ain’t gonna happen, these clowns have got their aspirations confused with their abilities once again.
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But if we’re run by clowns – and you are probably right about their delusions of adequacy – might the decisions made harm us?
Pretty soon?
Are there any adults in the room?
Not obvious here in the UK, for sure.
Auto
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To me perhaps the biggest problem is never (or rarely) spoken about.
Assume all the infrastructure, solar panels, wind turbines and transmission lines are magically in place. The moment this happens the rebuild and replacements start over again. . Perhaps after about 20 years. It will be a never ending saga.Impossibly expensive.
Unbelievably stupid.
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That’s WHY they’re called RENEWABLES David.
They have to be continually replaced. 🙁
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Going on my brothers and another friends experience…their solar panels crapped out after 6 years and all had to be replaced. Guess where the panels were made.
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I bought top quality solar panel battery maintenance/charging units for the tractor & the paddock ute. Neither saw more than 2 years service before failing.
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I haven’t tried it myself.
How did you go about it Jo?
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Well they’re saying $1.5 TRILLION at this stage – I’ve heard numbers of $8-10 TRILLION thrown around like money was confetti.
It’s great that a few honest people are starting to ask the HARD questions.
I’ll just make one statement though.
Governments could spend $8 HUNDRED TRILLION and there would STILL need to be reliable baseload power available for when the sunrays and the sea breezes stop producing ANY power whatssover – you know on a dark windless night which has NEVER happened before – OH WAIT??
But the REAL criminality in all of this scam is WHERE ARE THE GREENIES who protected the Franklin River when they tried to dam it – where’s Bob Brown – I haven’t heard of him heading up to Chalumbin??
“The Chalumbin Wind Farm is a major development project proposed on the boarder of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, close to Ravenshoe on the Atherton Tablelands.0 It consists of 86 wind turbine generators across two cattle grazing properties, Glen Gordon and Wooroora station, with a generation capacity of 602 megawatts of clean renewable energy.2 The project is proposed in a heavily vegetated landscape, containing threatened species, and in close proximity to the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.0 The Queensland government approved the Chalumbin Wind Farm development in 2022, despite strong community opposition.2 Mining magnate Andrew Forrest is hoping to build the Upper Burdekin Wind Farm inland from Ingham.”
Has Tanya Plibersec approved this yet?
Australians want ANSWERS!!
Cheers,
400
But renewables are good for the environment (sarc…)
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It’s very well reading about the net zero policies, folly & not to mention the $250,000.00 per family of 4 required to fund it all by 2035.
How about the MSM, telling those concerned in contributing the funds, the public, how much in $$ terms it’s costs to vote for the ALP / Unions / WEF / UN / New World Order Coalition. If you voted ALP, Green, or Teal independents it’s your fault I think. I’m still trying to figure out how the Coalition will react to this news. That of course is if they react at all!!!
If you think 🤔 the Voice is a bad idea you obviously don’t have a clue what’s still coming over the horizon. You will own nothing & you will be happy. That’s an order !!!!
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Dutton? No way. A fence sitter and climate change globalist. Frankly the only way out of this is to dissolve parliament and the attendant notion of parliamentary democracy – replace it with a national body who will act in the national interest.
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Dutton basically supports The Voice concept, he just wants smaller regional ones. It’s a complete joke. There are no options.
But that doesn’t necessarily rule us out. There is representation like Malcolm Roberts and a few others fighting on. A tiny minority but still fighting on the official platform.
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Of course even Dr Hansen was honest enough in 2015 to call the Paris agreement “BS and a FRAUD and a fake”. Here’s his quote from their Guardian interview in DEC 2015.
“It’s a fraud really, a fake,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”
What a joke from the father of their silly fantasies and fairy tales.
But China and Russia etc would have been laughing about their wonderful 2015 XMAS present.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud
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Hansen >‘We’ll have a 2C warming target…’
Got a comment coming up re the statistical stupidity of this but don’t want to thread-bomb this post. Basically, the now 1.5C limit is physically meaningless.
Maybe Open Threads tomorrow.
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They’re doing their best to fix that price problem. Has long been the aim.
20
Robin Hood never had a radio, Alfred the Great never had a toaster and Jesus Christ never had a mobile phone. Equally the times they lived in never had a “population problem”.
Dont project today’s population into tomorrow’s power grid as it will not be an element of the equation.
Pirola or any one of the other mutants coming down the tunnel are going to have your “name on him. Cuppla days…. bewdiful“.
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there has always been a “population problem”
wars have forever been fought over resources to keep the population from revolting because of shortages
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Probably should have said “population growth problem”. Cheers.
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Actually the universal constant is the “population subjugation problem” … because people with power never, ever give it up willingly.
Sometimes they decide that thinning the herd is the best way to keep control over the remainder. Read a history book and you discover various approaches, which have been tried so far.
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Its amazing how many educated and qualified people believe everything about renewables . Even when they have qualifications in Maths or Physics related fields. It seems that you have to really belt them with reality . I have tried but you can’t help some people ……
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I don’t think they believe Old Goat, they are just keeping their heads down, & hope it will be corrected by someone before it wrecks their grand kids life.
Gutless wonders description comes to mind.
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Some of us remember the era of the great ‘moonshot’.
And wonder what happened to that imagined promised Final Frontier.
So they might want to consider another metaphor for the sales pitch.
Of course, there is no pitch, it will be forced down our throats.
Sorry, it’s a global cult.
That has evolved to the Kool Aid phase.
They’ve already done round one.
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Andrew Bolt: ‘Hard to exaggerate’ how badly government’s energy plans are going
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The trouble is with wokies \ warmies \ greenies is that they believe that make believe is real. They believe that all they need to do is imagine it and it’s there.
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Thanks Kim and the Bolter always has a way of checking the data on the Bowen idiots ideas.
And boy that rainbow serpent seems to be here, there and everywhere.
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Strangled by a serpent, including the one on medical badges.
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It’s to be hoped that the current policies will ‘Kill’ the government before they kill the economy!
40
Polly Follies reign supreme!
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Sounds like yet another beat up to me.
On top of all the papers including the Gifford 1992 & 2014 & Donohue 2013;
there is the Nature paper of 2016 [ presently covered in a post on Gateway Pundit]:-
Published: 25 April 2016
Greening of the Earth and its drivers.
But the Houso PM probably does not read too much.
When will he change the name of Kirribilli to Sunnyvale?
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Communism meets the air industry = you don’t fly!
James Lindsay at New Discourses: ‘Degrowth: The West’s Great Leap Backwards’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pip8CUCbz4o
You’ve gotta hand it to the communists. Communism fails at everything, so now failure is a virtue!
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The numbers put forward are beyond staggering. Our current peak grid capacity needs are around 40GW/h and yet we need to install over 2000GW/h of RE nameplate capacity. Perhaps the most absurd part of the new energy system is the ongoing work effort and cost to replace the infrastructure as it ages beyond 20 years, which is forecast at $150B a year and would need 1.3M workers, which is 9.3% of the workforce, needed to be assigned to this exercise forever in order to keep up with the ongoing replacement. This would effectively reduce our national productivity by 9.3% just on the loss of productive workforce capacity and not taking into account the even bigger loss caused by having the worlds most expensive energy source that no business can afford.
Of course this is all a fantasy and will never happen because it’s simply not remotely possible or affordable. It would be easier to send a manned craft to Pluto. The only unknowns are how far down this dry gully we’ll travel before the climate alarmist lunatics running the show realise the obvious and will it be possible to recover from this greatest attack on our nation in human history.
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Only $1.5 Trillion?
Back-up battery storage alone would cost around $10 Trillion, without the cost of all the Transmission lines across the countryside plus the cost of Chinese made solar panels and wind turbines
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“reports…… from studies no one has done yet.”
It looks like the first sortie was fended off. (Missouri?) At leat for the time being.
But FDA shenanigans indicate that the second might not.
Keep bringing it before the courts and surely right will again become might.
Meanwhile we must marvel at the depth of George Orwell’s prescience.
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Theft by climate scam. Kind of like a war without the overt casualties; destroy everything, rebuild it, we end up poorer, they end up richer.
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Germany produces twice as much electricity as Australia {584 TWh vs 267 TWh} and Germany needs around 45,000 GWh of grid scale battery storage (with coal of natural gas) but is only planning an additional 9!
If Australia needs 20,000 of grid-scale storage then this will cost around A$10 Trillion based of the curent cost of battery storage of around US$350/kWh
The cost of battery storage is likely to increase given the scarcity of key minerals used to make batteries
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Just checked The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) which serves 15 States in the US and one the largest suppliers of electricity. 80% coal and gas at 21Aug23_1855 EST.
They have a long way to go for Net Zero. (Note, % to first decimal place).
CATEGORY MW %
Coal 42104 _40.1,
Natural Gas 42150 _40.2,
Nuclear 10563 _10.1,
Wind 6784 _6.5,
Solar 296 _0.3,
Other 3487 _3.3,
Total 104894
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97% of scientists agree with whoever is funding them.
The other 3% are banned on social media.
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I tried to follow the science but it led me back to the money.
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97% of taxpayer-funded “scientists” agree that scientific consensus decides scientific fact.
Meanwhile, the 3% of real scientists are defunded and cancelled.
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David, isn’t this exactly the thing that’s changed?
Science, from mid 19th century or so, was becoming the enlightened path out of the superstition mass formation
of the previous centuries.
With CONVID especially, this has completely reversed.
We now have Pope Fauci, Joan of Thunberg, and an orange Devil.
As you and I seek out unsanctioned theology and discuss it on the Gutenberg internet.
As I pontificated previously (see what I did there) …
Science has gone from Einstein to Cardinal Richelieu.
This New Church seems able to hold against an overwhelming army of facts.
It is an historically unprecedently prolific global cultish religious mass formation.
Not only 1.5 trillion for absurd energy fantasies.
Now they want us to pay for ‘womb transplants’ into men that think they are women.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healthcare/ama-taxpayer-funded-uterus-transplants-men
You’d think this would indicate bottom hitting.
Somehow I don’t think we’re there yet.
30
I would add, us children of the Space Age are failing, at the peril of humanity, to realize we are in a religious wa … uh, dispute.
There is one religion in particular that is the first target for elimination.
https://ewtn.ie/2023/08/09/armenian-christians-trapped-and-facing-genocide-an-explainer/
Western acolytes of the New Religion are silent.
Curious for self-righteous elites that just spent three years locking us in our homes to save grandma.
Perhaps they are too busy with their own cleansing plans
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Obviously, utterly reckless stupidity, is how I would describe it. The other consideration not mentioned is that as we go on this lunar (lunatic) moon shot all the other countries in the western world have the same aspirations.
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Let’s all hope this ‘moonshot’ blows up on the launch pad.
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At least the Germans and Japs had the decency to paint their flags on the sides of their tanks and planes, with this mob, who is in charge.
40
In a controlled greenhouse environment we often create 1200 ppm of CO2. The plants love it and thrive with less H2O.
We need to seek methods to raise the atmospheric CO2. Temperature wil not rise significantly and he planet will be much greener.Let’s push for more CO2.
80
More EV’s charged from the grid? That produces more net anthro c02 than ICE. Right?
40
Meanwhile China produces more than twice as much anthropogenic CO2 as the United States (Table 1), builds about two coal power stations per week and its CO2 emissions are increasing dramatically while those in the West are decreasing (see linked graph). And they have no emissions limits imposed on them whatsoever.
This is truly civilisation-destroying stuff.
See graph:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fossil_carbon_dioxide_emissions_six_top_countries_and_confederations.png
1 China 10,432,751,400
2 United States 5,011,686,600
3 India 2,533,638,100
4 Russia 1,661,899,300
5 Japan 1,239,592,060
6 Germany 775,752,190
7 Canada 675,918,610
8 Iran 642,560,030
9 South Korea 604,043,830
10 Indonesia 530,035,650
11 Saudi Arabia 517,079,407
12 Brazil 462,994,920
13 Mexico 441,412,750
14 Australia 414,988,700
TABLE 1: World production of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, tonnes.
Source https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by-country/
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Actually David your Worldometers link is from 2016 and China Wiki link (2021) is now about 12.4 billion tonnes per annum and the USA has dropped in 2021 compared to 2016, see your Wiki links again.
30
Neville, I couldn’t find later versions for either of those.
20
David I’ve just checked the OWI Data co2 emissions for 2021 and they show China at 11.47 billion tonnes p.annum and USA at 5.01 billion tonnes p. annum.
So China by 2021 is 6.46 billion tonnes p. annum more than the USA.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=CHN~USA
40
Thanks Neville.
20
Even if one believes the AGW nonsense, nuclear solves that issue, if it is an issue.
The USA Vogtle reactors came in at 28.5 Billion USD for 2 GWe.
For the 1,500 Billion AUD touted by the elites, that would be 68 reactor plants of 2 GWe or 136 GWe output, 24/7/365.
So AU needs 230GW of solar/wind at an average of 25% CF which is 57.5 average GW of output, but still random and unreliable.
For 500 Billion AUD lower cost, AU could have the same grid capacity, with a CF of 98% and no grid reliability, replacement issues.
Perhaps the AU needs more intelligent, maths competent, economics educated, practical , leadership.
The codswollop lawyers and navel gazing, maths/economics illiterate, seem incompetent to lead anyone, anywhere, except poverty and oblivion.
140
I think Barakah, when Unit 4 is up and running, will deliver 5.6 GW for about the same cost.
00
Where are the REAL electrical/mechanical engineers? You cannot get real data out of AEMO without trying to parse from mixed units and erroneous data. Take the premise of this article. We have, currently 50GW of ruinable nameplate capacity. Take that nameplate capacity and then look up the absolute best day of penetration into the market of 18.882GW for gawd knows how many seconds of a five minute block..37.78%..THE best they have ever done. Yesterday, we used a peak of 26.963GW HOURS of power at peak at 1800hrs and a low of 16.5GW HOURS. Just the math to cover yesterday. Using the absolute best penetration figure at the lowest figure during the middle of the day when solar is at its maximum to help we would need for the east coast market 43.67GW HOURS or 100% output of the nameplate for the entire duration of the load. The absolute best penetration is 18.882GW instantaniously..5 minutes?…which amounts to 1.5GW HOURS of the 16.5GW HOUR. Multiply that by another 5 times and you still only get 7.5GW HOURS for THE BEST 5 MINUTES of ONE DAY IN AN OCTOBER, nameplate does not equal load against demand that runs for 100% not 10% or 8% of the time
No matter how much you add you cannot guarantee load against demand. Demand then generation of the load as the demand increases. the renewable system is a lottery. A lottery that depends entirely on weather systems. Wether no clouds for maximum solar output or pressure systems for generating sufficient wind. Clippers are faster when the wind blows but even an old 1890s vintage steam powered ship will deliver the cargo GUARANTEED by a specified date. No engineer would sign their name to this.
60
‘No one is taking the transition, or carbon emissions seriously.’
Nobody ever did, except for the useful idiots. It’s always been a massive rent-seeking boondogle for the investors. For the socialist-international it’s always been about the destruction of the private wealth and self-sufficiciency of the commoners, and nothing else. Gillard herself told us the aim of the carbon tax was to get rid of coal power generators, but nobody was actually listening to the words coming out of their mouths.
We have been on this path for many decades, beginning with the steady creep of pernicious personal taxation (about 30 – 40% of a wage earner’s treasure is annually converted to public ownership – this is obscene), public ‘education’, and other socialist rubbish like Medicare. People, it is not the business of government to provide or distribute charity. When did we unlearn this?
70
One of the side issues of the EV “emergence” is the loss of the fuel tax on transportation fuels (theoretically used to maintain our roads). It seems that the UK does have a plan for addressing that (and potentially some other things).
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/07/ev-chargers-to-be-separately-metered/
Thus the use of electricity for (personal) transportation can charged on separate tariffs, monitored separately and turned off separately if the more useful parts of the grid are not able to meet customer demand.
perhaps we should ask our MPs to consider this as part of the mandated rollout of EV charging points?
20
Reports like this shatter any optimism I have about the near to medium-term future. I’ve been basically black-pilled. Governments of any of the major parties, while wearing a cloak of representative democracy, completely ignore the best interests of those they’re elected to serve (us, just in case you’re wondering) and serving some other master. Power, influence and wealth for their soul, or something like that.
There’s no other way of changing the situation without a popular uprising of the kind that brought down the communist regimes at the end of the Cold War, with perhaps a few Caucescu-like incidents to make examples of the worst of them. Otherwise we’ll be stuck with with social credit scores, intermittent power, CBDCs and goodness knows what else.
60
Had there not been a coup d’état against President Trump, he would have put a stop to this madness in his country (which he was in the process of doing anyway) and the rest of the World would have followed.
That’s one of the reasons the Left/Elites had to get rid of him.
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You’re of the opinion Trump is off to gaol? Many are these days.
00
I always thought if they can’t get Trump in gaol he will end up like Kennedy. Looks like the former is to be the method.
00
The 230GW figure is interesting because that is close to the the 240GW I arrived at for the scoping study I submitted to the Finkel enquiry. Maybe Robin has been looking over my numbers.
http://www.environment.gov.au/submissions/nem-review/willoughby.pdf
Combine 240GW of solar panels with 750GWh of batteries and you can meet the NEM demand.
Any home owner with a roof would go a long way to getting off grid with investing $57k in rooftop solar and battery. So if the house is home to 4 people, it is a quarter of the cost required to do it via grid power. I have always said that there is no benefit of scale with wind and solar. The benefit is that the energy source is ubiquitous so makes sense to generate at the load rather than spending up big on transmission lines in the vain hope that you can corner the diversity fairy.
My neighbour spent a whole year touring around Australia with a van that could function quite well without grid connection. He has since sold the van and is looking to invest some of the proceeds into rooftop solar (planning 12kW) and battery so he can go off-grid with his house. I expect more households will be doing the sums.
21
My roof is covered in shade from trees that greens wont allow us to remove, (and are extremely dangerous).
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I know of a house near my sons place in northern Tasmania that had a similar problem. They installed a large solar array and within a matter of months the two large trees that reduced the solar output were dead – very mysterious. There are subtle ways to kill trees with the evidence hard to find but not something I advocate.
I love trees but know they are best when well managed, particularly in the vicinity of a house. My neighbour here in Melbourne is a heritage listed property dating to 1854. The trees are also heritage listed so can only be trimmed by a registered arborist It cost me $2600 to get a large overhanging branch removed. I got the wood and that branch plus a few in poor shape high gave me a winters worth of firewood so I got more value than just peace of mind.
The importance of sunlight as an energy source is getting a lot more attention. Your situation is not rare. You do have rights regarding sunlight on your property.
10
Lets get real.
Victoria is sitting on 75Gt of lignite. That would meet all of Australia’s current electricity demand for 600 years. It is not economic to export lignite so there is no international market in the stuff.
The global target should be 1000ppm CO2 in the atmosphere by 2100. Burning lignite to make electricity would be a smart way to contribute to that target.
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Why isn’t it economical to export lignite?
Haven’t economical processes been developed for drying it such as the process by Keith Engineering?
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/9789812771957_0024
Also, lignite was to be exported to India but the Vicdanistan Labor Government stopped it.
30
Because there is still plenty of anthracite to export into established markets.
30
At the time, India was prepared to buy lignite, presumably at an appropriately cheap price.
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David I believe that it is dangerous to ship lignite as it has a tendency to spontaneously combust (because of the high moisture content?).
John
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Agreed jpm, but the company was proposing to dry it.
10
No. You just import them. Much cheaper.
30
and the imported ones will work for lower wages?
00
I dont know if any of your commenters have noted this …
two things
Firstly, $1.5 Trillion by the end of the decade but perhaps $3 trillion by 2050 according to the Commonwealth Bank
Prashant Mehra, CBA predicts $3 trillion cost for net zero. Headline – The West Australian newspaper. 10 August 2022.
Since each solar panel and wind turbine has a life expectancy of around 25 years (lets be generous for the moment – if the panels are all coming from China I would expect maybe half that) … which means that every panel and every wind turbine installed between now and 2050 will have to be replaced by 2050 … that means we are committed to trillions every few years … into eternity. And they call this “sustainable”!!!
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China will simply not be able to keep up with the demand. They have an ageing population.
This whole exercise in futility will disappear up its own clacker in due course. There is the basic issue that it takes more Chinese CO2 production from consuming coal to make all the “renewable” stuff than that stuff can save in CO2 over its operating life. It is a road to nowhere spiralling into oblivion.
20
Neville, I just added Australia to the graph. Our contribution is very small as an overall emitter. Ignoring of course our exports of coal and gas.
20
1.5trillion…and we have seen this “modelling” in action before. It’s absolutely BEST CASE SCENARIO so it will most probably triple or more.
And the only people smiling all the way to the bank will be the likes of activist investors (certain billionaires in T-shirts and other similar ones who are exacting revenge on Aussie voters) who turn energy providers into woke machines to “decarbonise”, drive up power prices to line the pockets of “guess who”, and then hold governments ransom to fork out tax payers $$$ to keep the base-load power providers in the mix to avoid blackouts into the future.
20
I believe the modelling came from Net Zero Australia, who in turn used the very faulty CSIRO GenCost data and calculations.
10
That bus and that cliff depict a range of other coincident events. 😎
20
This isn’t really a Moonshot.
It’s more like sending a colonising fleet to the third moon of Saturn sight unseen, and then towing it back into Earth orbit.
Tony.
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Are Renewables Cheaper Than Coal Fired electricity
Those pushing wind and solar are constantly stating that they are cheaper at producing electricity than fossil-fuel fired generators, but are they?
I did a simple back of the envelope calculation in an attempt to determine which was cheaper.
Firstly, the main component of the wholesale price of electricity is the capital costs and cost of that capital. Shortage of supply can occasionally drive up the cost but is not the main driver.
To construct a coal fired generator would require $2.5-$3.5 billion per GigaWatt while wind would cost between $1.3-$1.9 billion per GigaWatt (GW) of capacity. I am comparing wind as it is seen as cheaper than solar. There, you might say, the wind is cheaper! However this not the whole story. The capacity factor (CF) for coal-fired generation is around 90% if the generator is allowed to run efficiently (not continuously increasing and decreasing output to accomodate winds variable output). On the other hand wind-powered generators’s CF is about 25%. The advocates for wind-powered generators claim upwards of 40% CF. One must understand that the CF calculation is open to abuse. For instance if one wanted to show wind in a good light, one could take the generation data from a few wind-farms in a very windy area over a very windy period. Unfortunately this would not really answer. Users right around the grid want power on demand year around, not just when the wind blows. For my calculation I found the amount of wind generated electricity in the AEMO 2021 Report (P9) (financial year ending June 30 2021). For the installed capacity I found the present amount of installed capacity at : https://anero.id/energy/wind-energy (towards the bottom of the document). That gives the present installed capacity, not that for 2021. I therefore reduced the capacity by 10% and 20% for the calculations. They yielded 25% & 27% CF. Being in a generous mood I used 30% CF for these calculations.
Therefore 3GWs of wind would be needed to generate as much electricity as the 1GW coal fired plant over the year. That makes the capital cost of the wind generators between $3.9 & $5.7 billion. Wind doesn’t seem that cheap does it when it is compared on the ubiquitous level playing field.
But that is just the beginning. Some form of storage must be used to make these intermittent and unreliable generators acceptable. I will comment more on storage later in this article.
A coal-fired generator will have a service-life of 60 or 70 years or more if allowed to run efficiently. Wind-powered generators will last 20 years if you are lucky. They will require replacement at least twice while the coal fired plant just carries on providing electricity very cheaply. That means that our wind has now cost us between $11.7 and $17.1 billion compared to coal’s $2.5 to $3.5 billion.
Now for storage : Have you noticed that there has been no discussion about the expense involved. That is an indication that they see a problem here.
According to studies, between 500 & 1000 mega watt hours (MWhs) of storage is required for each MW of renewables on the grid (Ref P3 of Menton-Energy-Storage-Conundrum (MESC link below). Therefore, if we take the lesser of those, we will need 500 giga watt hours (GWhs) backup. Lets look at battery used to back up our GW of wind (actually 3GW installed) as it seems so popular with the climate-worriers. Approximately $0.7 Million dollars/MWh seems to be a ballpark price for grid scale battery storage (MESC P11). In a recent Canberra Times article they claimed that their huge new big battery will cost $400,000 for .5 GWh which equates to $.8 billon per GWh of battery storage.
That means that we will have to pay $350 billion X .9 = $315 billion for our battery, absolutely frightening price. Unfortunately, these batteries will only last 8-10 years if your lucky and depending on the charge/discharge cycle. The really significant thing about this is that replacement at say 10 yearly intervals will mean the battery storage has cost at least 6 x $315 billion = $1.89 trillion dollars. You have to add the costof the wind-powered generators as well #1.89 Trillion + $0.017 trillion = $1.907 trillion. That is over 540 times as expensive as the coal-fired plant. Who would have believed it?
However, blackouts are still likely as I used the lower estimate for amount of battery needed.
Ref : https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2022/11/Menton-Energy-Storage-Conundrum.pdf.
John
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Tony and team have been recording the NEM wind CF for over 900 days, and the average is 30%.
00
This should not be called a moon shot.
The moon missions were based on sound science and engineering.
Random, unreliable energy production isn’t.
To be fair, the meaning of “moonshot” or “moon shot” has changed over time.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/moonshot-words-were-watching
20
What is the end point of this madness?
How low will Australia sink before people wake up and demand proper power generation?
Beyond that, how long before a majority of politicians understand?
Nearly all of Australia’s increasingly limited financial resources will be wasted on this insanity and we will become a Third World country with huge unrepayable debts.
50
And how about making use of Australia’s abundance of minerals and energy mostly locked away by our politicians, the current account combined national debts could be repaid in no time with export of these in demand products.
30
And what about the new army of building and construction trades people needed to catch up the housing crisis shortage of stock and prepare for the rapidly increasing immigration intake Albanese Labor has been organising?
20
The Vicdanistan Government has made a secret deal to keep the lights on by keeping the Loy Yang power station open until 2035 despite the demand of Cannon-Brookes.
I wonder how many billions of tax payer dollars will be blown on this? And why is it secret?
10
Yallourn power plant is scheduled to close in 2028. That will leave Victoria short of power anyway.
John
00
There is a lot of Helium-3 on the moon, which is badly needed for Fusion Power to get underway.
Back on earth, Minns is counting votes.
‘The Minns government’s review of the NSW electricity network has recommended the life of Australia’s largest coal-fired power station be extended by making a deal with operator Origin Energy.
‘After months of speculation over the future of Eraring, the Herald can reveal an Electricity Supply and Reliability Check Up review commissioned by the new Labor government to assess the state’s transition to renewable energy has recommended the power station’s operations should be extended beyond its existing 2025 closure date.’ (SMH)
20
So in both NSW and VIC, (as per my post above) they (the Government) see the need to extend the life of power stations.
And in both cases they have to make “deals” to keep them open.
Why?
In a free market you wouldn’t need to. But the compulsory purchase by consumers of expensive unreliables makes it more profitable to sell garbage random energy than proper, reliable, inexpensive energy from power stations.
60
AGL have just announced the completion of a 250MWh battery facility at Torrens Island that, they claim, will power 75,000 homes for one hour
According to my calcs (correct me if I am wrong), this would supply 3.3kW to each of those homes for the hour.
Please turn off your fridge, freezer, car charger, air con, etc
40
I would say they know the jig is nearly up so might as well go for broke and loot every penny.
30
It’s interesting that it seems to be impossible to determine how Australia is tracking towards the magical renewables figure for 2030. No govt organisation that I’m aware of releases any data on this vital issue.
10
Reality raising its ugly head.
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/the-iron-law-of-power-density-part?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
10
Bryce’s report has a lot of good links to some solid research papers. Some info I have on eROI suggests that modern society requires eROIs 6-20 or higher for our living styles, but wind and solar, with their very low eROIs, don’t come close. Before the Industrial Age, the Roman Dynasty was able to achieve the highest eROI of 2:1, yet after 2000 years, wind and solar don’t achieve much more.
10
This isn’t the Australia we built with effort, sacrifice frugality adequate leadership.
We’ve been sold out big time and need to seriously reassess where ugly politicking has taken us.
Observe, analyse, decide and prosecute and punish.
Abuse of leadership positions and theft of public monies Must Be Halted.
40
Stoppit Jo.
I go to the Babylon Bee for my comedy.
20
Most of this money will be spent on fossil fuels! Producing steel, concrete, plastics, rare earths, lithium, fiberglass, etc, all rely mostly on fossil fuels.
It is my main objection to these infantile ideas. Fossil fuels are a limited resource and should not be wasted as it reduces the time when they will effectively run out. I am old enough not to be affected but the younger end are highly likely to live to the point where oil is effectively not available.
Younger people are perhaps the most likely to think of renewables as essential, but they will be the ones spending their whole [shortened] lives paying for them.
20
Of course the whole problem can be solved at the cost of a ham sandwich, just acknowledge Australia is already at better than net zero, it is all in the counting. Our vast areas of scrub and forest plus agriculture absorb much more CO2 than we produce. Grain fields absorb over ten tons per hectare per year, cattle eat foliage grasses etc that would otherwise rot and poop about ten tona a year that is absorbed into the soil. As for methane the fools have no idea as to how much there was even in recent times when the wild herds roamed the world.
10
METHANE
It seems that every square meter of the Earth is producing methane at some level. Vast amounts are produced underground, there are methates on the seabed and in permafrost, and anything that rots produces methane.
Despite all this methane is almost non-existent in the atmosphere. The NOAA records methane as 1900 parts per BILLION. Rounding it up to 2000 means that in 1 part in 500,000 is methane!
Methane is of course highly flammable so I suspect its time in the atmosphere is short-lived. The idea of spending ANY money in ‘combatting’ methane shows how brain-washed most people are.
20
More important than that silly cost estimate, is where will that money end up? How many globalist elites will add a few 0’s to their personal fortunes?
As with all these globalist heresies, follow the money – they care not about humanity, or the planet, only their own self serving greed
10
The crazy thing is that after all this financial pain we will still not have an energy system fit for purpose.
20
Is there anyone with the skills to create a mock up picture of what Aust will look like after all these windmills, solar farms and power lines with their associated easements and access roads will look like?
10
There will be AI’s — but which ones?
00
How the **** are we paying for all this? Where is the money coming from? I’m broke and I’m treading water with my finances and I can’t take any more inflation and hidden taxes.
20