Victoria is just not big enough to fit all the solar and wind industrial plants
It’s no wonder the Victorian government is desperate to begin building offshore wind turbines. Their own targets for the forced transition are so crazy-brave, they would “need” to use as much as two thirds of the state’s agricultural land instead. It sounds delusional but they told us this straight up in their own policy document released in March 2022.
Thanks to Aidan Morrison at the Centre for Independent Studies, who not only reads these boring tomes, but also noticed that they quietly disappeared the Victorian Offshore Wind Policy Directions Paper. He explained in The Australian that he believes they hid it because they’ve realized how embarrassing it looks.
Apparently 227,000 square kilometers is not enough land to power 7 million people in a NetZero world.
Victorian planners had farmland in their sights (as if it was their own). They mapped it out and described it as “available for onshore renewables”.
If farmers were not aware of the totalitarian disregard the NetZero bureaucrats have for farmers, they know now.
Think about the captive mindset it takes to publish a ludicrous document like this without blinking? These are people who never meet a skeptic. Whoever wrote and approved it didn’t even try to hide the ghastly cost of building wind and solar power onshore. And they certainly didn’t spend a nanosecond imagining what Victorian farmers might think of it. (Or checking their own maths — 70% of agricultural land is not the same as “four times the area of Greater Melbourne”.)
Presumably some bureaucrats were tasked with justifying the big Offshore wind developments and it didn’t even cross their minds that “Net Zero” is a option, a frivolous quest, and that farmers, and everyone (outside the party room) might just say “No”.
Billions of dollars are on the table and no one even reads the policy documents. We live in an era of distilled incompetence.
The Bottom Line:
Victoria is supposedly aiming to be 95% renewable by 2035, and at this point gets about 50% of it’s electricity from fossil fuels (and even more of it’s total energy). Even after the mass installation of unreliable energy for the last ten years Victoria needs to build 15 times as much to reach its target.
There are no offshore wind farms in Australia, and the federal government just put a poleaxe through the offshore plans of the Victorian government. But around the world investors are running away, share prices are falling, and insurance firms are balking at the million dollar cost of repairing the cables.
Now would be the perfect time for Australia to get out of offshore wind — right before it gets into it.
Victoria farmers won’t be pleased,
If their lands are confiscated or seized,
For vast solar panel fields,
Decimating food yields,
Nor by wind turbine pipe dreams appeased.
–Ruairi
REFERENCES
The original government source page contains the dead link. Luckily for us the Wayback Machine captured the site and the PDF.
Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay
“Now would be the perfect time for Australia to get out of offshore wind — right before it gets into it.”
A key difference between Australia (and particularly Victoria) and other western countries, is the depth of ideological commitment. It doesn’t matter how bad things look, the excuse is it just needs more investment.
I can’t see them backing away, even if reason says they should.
Ideology trumps reason.
They will throw more money at it…
540
Spot on MichaelB.
As I frequently say, Australia (politicians, senior public serpents and most of the Uniparty voters) has a fanatical commitment to the anthropogenic global warming fraud, much more so than nearly any other nation.
And unlike other nations, Australia cannot rely upon cross-border imports of cheap, reliable electricity such as when European nations import nuclear power from France or hydro from Norway and Sweden. And the US and Canada can also exchange reliable and inexpensive coal, gas, nuclear and hydro with each other.
The only reliable and inexpensive power Australia has is a small amount of hydro and a diminishing amount of gas and coal power stations. There are also reliable but expensive aeroderivative gas turbine generators typically only used for emergencies or in Third World countries e.g. see https://www.ge.com/gas-power/products/gas-turbines
In Australia, nuclear power was outlawed by the Liberal faction of the Uniparty. They talk about introducing it but they know it would never happen in any reasonable timeframe given that it took 50 years just to decide on a second Sydney Airport… Also, Australia did in fact start building a nuclear power reactor around 1970 in Jervis Bay, but again, it was the Liberal faction of the Uniparty that cancelled that. It’s just not going to happen and they know it.
The commitment to the deindustrialisation of Australia is powerful across all Uniparty factions.
The only hope Australia has is to vote for conservative-oriented parties such as:
United Australia Party
Libertarian Party
One Nation
582
Good old Oz, destroying itself to save something??? Certainly not our economy, our farming, our food chain, our environment. Tell me again what are we saving? Is it just the leftist/communist, greenies ego or a glimpse of the Great Reset?
330
Floating Offshore Wind is the political solution since “wind farms” can be put far enough off the coast line and sight lines to avoid local opposition.
This report gives the cost of offshore floating wind at FOUR times the cost of onshore wind.
But hey it is your money and not the politicians who support such “solutions”
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/84774.pdf
220
I doubt if it is purely ideological and much more likely to be pecuniary. The industrial super funds (read union super funds) have invested heavily in renewables. They are not going to give up their super profits, regardless of the destruction renewables are wreaking on The Australian environment and the households of the hoipolloi.
200
This was done in 1998 by the Howard Government (see post #23 below) with horse trading with the Greens to get an upgrade to the Lucus Heights nuclear facility.
In 1998 it seemed that cheap and reliable coal fired power station would be providing electricy in Australia for decades to come.
Mt Piper (NSW) Stanwell (QLD) and Loy Yang B (Vic) had all been commission in 1993 a few years earlier.
Wokeism was a thing of the future.
211
Today’s Johannes Leak “cartomb”
BOBowen spruiking the benefits of power cuts “You say it’s a power cut we say it’s half a million Victorians enjoying the benefits of living Off Grid”.
471
All Leak’s cartoons, especially those on the Voice and power issues have been brilliant. The best has been Albo’s T shirt with the words “Voice, Treaty, Truth” on it gradually loosing each of those words as Albo gets deeper and deeper into the mire.
230
“You say it’s a power cut we say it’s half a million Victorians enjoying the benefits of living Off Grid”.
I don’t suppose there was any mention of food wastage, both in households and by businesses such as supermarkets
220
Half a million Victorians are without power to heat, cook and recharge their EVs because they lost a couple of power pylons in a storm. And the idiots in charge want to install hundreds more of them to convey solar/wind power from the farm gate to the population centres
461
Check ongoing outages at the following link.
https://ausnetservices.my.salesforce-sites.com/OutageTracker/
That’s just for one operator.
Australia’s electricity grid now lacks so much redundancy that it can’t tolerate a moderate 20 min storm and collapses over much of a state because a few badly designed pylons with cheap Chinese steel fell over in the wind.
It’s only going to get worse.
Where are the engineers and scientists who must know the truth and are in a position of influence and who are prepared to speak out?
301
The operative word is cheap, not Chinese.
The steel is cheap because that is what was specified, or permitted, to keep costs and timing down for the 20,000km still to go.
This became destructively apparent in the SA 2016 debacle. So our despicable MSM buried this and continue to bury it on the superstitious, magical belief that if something is not reported then it didn’t happen.
So much for pious hope that voting changes things that actually matter.
370
“Where are the engineers and scientists who must know the truth and are in a position of influence and who are prepared to speak out?”
Good question Dave Maddison.
Has anyone thought of hosting a safe site where engineers and scientists with hard evidence could contribute their findings?
PANDA was a model for such an investigation during covid chaos.
120
https://www.linkedin.com/company/pandemics-data-analytics-panda/
For those who are unfamiliar with PANDA and the work of Nick Hudson.
PANDA made a difference in the overall trajectory.
11
“Where are the engineers and scientists who must know the truth and are in a position of influence and who are prepared to speak out?”
Such as?
I only know one, nuclear physicist and head of Kodak, Optus, Telstra Ziggy Switkowski, Vice Chancellor or RMIT. But a decade ago he refused to speak out. I spoke to him and he just shrugged it off. He only spruiks nuclear power. Not his problem.
Electronic Engineer and former Chief Scientist Alan Finkel is totally professionally and emotionally committed to man made CO2 global warming. He sees it as the greatest challenge of his professional life, to effect the biggest change in Australian society since the industrial revolution. And instantly dismisses any idea that it might be made up nonsense. He told me that for every paper I could find debunking it, he could find another supporting the idea. And of course that’s right. There’s no money, fame or power in the truth. There are billions in Climate Change and the papers supporting the UN are endless, even if the IPCC itself has completely backed off.
As for currently employed scientists, they have families and mortages. And almost no one who speaks out is currently employed as a scientist. They would be fired. It’s hard enough to get a job without offending your public service or corporate employer. And if they still speak out they get the Snowdon/Assange/Ridd treatment.
Those who do speak out are retired white haired former scientists, dismissed as irrelevant today, as if science has changed. Like Prof Carl Otto Weiss who’s incredible explanation of sun and ocean driven temperatures fits like hand in a glove, without CO2.
Others need a secure source of employment because there’s no money in questioning the official truth. You will be doxxed, insulted, ridiculed and shunned.
And in government? Where is there a scientist or engineer? It’s hard to find any politician who has ever had a real job.
Chris Bowen, minister for Climate. He was previously minister for massive illegal boat migration under Julia Gillard. And Treasurer under Kevin Rudd. If you had to argue that the Labor ministers were competent in any way, you would not start with Chris Bowen. After an Economics degree at 22 he was Councillor and then Mayor of Fairfield, so he has been a professional politician all his working life. His grasp of his portfolios is amazingly poor. And it doesn’t say much for university standards in economics.
301
But that does not mean not to speak out. However it looks like we have to see complete disaster overtake the country before that happens. The Coalition are now pushing nuclear power, afraid to attack the absurdity and uselessness of Nett Zero, conceding the moral high ground to the Labor party and the Greens.
I prefer the Tony Abbott approach, as do most Australians. Climate Change is crap. And look what happened to him.
However if politicans would have courage for once, the votes are there, as in the Voice. If Dutton wants to be PM, he could do worse than tackle it head on and ask why we are not allowed use the coal, iron ore we are exporting to China. And if there is to be war, soon like the UK we will have to ask China for steel to build ships or guns. It’s a simple as that. And we will not be able to use our own coal for power. Or to make our own windmills. Everything comes from China which is stealing all the world’s CO2 because we don’t want it.
230
And we will keep going, so that people who start to doubt, people who want to know the truth can find it in these pages. And the truth will set them free, even if by that time they are generating their laptop electricity on a treadle.
140
I am a scientist and in a former job at a very large engineering consultancy that had recently taken over my previous consultancy, I happened to comment publicly on wind farms as “more bird killing machines” having read evidence of that from UK studies. I was promptly hauled over the coals by someone very much my junior but happened to be the manager of my section as that company was designing wind towers and responsible for construction of the ones I criticised, which I didnt know at the time. I resigned from that company within 6 months as I disagreed with the principle of profit before doing the right thing. At the company I now work part time for there are many people involved in the alternative energy fields so I have to take a low profile on this, but all my close colleagues know and agree with my views. Its just very hard to fight against the dollar.
210
See the link below which discusses the risks inherent in the Brooklyn Bridge in New York and the chance that they may make it a pedestrian only bridge as they are unable to inspect the wires in the support cables.
https://wireropenews.com/the-brooklyn-bridge-experiment/
30
The wire used in the rope bundles was dodgy from the start, but why can’t they Xray it.
20
Criminal incompetence or criminal malice.
It is a purely political thing, so I know where my wager will go.
Note the key word.
240
Both!
140
I think they will “succeed”…
…entirely Denominator-based you understand.
80
But hold the presses! BOBowen wants to create a hydrogen fuel industry out of thin air and copious subsidization. Needless to say, all the rich rent-seekers are jumping on the bandwagon. So, while Electricity generators are spruiking price cuts to aid the government’s hypocrisy of pseudo-tax cuts and hide bracket creep
https://principia-scientific.com/can-the-government-create-a-green-hydrogen-fuel-industry/
170
As we know watervapour is the end result of hydrogen production. Isn’t O2 a “greenhouse gas”? Oh, the irony.
190
I think you mean H2O?
140
Another success of the Australian Education System!
130
If CO2 can be called ‘carbon’ then H2O as water vapour can be called ‘oxygen’
110
shouldnt it be hydrogen? That would settle it
30
“Or”?
Incompetence does not preclude malice, nor does malice preclude incompetence.
190
Importantly the lost a couple pylons to a plant that:
– can provide dense energy to keep the grid synchronised
– can actually boot itself up if a black start is needed
– can provide that pesky baseload power
230
The solar (subsidy) farm at Winton in Victoriastan is absolutely massive , most of it was productive farmland .
240
Renewable inefficiency ==X
==x food insecurity.
130
Removing productive farmland from service is all part of the plan.
271
Yes, suits the EU/China/WEF to a tee. A double win. Starve the people to death and deprive them of any quality of life. Like Green Sri Lanka. As Stalin and Hitler knew, it’s far cheaper than war. And faster. The new trick is to get them to do it themselves, to save everyone else. A laugh a minute.
130
Look – forget this 2035, 2040, 2050 future date green utopia nonsense.
They’re ALL pipe dreams and won’t materialise, because the morons behind them have orchestrated a socio-economic collapse that’ll make such dreams impossible.
The next 8 years are all you need to focus on.
The green garbage is falling apart faster now.
JP Morgan Pulls Out Of $68 Trillion “Climate Action 100+” Group
We have been covering the full on implosion of ESG and “green” investing for the better part of the last 6 months and today, the wreckage continues.
That’s because mega-bank JP Morgan has officially left a $68 trillion investor coalition that is “focused on pressing the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases to decarbonize,” according to Bloomberg.
In other words, the “fight” to decarbonize is imploding.
JP Morgan said it is leaving the Climate Action 100+ because it has “made significant investments in developing its own climate risk engagement framework”, the report says. The bank claims to have 40 professionals now focused on sustainable investing.
And the damage for the Climate Action 100+ may only be getting started. Lance Dial, a Boston-based partner at law firm K&L Gates LLP, told Bloomberg: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more defections, especially given that there’s now a cost, such as potential litigation, that wasn’t there when companies joined.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/jp-morgan-pulls-out-68-trillion-climate-action-100-group
Wakey wakey time!
310
Even if Australians got smart and elected a rational, conservative government, there is no obvious exit strategy to extricate ourselves from the renewables madness because it appears the subsidies harvested by the owners of solar, wind and battery plantations are guaranteed by contracts and government legislation.
The only possibility of an exit as I see it is for contracts to be cancelled by reason of force majeure but even that might not be applicable because Australia’s energy disaster was ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE, not unexpected in any way.
271
I recall that maybe 2019 the Morrison Coalition Government legislated for an end of RET based subsidies for new installations?
Around that time they made changes to company laws to force greater competition between electricity suppliers.
Being a state primary responsibility, electricity supply and development approvals etc., Federal influence is limited which in itself based on the interconnected electricity grid provides problems of management, similar to the now emerging management of NDIS because of State control and influences.
101
Conservative? The current group of politicians are too scared of polls to take a stand!
Remember when the Voice was supposed to win? If Peter Dutton took stopping the wholesale destruction of coal and gas power stations as his theme, he would romp home! It took him a month to take a ‘courageous’ stand on the Voice.
And this nonsense that coal power stations are old and tired. Hazelwood was running at 98% of design capacity when they switched it off. It’s all lie. Coal power stations are just factories on the ground, not in the air or miles out to sea. They can be maintained forever, unlike windmills with a life expectancy of only 18 years, if that. Like granpa’s axe with five new heads and six new handles, a power station has an infinite life.
Having coal and steel as the backbone of your country is essential. Or you are not a country. China knew that. Mao Tse Tung has people making steel in their backyards and they are convincing us not to make it. Greater fools us.
Why can’t we use what we are exporting and what is paying the bills for everyone in the country. We make NOTHING. It’s all paid for by coal, gas and iron ore and wheat, wool. So CHina and their partners the Green are trying to shut us down. And it’s working. But the treasurer takes credit for balancing the budget, which is being done entirely on the back of coal and iron ore, something he prefers to call ‘commodities’ to hide the ugly truth.
Australia may be the Lucky country, but has some of the stupidest politicians in the world and that’s a hot competition given Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak.
270
And why is China still buying our coal? Because we are the world’s greatest supplier of metallurgical coal. Indonesian coal is thermal only. And when they seized our coal exports and would not pay for them and left them rotting in the port, the price of coal quadrupled. So they are back. But forewarned should be forearmed, but we still haven’t learned. China wants us unable to offer any resistance. Then use us as an open cut mine.
But the real irony is that we are prepared to shut down our own steel making and coal exports. The Victorian Government under John Brumby stopped a $400million export of coal to India because it was ‘brown’ and taking the 66% water out would make it ‘blacker’. This was front page on Pravda on the Yarra, The Age.
Is there any alternative to forced reeducation of politicians? Or is idiocy a requirement for the job?
Why aren’t we exporting billions of dollars of briquettes to India? Compressed it has the carbon density of anthracite. Why are we just rolling in debt when we can be making money, like Germany, with vast reserves of FREE solar energy? The oceans look after the CO2. It’s 30x more soluble than oxygen and fish breathe.
170
The joke about this Wind Directions Policy Paper is that the Victorian opposition (LNP) probably think it’s a good thing. But I’m not laughing. They’re the ones who went to the last state election with an emissions reduction target larger than Daniel Andrews Labor. I kid you not. They’e totally on board with all this ocean boiling stuff, even the National Party wing of the party. The Nationals are supposed to represent the rural/ regional vote, so why weren’t they the people exposing this discussion paper? They’re the party who championed ” Shut the gate”, to stop oil/ gas exploration on rural properties. They thought this would earn them votes, which they already probably had anyway. So, when people criticise the ALP (Labor) on their exploration ban, they forget that the LNP are as equally demented in their policy stance. Yet, we have shiploads of gas in various locations right across Victoria, just waiting to be utilised. Also, before everyone dumps on us silly Victorians, just remember federal and state governments Australia mainland wide are all Labor. Tassie, most likely will go back to Labor soon as well.
230
John Persutto must go. So woke he probably doesn’t sleep, he is being sued for calling a Jewish woman a Nazi and he denies that women exist at all! He is far to the left even of Labour and calls himself a conservative. Another single career politician who has never had a job, exactly like Daniel Andrews, he is hoping to win by default, not by having any actual principles.
Australia is filled with people who walk in to local government, then into state and leave onto company boards and plum jobs as experts and the golf course without ever having had a principle except winning elections. Zero conviction politicians. Although to be fair, some of them have been convicted.
We in Victoria have been robbed, massively indebted and surrounded with vast concrete memorials to projects no one wanted. Councils as not much different. And the public service is growing faster than any other business, along with their wages and our taxes.
Javier Milei is savaging the number of public servants in Argentina, possibly their biggest industry which of course produces absolutely nothing except more taxes. We need the same medicine here. Halve the councils and the public service and close all the make believe Clean Green energy nonsense. It’s based on fantasy, not science, unless you know a Boiling Ocean nearby.
190
And if Bolt is correct we’ll have 9,000 klms more towers and wires to come across Australia and heaps more in VIC.
And if we’re extra lucky the wind turbines and solar panels might last for 15 to 20 years, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
But if we used our brains(?) new RELIABLE 24/7/365 BASE-LOAD coal or gas plants could last for 60 years and longer with proper maintenance.
And no more worries about thousands of kilometres of surplus crazy towers to crash every time we get some heavy winds or cyclones or?
Never forget that these thousands of klms of DANGEROUS EXTRA towers are only built to connect crazy dilute, UNRELIABLE TOXIC W & S. And the lifespan is very short and then we’ll bury the entire TOXIC mess in landfill plus REGULAR ongoing replacement every 15 to 20 years.
261
Thats the point, it all has to be redone in 20 years. If they’re lucky.
140
The recent tower failure in Victoria was again on the news last night because there are still places without power. So a “silly” reporter asked the obvious question – Wouldn’t it be better to have underground cables instead of overhead lines? The expert reply was that it would be uneconomic.
Here they are doing all they can to make electricity way more expensive; more sensitive to weather events and unreliable but one thing that could make it a tad less sensitive to weather is regarded as uneconomic.
With imbeciles in charge, the better option is to make your own electricity.
310
What about underwater cables? Does not seem to be a problem with these if they are connecting offshore windmills!
Floating offshore windmills are FOUR times as expensive an onshore windmills
100
The former Snowy Hydro CEO, after he resigned following disagreements with Minister Bowen, commented that if the Albanese Labor RET of 82 per cent of electricity grid supply could be completed it would take well over eighty years.
And consider the removals and replacements (if the shareholders are prepared to reinvest their dividend earnings) of wind turbines and solar panels during that time.
241
Labor voting Victorians are getting a box seat experience of a going green, going low CO2, low everything future that is coming to them courtesy of our UN infatuated pollies and pubic serpents.
Lap it up luvvies, it might not get this good for while.
310
Most politicians seem either not smart enough, not educated enough or not honest enough, or all three, to be able to understand the nature of the problem.
231
Nationals MP Dr David Gillespie is one politician who has researched so called renewable energy and is now campaigning for nuclear energy to be utilised, and of course for repeal of the legislation banning nuclear.
There are others supporting him including an electrical engineer Queensland National Party MP.
Keith Pitt was born in Bundaberg, Queensland. He grew up in Woongarra and attended Kepnock State High School before taking up an electrical apprenticeship. He went on to the Queensland University of Technology, graduating with the degree of Bachelor of Engineering.
240
I have really admired Keith Pitt over the years as very often the only person within the national LNP to talk sense on energy policy. But like Matt Canavan has no political grunt, no mean streak. They both appear very happy to represent their electorates, whinge and moan a lot, but appear to not have any influence in the party room. So similar to all the LNP, not prepared to fight “culture wars”. In this case, energy wars.
240
They are both on the back bench (and I think Matt chose to be there) and because of that they are more able to express opinions on energy issues than if they were in Cabinet, where they would have to toe the line. Both are effective speakers on Sky and their messages are getting through to viewers.
270
Even as a member of a shadow cabinet of an alternative government in opposition MPs are bound by the rules and cannot speak outside of cabinet if taking a different point of view to the cabinet majority.
80
It is interesting that lands having native title are hands-off. But the farmer’s entitlement to their land is fair game.
Victoria needs to take a close look at Holland. Port Phillip is the ideal location for wind turbines. Let the teals in Briiighton have a good view of their prized subsidy extractors.
Port Phillip has an area of 200,000Ha. So good for up to 200GW of installed wind capacity.
Why would Victoria want to hide their symbols of faith out of sight in Bass Strait when they could put tens of thousands of them in view of the most residents and visitors. Think of future generations of Grand Prix visitors watching the battery powered screamers tearing around Albert Park with thousands of wind turbines turning majestically in the background. What a wonderful sight.
No perceptible wind here in SE Melbourne this morning but Fawkner Beacon showing 20kph. Not quite at the sweet spot but up around 50% 0f rating.
Port Philip would be the most economic location by far. Quite shallow water – check. Close to load centre – check. Short underwater cable runs – check. Easy to service – check. Spectacular viewing when one disintegrates – check. Ticks so many boxes.
410
Indeed. For Port Philip Bay:
Ideal depth to install an “offshore” bird chopper plantation.
I am not aware of any indigenous claims to residence of any Rainbow Serpent living in the bay, but no doubt it will take up residence as soon as something for which financial tribute can be extracted is installed.
302
It’s amazing how those rainbow serpents pop up when there is money to be had or a cause to be pushed.
160
But they claim Middle Park and Albert Park and Port Melbourne, even though the area was half flooded unlivable salt marsh and the rest were sand dunes. So I have buried beer cans on the beach and will soon make my claim to the area. And charge rent for windmills in my bay, a sacred drinking place for the rainbow yawn as Bazza said.
100
If that happens, I wonder if it will be via a dishonest accounting trick like they do for Canberra/ACT?
181
It is getting harder for the higher demand States to lean on other States. Both South Australia and ACT are almost inconsequential loads so readily lean on other States for reliable generation and South Australia also uses Victoria as an additional load. Victoria leans on NSW and Tasmania now but Basslink has limited capacity while NSW is not flush with reliable generation..
The only way the whole of Australia can get consistently above 30% is for more storage. And it takes a lot of storage capacity to make a difference. Snowy 2 would enable getting up to maybe 40%. The new big battery in Victoria gets another 0.7% overall for Australia. If Tassie and Victoria get good rain then existing Hydro could push it higher than 30% now.
The other thing that is happening is household batteries. They mean that grid load reduces so existing grid wind and solar have reduced opportunity so their capacity factors drop.
Connecting more wind and solar now just lowers capacity factors. The capacity factor of my on-grid solar system has declined since a near neighbour installed a large rooftop system. There has only been one day this summer when it has been sunny that my system has not been backed off on overvoltage through the middle of the day.
110
Victoriastan will rely on the interconnector to South Australia to import renewable energy from SA when there is no longer any “dirty” brown coal electricity to export to SA.
No more “smoke and mirrors” with no more burning of smokey coal!
100
If that happens, don’t leave your home on a stormy night.
20
The CIS tells us the so called CSIRO Chief Energy economist and BO Bowen misled us on Nuclear Energy.
I still think that Nuclear will take too long for we Aussies and NEW RELIABLE Coal and Gas would be cheaper for us at this critical time.
But watch the CIS video below and see if their CSIRO expert fills you with confidence?
But I’m sure he’s a great comfort for Labor and BO Bowen.
https://www.cis.org.au/publication/more-misinformation-from-csiro-on-nuclear/
120
Also read;
https://www.smrnuclear.com.au
60
Note that the people making the decisions, politicians and senior public serpents are all highly overpaid, have indexed salaries and have absolutely nothing to lose by, for example, a factory closing down due to expensive or unreliable electricity.
It was the same with covid. Not one of the b-st-rds suffered at all.
251
David,
Make them have skin in the game . Deficits come out of their pension funds and entitlements . Let us vote on their pay packets instead of them. 3 monthly vaccinations for all politicians and their families . Sounds good to me….
170
I love a solar-paneled country
a land of metal plains.
of ragged windmill ranges
and toxic battery acid drains…
370
I love those distant windmills
As far as the eye can see
Her ugliness and conformity
The brown coal free land for me!
201
Wind and solar ‘renewables’ are an OK, out of sight out of mind blight on productive agricultural land and heritage rural vistas but not in close proximity to city and urban areas, especially those in the electorates of the politicians like Chris Bowen or PM Albanese. Another example is Zali Steggall, Teal flavoured Independant for Warringah. She doesn’t want electrical energy generated from coal, gas or nuclear power but she’s OK with power generated from wind and solar factories buggering up the rural landscape for farming. How about wind farms off Manly and other Warringah beaches Zali, or all over your beloved ski fields?
160
Or anywhere where they are likely to be viewed by Malcolm Turnbull in his mansion.
80
Sydney harbour then. In front of his view.
30
We keep getting told how cheap electricity is from solar and wind plantations but none of its proponents can cite a single example of where electricity is getting cheaper due to adding more W & S or where W & S operates without some form of subsidy.
The relationship is simple. The more W & S there is, the more expensive and unreliable electricity becomes.
240
But Mr Albanese has promised Australians
“Shleeper Electrishity” and “My word is my bond”.
Are you a denier of the integrity of our esteemed Prime Minister?
150
Absolutely!
70
I understand that his fiancé is worried that the Order of Service might be more than one page.
90
Albo’s proposal to Allan Joyce must have been knocked back.
70
Time to revisit the Ban on Nuclear Energy
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Nuclearprohibitions/Report/Coalition_Senators_Dissenting_Report#
130
It would be prudent to wait for Fusion Power (it apparently works) we only have to mine the moon.
62
Research Helium-3 and multi-nation research and development for mining and processing on the Moon utilising the heat of days and the extreme cold of nights to process and prepare for transportation to Earth via Space Shuttle cargo carriers.
20
Have you been watching the film “Iron Sky”.
That had a little bit to do with mining Helium 3 on the Moon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sky
10
If 70% of agricultural land is required to meet renewable energy targets, does that include the land occupied by units that have reached the end of their “useful” lives and are awaiting replacement or being replaced, given the relatively short lifespan of the units.
100
It was interesting in the Australian today that the total area occupied by the many coal plants closed to date is less then 450 acres. About 2 square km . That’s tiny, 2km x 1km. Less than say Albert Park in Melbourne minus the lake. And of course the transmission lines were already there and not the new Chinese falling over type.
71
Converting Coal Fired Power Stations to Natural Cost
In the USA over a 100 coal fired power station have been converted to run on Natural Gas.
If Australian politicans were serious about reducing local CO2 emissions ASAP (while igboring our exported emissions in coal and LNG) then this would be the best and least expensive solution (apart from bulding new HELE Coal Fired Power Stations)
However all “fossil fuels” have been demonised so it is all or nothing.
The cost of a “pure” renewables grid with battery back rises exponentially as the 100% target is approached.
A grid of weather dependent wind and solar (with some hydro) might require $500 billion worth of batteries for a 95% reliablity target with natural gas peaking plants covering the last 5%.
But this would not suit the Climate Cultists to have even 5% produced by evil natural gas. How to justify the ban on relatively small usage for domestic heating and cooking?
Going to 98-99% reliablity with renewables only would push battery costs to around $10 Trillion with most capacity not used in an “average” year but with a major grid failure still possible in an unpredictable “bad” year.
As the Chinese curse goes “May you live in interesting times”.
60
Coal power stations could have new lives with gas
Converting Australia’s huge coal-fired electricity plants to gas would make more sense than trying to keep them going, and could help Australia’s faltering energy transition.
Nyunggai Warren Mundine
https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/coal-power-stations-could-have-new-lives-with-gas-20230806-p5du8x#
40
Why, when eg. Victoria has over 500 years of easily accessible brown coal reserves right next to infrastructure already built? Plus, the present coal fleet could all be easily upgraded to Ultra Super Critical or Super critical level. The tech is already available, easily procured unlike all the suggested unproven improvements to renewables. Australia has always been a special case, one that our idiot politicians and bureaucrats were unable to argue against during UN emissions protocols – going back decades. Which is why Australia is one of the biggest exporters of coal to China and Japan and India and Vietnam and Thailand and so on and so on.
130
There is no common sense relating to climate warming hoax Ross, as you know.
Cost-benefit analysis not considered by the disciples.
50
Dennis, my criticism of politicians and bureaucrats can only go so far. Because, sooner than later, someone will comment that “if you’re so damn smart, why don’t you go into politics?” Which my answer is, there is no **&&#$% way I could work in government or be a politician. We have to work with what we’ve got I’m afraid. But, in reality I don’t think the politicians are the boss in Australia’s energy policy anyway. Its all been determined by the public service decades ago.
80
You are right Ross, and it makes sense because public service employees are employed for their qualifications and to do what business executives do who advise company boards, so a cabinet of ministers including prime minister is very similar to a public company board of directors.
However, as boards of directors ofen do when presented with capital expenditure applications, usually presented by a managing director/ceo and finance manager, maybe manufacturing manager invited to discuss when appropriate, cabinet ministers can vote no.
I believe that Minister Bowen and predecessors have been blinded by the climate warming hoax United Nations IPCC politics and have chosen to ignore qualified advice in favour of vested interests and bureaucrat lap dogs.
50
Another sensible option.
And noting the enormous reserve of known and recorded gas fields onshore and offshore.
40
To every cloud a silver lining …
The same scientifically illiterate clowns who think they can replace thermal generation with unreliables with an ERoEI ratio of only 3:1, are the same clowns that think they can preserve their undeserved elitist status via the creation of a digital gulag.
Can’t keep the power on? Whoops! There goes CBDC, Digital identity, social credit scoring , 15 minute city ULEZ cameras, traffic cameras and biometric scanning!
On power outage days, via their virtue signalling, the parasite class will be trapped by their uncharg’d vehicles, with their fragile digital gulag collaps’d. What feats we may do those days!
41
Except on the days when it works they will have used the AI to find and jail the troublemakers. Then when the grid goes down the unwashed masses won’t find it easy to organise in the hours of freedom they have for obvious reasons. And if a few of the riff raff find it hard to get clean water, fuel, emergency ambulances, it’s not like the rulers will care.
There are already exit levers in some electric cars. And fire, police and ambulances and ministers cars don’t need to be electric, right?
They are incompetent, true, but if they have all the levers of money and power, they can keep on going for a long time.
Isn’t it better to stop them now?
140
“
Electric police cars ‘running out of charge’ responding to emergencies
https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/latest-fleet-news/electric-fleet-news/2022/07/06/electric-police-cars-running-out-of-charge-responding-to-emergencies
70
If you’re going to reply, answer the question.
11
Isn’t it better to stop them now?
Stop and think …
We already did. The anti mandates and passports protests. Me in Sydney, on the front page of news.com and daily mail. You in Perth. 200,000 protesters on the streets in Sydney, but only 18,000 police in the state of NSW.
“The Gulag Archipelago” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsn.
Please keep up on your reading Jo. Solzhenitsyn is old fashioned. Guns are old fashioned. The digital world and a digital gulag is so fragile, just a little sand will do the trick.
But here’s the thing Jo, the sparing application of said sand requires physical, not digital effort.
Read Solzhenitsyn, and understand.
02
I’ve read Solzhenitsyn.
Good luck with the sand.
We haven’t stopped the Ministry’s of Misinfo being set up around the West.
We haven’t stopped the CBDCs.
No one has gone to jail for election cheating or for vaccines.
The J6 prisoners are still in the gulag.
The Tech Giants haven’t gone broke.
The banksters still have their profits from the GFC.
70
Victoria farmers won’t be pleased,
If their lands are confiscated or seized,
For vast solar panel fields,
Decimating food yields,
Nor by wind turbine pipe dreams appeased.
160
Perhaps there is an opportunity to support solar panels….. 🙂
Properly mounted and spaced, the grazing of sheep among the panels has proven to be quite possible. But of course growing wheat or other cereal crops would not be possible.
Support the panels to “put it to” the vegetarians?
31
or perhaps attach solar panels to the back of the sheep
and herd them into areas where the sun is shining?
40
You can’t eat a wind turbine. But what politicians or Teals understand that? Food comes from Coles or Woolworths.
90
Yes you can
34
I see that person is regarded as having a psychological disorder.
Necessary for eating them, and mass planting them too.
.
You may well have solved the problem of disposing of them in 15-20 years. Then it becomes the sewer authority problem.
30
In Monty Python parlance -“…. you cant eat a piston engine, but you can cook it”. There’s been a few wind turbines that have cooked and caught fire over recent years.
80
Callide power station ring a bell?
400 MW gone for 3 years, or about 400 3 MW windmills.
30
Farm land taken over by unreliables, all part of the plan for global depopulation.
50
There is a seriously bad problem within governments including elected members of parliaments and employee public service staffers. Taxpayer’s monies are treated like their own, consider the revelations of a recent Senate Estimates Committee interviews with public servants who were forced to admit they have been conducting meetings in expensive Canberra restaurants instead of in meeting rooms with sandwiches, amounts over $100/head mentioned.
That is petty cash compared to the squandering of our tax monies by all levels of governments.
And consider the rates of pay compared to private sector equivalents, and the regular wage/salary reviews conducted and paid, last Federal increase late in 2023.
Even worse the wasting on defence spending and procurement, the wastage on Renewable Energy Target and Net Zero Emissions plus economic vandalism costs to our nation.
Indigenous funding and where does the money end up.
Considering the abundance of natural wealth here from reserves of minerals and energy, farmland and potential new irrigation farmland just build more dams, the resources locked up in former public land and forests now UN registered National Parks including Marine Parks and more.
I believe that with Singapore Government style corruption-free because of high penalties applicable management, look at their reserve wealth fund investments, Australia could abolish income tax, maybe raise state based GST even to 20 per cent, and make company tax internationally competitive.
30
Paraphrased quote from Plato’s Republic:
In other words, good people do not want to hold office but they sometimes force themselves to because the alternative is that worse people will rule.
80
Bill Gates’ dark dream of blocking sunlight from the Earth is about to be realised
Bill Gates, ever the demented snake oil salesman, has long argued in favor of a bizarre plan to fight global warming by using experimental geoengineering to partially block the sun’s rays from reaching Earth.
Well, he’s apparently about to get his wish.
Scientists plan to begin pumping chemicals into the sky over the next few weeks and months from several countries around the globe, including the U.S., Australia and Israel.
The idea, promoted by Gates and leftist billionaire George Soros, involves pumping manmade white clouds containing chalk dust and other chemicals into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from the Earth’s surface.
Blocking the sun’s light would allegedly lower the planet’s temperature enough to reverse global warming.
[SNIP]
https://leohohmann.com/2024/02/15/bill-gates-dark-dream-of-blocking-sunlight-from-the-earth-is-about-to-be-realized/
Reflect the sun’s rays while simultaneously rolling out solar power arrays.
Clown world.
I wonder if there’s such a thing as a stupidity tipping point.
100
What beats me is how these people concentrate so hard on their doom theory that they lose all sense of reality.
Or maybe they actively refuse to acknowledge the hugely beneficial effects for the global fauna, flora and people from what is happening currently to the world’s ‘climates’. If people begin to notice the benefits, lose their fear of the Warming argument, the entire attempt to take control of the Western world by those people, would fail. They hope to become the most powerful authoritarian Western government the world has seen. They would run it like the EU Commission runs the EU. They’ve said nobody in the West will own anything, but be happy. That would be worse than any current governance on the planet.
Just imagine the chalk dust trick was done as the world really decided to cool. Catastrophe!
40
It’s Lucifer’s sin, *pride,* perhaps THE MOST serious of the seven deadly sins
leading on to Armageddon.
‘We KNOW just how the world works, trust (and obey) us.’
H/t Plato’s Republic ‘regarding the Great Man in History’
30
Fun Facts – Nuclear Energy
35 Countries have nuclear reactors
There are 437 operating reactors with another 63 under construction
Three Countries obtain more than 50% of their electicity from “No CO2 emission” nuclear energy.
France 62.6%
Slovakia 59.2%
Ukraine 55%
The USA generates 771,221 GWh of electricity followed by China 395,354 and then France 282,093
Australia’s annual electricity demand is 237,000 GWh
So why cannot Australia be added to this list?
The dirty deal with the Greens in 1998 can be undone.
110
Most unlikely, its a political hot potato.
Dutton could run with it at the next election and the electorate would say not in my backyard.
41
‘Libs’ nuclear policy will electrify debate.
‘Peter Dutton will take a well-advanced policy to the election that is based on a starkly different alternative to what the Coalition claims is Labor’s renewables fantasy.’ (Oz)
20
Aidan Is becoming a little Aussie legend!
30
Beats me how agriculture is so devalued. How do these lunatic governments, activists and people who vote for them think they and the World are going to feed themselves once so much prime farm land is removed from production and over time in this country, become infertile. ‘Natural’ fertilisers went down well in Sri Lanka didn’t they! Is that the template?
The West provides much of the food for the World, let alone itself, but here we have Western ‘leaders’ actively reducing food availability for their people. I know most of these dickheads want a reduction in world population but do they really intend to induce it by mass starvation, building temporarily available and short-lived solar panel ‘jungles’ and turbine forests on prime land and in the seas? Not many insects nor flora in that dream!
If Japan and China – and Australia – are anything to go by, increased personal wealth seems to bring about low human replacement rates. One ends up with a nation of dependent olds but with not enough young to keep the economy humming to meet that dependency. Growing wealth seems to be the quickest, passive way to reduce world population without catastrophe.Seems a great place there for robots rather than immigration! But then, robots need energy. Circular argument.
40
The Netherlands is also to small for all the windturbines they need fot netzero. See this short video to understand the magnitude of the problem: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m7PHUMd7PYA.
10
[…] By Jo Nova […]
10
[…] By Jo Nova […]
00