Image: Keppel Prince
By Jo Nova
More proof that wind power can’t be used to make wind turbines
The one and only Australian manufacturer of wind turbine towers is going out of business, despite Australian electricity reaching 35% glorious renewable, and the Prime Ministers big plan to have the $22 billion dollar Future Made in Australia, as well as our galloping Net Zero fantasy to reach 82% renewable by 2030. We are, in theory, supposed to install 40 new wind towers a month somewhere in Australia, but none of the towers, it turns out, will be Australian made.
Imagine what we could do if Australia were the largest exporter of iron ore and coal in the world? The government could still screw it up.
Right now, we ship the iron and coal 7,000 kilometers away with heavy fuel oil, to be made into windmills to save the world, only to ship them right back, rather than make them here.
Renewables are the cheapest source of electricity on Earth, they say, and Australia has twice as much as China (proportionately). But China makes 65% of all wind turbines globally, and soon Australia will make 0%.
The company Keppel Prince don’t mention the cost of electricity, although the boss of Glencore claims Australian prices are double or more the cost in China, which can’t be good for any business. Instead the company blames Chinese subsidized competitors for dumping, which may have some truth to it, but Keppel Prince has been living off renewable energy subsidies themselves in Australia for years. In 2009 the company warned of job losses if the government didn’t set a bigger renewable energy target (which it did), but then they had to sack 100 staff in 2014 when the target was cut. After that they got help from the Victorian State Energy Targets, and the requirement that 60 per cent of the manufacturing was done locally. The truth is there has probably never been a wind turbine built in Australia that wasn’t subsidized. The only question is “how big were the subsidies?”.
The Opposition here, are naturally making fun of the abject failure of the Future Made In Australia plan:
China subsidies smash Australian wind tower builder, signalling end of last major player Keppel Prince
The Australian
“They’ve got to look really bad that they are losing the only tower manufacturer accredited to build the things,” Stephen Garner [the Executive Director of Keppel Prince] told The Australian.
“The federal government continues to say, like Albanese says, we want to get back to manufacturing. Here we have a manufacturing facility already in place.
“It’s set up for renewable energy, which is what the government talks about every day of the week, and yet we’ve got to mothball it because we can’t compete with China because our government won’t do anything about it.”
Mr Tehan said the government’s pledge to build Australia’s manufacturing base was in disarray. “What a complete embarrassment,’’ the member for Wannon said. “Their renewables only policy has been such a success it has closed our last remaining wind tower manufacturer.
“So the government is not in breach of its own misinformation and disinformation laws, it needs to immediately pull its Made in Australia ads that proudly displays a wind farm. “It would actually be funny, if workers weren’t losing their jobs…”
We don’t like seeing any Australian business go under, but there is an element of live-by-the-sword, die-by-the-sword as the saying goes. Hopefully the expertise in Keppel Prince can be put to better use manufacturing things the market wants, instead of what the government wants.
Ultimately, no Australian business can compete with slave labor and cheap coal fired and nuclear power. The only thing more stupid than that would be competing in an industry to make things the market doesn’t want, the country doesn’t need and which won’t save the environment.
The Govt learnt nothing form the local car manufacturing, and what happens the moment you subsidise a company. Instantly they start planning on the next, greater round of subsidies, because that is easier than competing in a marketplace. Its simpler and easier to buy a politician or bureaucrat than to buy customers.
If China is subsidising their manufacturers they will have the same problem, the companies turn into ossified, expensive dinosaurs that are not competitive, and meanwhile the Govt is making life more expensive for everyone else to find the money for subsidies.
If we could stop all Australian Govts from subsidising anything we would be a lot more efficient. You need new, hungry, energetic businesses entering the market with bright new ideas, not ancient factories that are just old mens clubs at the local Chamber of Commerce. Subsidies attract the wrong sort of people, people who are just experts at sliming their way into Govt money, like Cannon-Brookes, not real business experts like Dick Smith.
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“Future Made in Australia”. LOL. The future is already here and what is made in Australia? Less and less by the minute by the looks of it.
Vale Australia.
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Much like the UK.
Sadly.
Auto
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With Trump getting out of the Paris Agreement (for the second time) my check of those ACTUALLY doing anything about emissions is about 11% whereas 86% aren’t.
I should have added another column to the spreadsheet listing those who wanted money.
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Australia, some years ago had a fairly good base manufacturing setup which was spurred on by WW2. Due to our geographic isolation and lack of initiative in following years we find ourselves unable to compete. Unfortunately the domestic market is small and labour costs are high. Now we have one of the highest energy costs in the world. Now we are captured by an aggressive trading partner and a supine government which seems intent on destroying it.
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Australia’s electricity production increased by 75% in a decade from 1978 to 1988. The State governments encouraged a lot of heavy industry into the country, most notably, electricity hog aluminium production. The Queensland government had the sense to electrify their coal trains.
Aluminium smelters were buying electricity for a few cents per kWh. They were highly competitive internationally. The heavy industries, businesses and households all benefited from the increasing scale with large power stations being built on coal fields.
All that efficiency was sacrificed by subsidising intermittent electricity generators into the market. That single decision has been an economic disaster for Australia.
Those in the generating and distribution industry were going through rapid changes in the 1990s as the national market was created and State monopolies being streamlined to remove productivity hurdles in these business. It was going really well but, as far as I know, there was no one in the industry condemning the decision to allow intermittent generators into the market on highly favourable terms.
The mandated theft is now taken for granted by almost all in the Federal and State governments because it is not a budget item. Making the retailers the bagmen was an inspired idea. No one in the LSM uses the term consumer theft to rightly identify what the retailers take from consumers to buy LGCs from the grid scale wind and solar black markets..
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People, especially the young, just do not understand this. That if you’re producing reliable electricity from a furnace or reactor, you just do not need intermittent supply, because the power produced is so cheap it makes no sense to add solar cells to your roof. All it can do is save you a few litres of fuel at an enormous expense.
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A lot of the cost, small market stuff, etc. is nonsense. Policy decisions by Australia’s ever so talented (sarc) politicians doomed manufacturing starting with the Lima agreement in 1975 which had a profound effect on Australia’s manufacturing industry, leading to significant economic changes and decline.
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Someone with brains & the resources please ensure this news regularly made very public!
This Net Zero insanity has got to be stopped before it stops the whole country!!
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Hopefully it will be resolved at the coming election. If not, this will be one rare example of accelerationism that I support. A huge blackout will be the only thing that wakes up sleepy Aussies.
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Again toxic W & S only generate 30% and 15% of every day, month and year. Of course they’re replaced every 15 to 20 years and thousands of klms of our wilderness are destroyed forever.
So why would you waste trillions of $ on this fra-dulent toxic lunacy when we could have cheaper base-load power that generates 24/7, 365 days a year and lasts beyond 2100?
Obviously a no brainer, but even Labor, Greens and Teals manage to stuff it up.
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Neville, I think your first sentence should read something like…
Again toxic W & S only generate sometimes/intermittently 30% and 15% of every day of the year.
Also I realise that you didn’t mention the Liberals regarding this mess but I have no faith in them fixing this idiocy. The Libs and Labor created this debacle together and are still 100% for net zero.
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Australians seem to want manufacturing here, but they also want really high wages and really high energy prices. The great Aussie conundrum.
How about we put a tariff on the Chinese windmills, that’ll fix it right? Aussies would make them good right? This idiocy, in my experience at least, is about the level of an average conversation on the issue.
And yet another painfully persistent argument, “I reckon if the wind is there and the sun shines, we may as well use it”. And that one is used by the Minister.
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Australia generates just 12.1 % of our energy from Wind. Except when it doesn’t.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-wind
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Australia generates about 17% of our electricity from Solar. Except when it doesn’t.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-solar
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I saw a tweet on X yesterday, “why do people vote for these far left idiots?”. Thats easy, because they’re far left idiots themselves.
Australians are by default rank socialists. They get it from their British working-class origins who are outright socialists. The result is they vote for their political representatives who in turn produce woeful results like this windmill debacle. You get the government you deserve.
And it is not a modern phenomena. For Australia not to be a full blown all out socialist state is the real miracle. I’ve been reading on the early Prime Ministers recently. Once that Labor party formed Australia had a real problem on its hands, recognised by Deakin, and those early guys were even more left wing than the clowns we have today. The big difference though was the old guys were loyal to Crown and their people, now completely gone from the left.
I’d like to know more about the colonial government era hoping to find it was far more fiscally sensible, but information is short. Apart from the divide of NSW’s free trade and Victoria’s protectionism – still unresolved – and Eureka stockade, the early warning signs of the coming devastating labour movement, I find little information.
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Coming from rural stock that operated a mixed sheep/wheat property in northern NSW we had constant battles with shearing teams. We had one union delegate who said that we wont shear because of scotch thistle ( as it was called) in the wool. The old man was sick and tired of their continual class warfare nonsense that he hopped in his light plane and flew out to Walgett and hired a Kiwi team. They wanted to work and earn a bob.
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A big concern is that the Albanese Socialist government is only keeping their insane renewables energy superpower scheme alive because it is on long-term life-support from coal and gas fired base-load inputs. Unfortunately for most of us we’re not only paying dearly for the subsidised base-load inputs but also the NDIS style financial support for Bowen’s handicapped renewables nightmare of separate electricity grid, eyesore wind farm towers, and land blanketing solar farms. The indictment of Bowen’s mad renewable energy scheme is on one sheet of paper: YOUR ELECTRICITY BILL!
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The only Aussie wind generators ever to be profitable came from a different era and for a different purpose.
These were Dunlite generators which, unlike modern wind turbines, were designed to produce electricity, not harvest subsidies.
They were intended for remote area (e.g. Outback) application where grid electricity wasn’t available and before solar panel technology.
Here is a Canadian Web page about them.
https://www.pearen.ca/dunlite/Dunlite.htm
As real Australian and other history is no longer taught in “schools” and most people have no interest in history generally, sadly few Australian people will have heard of them.
(Posted from Thulo Shyaphru, Nepal.)
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Great Stuff David.
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Thanks Johnny.
(Posted from Thulo Shyaphru, Nepal.)
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IIRC they retreated pretty quickly here when SWER lines appeared.
But , in the early 1970’s, they had a showing for Rocky Mountain cabins
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The ONLY purpose of wind or solar plantations is to harvest subsidies.
In Australia the subsidies (for generation) are harvested directly from consumer electricity bills. Illegally as RickWill has pointed out.
In the United States, subsidies are in the form of tax credits as Warren Buffett has pointed out:
(Posted from Thulo Shyaphru, Nepal.)
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Chris Bowen is building one of the greatest white elephants in world history, all for the sum of $1 trillion.
This will destroy our living standards and not change the weather at all.
And he has the hide to accuse the LNP of being irresponsible to suggest that we use nuclear instead.
We should just be burning coal for all our electricity, but we can’t have that because most of the voters in Australia are morons.
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And that, exactly, is the purpose. They want to lower our standard of living.
It’s one of the Left’s strategies to destroy the West, just like how Obama and Biden deliberately weakened the United States, the leader of Western Civilisation, the leading successor to Greco-Roman Civilisation.
(Posted from Thulo Shyaphru, Nepal.)
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Today, as a follow up to his Tuesday night hit piece on Australia’a energy transition, Chris Uhlmann has also written a similar story in today’s (Saturday) Australian. Go to the comments and mostly the contributors praising CU’s article. But there are still some AGW fanatics pushing the old “science is settled” lies about climate change. Usually it’s the likes of ” sillyfilly”, who I noticed was once a contributor to this blog. Again, the crazy comments about CO2 and CH4 being a powerful greenhouse gas etc, etc. Maybe Jo could ghost write for Chris- because he was once at the ABC and now migrated, his voice has a little more impact to the majority of Australians who still believe in the AGW/CC garbage.
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I’ll have much more to say on this later but here in Nepal, claimed by the Left to be a “Net Zero” country, you get a real idea of how the Left want we (non-Elites) to live. Nepal is the 17th poorest country in the world.
Up here in the mountains, there is:
Intermittent grid electricity, if available, that comes and goes either due to scheduled load shedding or random reasons.
A standard of living roughly equivalent to Australia/NZ, Canada, USA, UK of about the 1850’s.
No hot water for the locals for showering or washing dishes etc.. You can’t use detergents in cold water so that affects hygiene.
Rarely, hot water in tourist guest houses. It’s either solar hot water which runs out after a few showers and usually luke warm in any case but usually unavailable. Sometimes there is gas hot water from cylinders carried up the mountain on the back of man or beast.
No heating, except at the dining areas of guest houses for a couple of hours at night so foreign tourists can socialise and eat. Wood fired.
Cooking with wood or animal dung. Much pollution from this, indoor and outdoor.
Water, untreated, gravity fed from streams higher up. Can’t be drunk by Westerners without making them sick.
Some guest houses have a few small solar panels and about a 100Ah or less lead acid battery for some night time lighting. They may have an unreliable grid connection or none at all.
Some guest houses have WiFi but extremely unreliable. Cell towers are solar powered and often go flat at night or stop working for other random reasons.
No high power use of electricity it tends to be only for lighting or WiFi for tourists.
I brought my own electricity in the form of lithium ion battery packs and charge them whenever electricity is available.
It is the “dream” (nightmare) the Left want non-Elites to live.
(Posted from Thulo Shyaphru, Nepal.)
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Chitwan, Kasara, Kongde…
There’s more than backpacker level wilderness accomodation you know…
But, it’s good to rough it as you appreciate the niceties one takes for granted.
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I was referring to the standard of living of the locals and the accommodation they offer, not luxury offerings unaffordable by locals on a Net Zero lifestyle.
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Albosleazy will just buy ’em out of Tofu-dreg manufacturer, China!
A taste:
https://youtu.be/jH1FLn-ATcc?si=kU11JfDQn6h0W9Nv
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At want point should what the Left are doing to Australia and the Western world more generally, be considered a crime, probably a war crime of The Left against “we, the people”?
(Posted from Thulo Shyaphru, Nepal.)
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https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotels-g12596085-Thulo_Syabru_Central_Region-Hotels.html
Spend the dough!
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I am doing a HIMALAYAN TREK JC II.
Not seeking luxury accommodation.
You missed my whole point describing a Nut Zero lifestyle as I have observed it up here in the Himalayas.
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Talk about hard Labor! We have been sentenced to a term not exceeding our natural life by successive Fed/State Governments by Politicians ill equipped with brain power. The United Nations and its off shoot WHO are hell bent on biting the hand that feeds them. What seemed like a good idea after WW2, World Peace, has Frankensteined its way into a monster. The tale is now wagging the dog. It has now reached its UBD and should be put down!
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“Energy transition” is as scientifically invalid as “gender transition”.
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How can the Left continue to be allowed to get away with the obvious lie that wind and solar are the cheapest form of electricity production?
How stupid can people be not to see the fact that the more wind and solar plantations we get, the more expensive electricity becomes?
(Posted from Thulo Shyaphru, Nepal.)
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I read somewhere that major Australian Super Funds are invested in Renewable projects/companies.
Is that correct?
If yes, then Bowen & Albo will never change course as they may ruin Australian Super Fund members investment balances.
Please advise me if anyone believes I have been given incorrect information.
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Yes and that is correct.
So if you are invested in an Industry Superannuation Fund, then you need to look at the investment options and study them. Ask the Fund questions as to which options are invested in Renewables including the Companies that make the stuff. Get your Financial Adviser on the case, if you have one that is. Then, just make sure that the investment options that are invested in are the right investments for you and your Risk Profile.
QED
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BTW here’s Eschenbach’s summary of replacing our electricity grids with toxic , unreliable W & S or Nuclear.
His version for Nuclear replacement is the same as Dr Pielke jr.
Read his summary and then ask why are we governed in the OECD countries by stupid illiterate fools. Here’s his summary….
“To summarize: to get the world to zero emissions by 2050, our options are to build, commission, and bring on-line either”:
• “One 2.1 gigawatt (GW, 109 watts) nuclear power plant each and every day until 2050, OR”
• “4000 two-megawatt (MW, 106 watts) wind turbines each and every day until 2050 plus a 2.1 GW nuclear power plant each and every day until 2050, assuming there’s not one turbine failure for any reason, OR”
• “100 square miles (250 square kilometres) of solar panels each and every day until 2050 plus a 2.1 GW nuclear power plant each and every day until 2050, assuming not one of the panels fails or is destroyed by hail or wind”.
“I sincerely hope that everyone can see that any of those alternatives are not just impossible. They are pie-in-the-sky, flying unicorns, bull-goose looney impossible. Not possible physically. Not possible financially. Not possible politically”.
“Finally, the US consumes about one-sixth of the total global fossil energy. So for the US to get to zero fossil fuel by 2050, just divide all the above figures by six … and they are still flying unicorns, bull-goose looney impossible”.
“Math. Don’t leave home without it.
“My very best wishes to everyone, stay safe in these parlous times,
w.”
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Here’s the link to W. Eschenbach’s article again at WUWT.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/01/27/bright-green-impossibilities/
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That truly is MISSION IMPOSSIBLE. Albo Sleazy/Upgrade Albo and Blackout Bonehead Bowen please note and back to proper school on Monday for you two and all the other Feral Guv’ment Marxists.
Reality meets Pipe Dreams.
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Also from the Article –
Update re $$$: Top consulting firm McKinsey has calculated that the net-zero emissions targets set by global governments and championed by the United Nations would cost the public a staggering $275 trillion by 2050, or around $25 billion per day until 2050.
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It was never about having renewable energy, nor making this stuff in Australia. It was always about siphoning off another AUD$22 billion from taxpayers to send to the corrupt politicians’ mates.
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And despite the shipping costs relating to a very large empty internal space.
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