By Jo Nova
It’s so unfair, the wind is free, but who could have known we’d need metals, boats, cables, and magnets?
Governments waved their magic wands to declare the renewable transition would “bling” into existence, but they didn’t bother doing the sums on whether we could mine the vast resources in time, and what would happen to the prices of everything, if every other stupid fashion-obsessed western nation tried to do the same thing at the same time.
At the academic safe-space known as “The Conversion” Thomas York explains to baffled renewables fans why wind farm developers are mysteriously pulling out at the last minute. He doesn’t spell out the baby-nature of the economic reality, but we can read between the lines. The ship called The Infrastructure-Bill has arrived and it’s killing them: the price of steel, copper and aluminium has doubled and tripled; we can’t make the right boats fast enough to build the towers out at sea; everyone wants high-voltage cabling at the same time, and they all need the rare metals for the magnets, which are well, rare. Then, the delays in arranging all this mean the developers fall over their contract agreements timelines, so they start to lose subsidies.
Ultimately developers have raised their prices to cover the true costs, but then the customers aren’t happy. As the University of Leicester researcher says so poignantly when faced with the brutal reality of the market: “it [wind power] is simply not profitable enough”. He even admits “renewable energy still cannot compete with oil and gas.” Sacre bleu!
The UK government magic wand says it can generate 95% of energy from renewable sources by 2030. York, master of understatement, says the “target is now in jeopardy.”
Lordy, but the skeptics were right all along…
By Thomas York, at The Conversion*
The UK government’s strategy for tackling climate change received a major blow in May when Danish developer Ørsted announced that adverse economic developments had halted its 2.4 gigawatt (GW) Hornsea 4 wind farm in the North Sea.
Supply, meet demand: When everyone wants the same thing at the same time, prices rise
Building a wind turbine requires significant amounts of steel, copper and aluminium, all of which doubled or tripled in price between 2020 and 2023. Turbine manufacturers have raised prices in an effort to recover recent losses…
Impending national and international net zero targets also mean that developers globally are having to make earlier investments in transmission infrastructure. An exponential increase in demand for scarce high-voltage cabling has already led to high-profile cancellations of offshore wind farms in the US.
… Rising demand for rare earth metals used to make magnets in turbine generators has also been snared by geopolitical issues.
There are just not enough boats:
Ørsted ceased work on its 2.2GW Ocean Wind development zone off the coast of New Jersey in 2023, citing a vessel delay in its decision to cancel the project.
According to the advocacy group WindEurope, demand for vessels capable of installing foundations and turbines and laying cables will outstrip availability within the next five years. The gap between the two is forecast to skyrocket between 2028 and 2030….
Delays caused by these issues can result in a problem known as “contract erosion”. In their contracts, developers have a commissioning window within which turbines have to start generating. If they are not operational within this time, they lose their subsidies on a day-by-day basis.
Ultimately, the market hath spoken:
Rising costs mean that even one of the world’s biggest wind farms, Dogger Bank in the North Sea, will not be profitable for its developer, Equinor. As a prospect for generating financial returns, renewable energy still cannot compete with oil and gas.
This is the key argument of economic geographer Brett Christophers in his recent book The Price is Wrong. Christophers argues that, if national governments continue to rely so heavily on private sector investment to build renewable energy, decarbonisation is unlikely to proceed as fast as it needs to. It is simply not profitable enough.
If the government had got out of the way and let the market speak twenty years ago without hiding the truth under a bonanza-fog of subsidies, we wouldn’t have wasted twenty years and trillions of dollars to find out it was not going to work.
_____________
*In 2019 The Conversation gave up conversing and banned skeptics. Thus, they became — The Conversion.
The “rare-earth” elements (REE) are seventeen metallic elements that are essential for many high-tech devices. What is actually rare is a nation’s willingness and ability to process the ore and make a usable product. Can you say “China”?
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A few companies have tried to set up a REE processing plant near Port Pirie in South Australia, originally on, or near the site of a former uranium processing plant, but all these things fall over for one reason or another.
A magnesium processing plant was also touted for the same area 20+ years ago, also with no progress.
the latest for REE processing potential in the area is a company called ACDC Metals, which are keen on mineral sand and REE deposits in Victoria. I don’t think anyone has told them thy need reliable and affordable electricity… not something SA is known for…
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Dig up the planet to save it..hooray. Mining HAS to increase 1000 fold for Albos and woke gullible Western leftist loonies governments ” net zero “…(electricity) fantasy. Oh, and covering everything in CCP wind mills and sun mirrors and big batteries that go boom.
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Take your blinkers off, Christopher Eyles Guy Bowen, and smell the air of failure! Carbon neutrality is figment of your mind. Off shore wind towers are too expensive to generate energy at economic levels always was and always will be.
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Not Thom York of Radiohead fame…? (sorry…)
Surely the solution is to throw even more UK taxpayers money at the problem… what could possibly go wrong?
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Musician is Thom Yorke. A few Radiohead songs that seem relevant to today’s thread…
2 + 2 = 5
Blow Out
Dollars and Cents
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Ops….but what’s a missing “e” between friends….?
I should have checked, though was never a big….fan…
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For Australia, don’t forget the Australian Government has decreed that we are going to be a “renewable energy superpower”.
Anytime a politician or the public serpents that tell politicians what to think says that we’ll be a “superpower” in something it raises immediate alarm bells with me.
A stupidpower, yes, but not a superpower.
And when are the anti-energy lobby going to stop misleadingly calling windmills by their nameplate power and not by their power X capacity factor? And even that’s still dishonest. The only metric by which wind (or solar) should be measured is dispatchable power and that can only be done via a battery.
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Meanwhile in Japan – July 11, 2025
Japan’s Yoroi Reactor Ushers In a New Era of Micro-Nuclear Power
. Japan has deployed the Yoroi Reactor, a sealed, shipping container-sized microreactor, in remote communities.
. Designed for disaster resilience and clean energy access, the Yoroi runs for ten years without refueling or onsite staff.
. Using molten salt cooling and low-enriched uranium, the reactor features passive safety systems and no meltdown risk.
. Two units are already operational in Hokkaido, displacing diesel generators and providing zero-emission power.
. Japan aims to install 50 more Yoroi Reactors nationwide by 2030 as part of its energy transformation strategy
Japan has quietly taken a radical step in nuclear energy innovation with the deployment of the Yoroi Reactor — a compact, self-contained nuclear power unit designed to operate autonomously in remote or disaster-prone regions. Unlike conventional reactors, Yoroi requires no towers, no operating crew, and no on-site refueling for up to a decade.
Roughly the size of a standard shipping container, the Yoroi Reactor is engineered to be buried underground, where it can deliver stable, zero-emission power without posing the risks historically associated with nuclear energy.
Its name, “Yoroi,” which means armor in Japanese, reflects its ruggedized design philosophy — built for resilience, reliability, and total containment.
Most critically, the Yoroi operates with what engineers call “passive safety.” If anything goes wrong — whether due to natural disaster, loss of external power, or component failure — the system shuts itself down without requiring human intervention. This design is particularly relevant for a country like Japan, where earthquakes and tsunamis have historically challenged nuclear infrastructure.
Two Yoroi Reactors are already running in northern Hokkaido, powering isolated towns that previously relied on diesel generators. These microreactors are delivering constant, clean electricity with zero carbon emissions, replacing decades-old fossil fuel infrastructure in the process.
Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) (pictured) has publicly stated its intention to scale deployment, with plans to install 50 additional Yoroi units across rural Japan by 2030. The government sees the technology as a critical bridge between energy security, carbon neutrality, and disaster preparedness — particularly for communities that are difficult to connect to national grids.
Unlike traditional megaprojects, Yoroi Reactors require no high-voltage transmission lines or complex regulatory footprints. They can be installed near point-of-use with minimal disruption, offering consistent power to hospitals, desalination plants, communication nodes, and civilian infrastructure in the harshest environments.
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This could be the best news I’ve heard in a very long time. Somebody doing something positive.
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I can find no evidence the purported reactors exist and are operating.
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Errr…
Fell for it agaain.
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The first “wind Farm” in Australia at Esperance in WA was not replaced by more Wind Turbines but a Gas Turbine, now the original Codrington Wind Farm at PortFairy in Victoria has reached “end of life” it is not being replaced or refurbished, and this would be one of the best sites for Wind in Australia. The end for wind is nigh!
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Esperance, a windy location, was claimed to be ideal for a wind system. Interesting that it’s running on gas, because the gas is coming from the Pilbara, over 1500 kms away. And folks in the east claim that it’s too expensive to bring gas down from the north, better to build import terminals on the bottom of Australia.
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Meanwhile, Victoriastan is sitting on years and years of gas, no fracking required, and will not access it. Peak stupidity.
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Sorry to disappoint you PETER, But I fear the Victorian and Albanese Federal governments are yet to reach peak stupidity.
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The South Australian offshore wind farm didn’t get off the ground.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-13/south-australia-offshore-wind-rejection-renewable-energy/104771058
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“didn’t get off the ground”…..
Or in fact off-shore. lol.
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The Illawarra offshore farm is another non starter.
https://fishingworld.com.au/news/offshore-wind-company-abandons-plans-for-illawarra-wind-zone/
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Not quite the full picture….
The Esperance “10 Mile Lagoon” 2.0 MW wind farm, has been replaced by a combination of 2 new 9.0 MW wind generators, a 4.0 MW Solar facility, a 3 MW battery, and a 22 MW gas back up generator !
This type of “hybrid” supply is common for non grid connected communities in SA.
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The gas backup generator, interestingly has the same capacity as the wind generators. I expect it will be regularly doing the heavy lifting when the wind isn’t blowing – or it is blowing too hard – and the battery is flat. And it will be doing so more cheaply and far more reliably.
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The amount of economic destruction and even the sheer amount of materials wasted (steel, copper, rare earth’s, concrete, fibreglass and resin etc.) is staggering.
A tragic waste when those resources could be used for something useful and would actually progress humanity.
These windmill (and solar) monstrosities are only of benefit to the subsidy harvesters and the nation destroyers.
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What is galling is that the likes of Blackout Bowen (BOB) will not be held to account for the unmitigated disaster they have created.
“All care but no responsibility” should be on every politicians door (but I’m not certain that ‘care’ is in their lexicon).
Once BOB ends his disastrous ruination of Australia, expect to see him in a cushy UN job, still genuflecting to the WEF and Co
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Again and I understand this is very boring or perhaps very scary…….
The 3 University study + the Nous group tell us that their free W & S will actually cost Australia 7 to 9 TRILLION $ and will require 100 times more of their W & S BS and lunacy.
Just read the first few paragraphs for yourselves at the link.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/net-zero-study-finds-australia-needs-nearly-three-terawatts-of-wind-and-solar/#:~:text=Australia%20will%20need%20nearly%20three%20terrawatts%2C%20or%203%2C000,to%20%249%20trillion%2C%20according%20to%20a%20new%20study
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Note this is an April 2025 dated study, but at the very top they always use the latest date. Top page date is 12 July 2025.
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Why do these people never link to the actual study that they are criticizing? Almost as if they know that we wouldn’t believe them if we could read the real thing.
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https://www.netzeroaustralia.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Net-Zero-Australia-Mobilisation-How-to-make-net-zero-happen-updated-19-Sep-23.pdf
Our final modelling results, released in April 2023, highlight the immense scale and speed at which a transformation to net zero
by 2050 (domestic) and 2060 (export) occurs.
We are predicted to commit up to $9 trillion on the transition in
the next 37 years.
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But seeing as how major construction costs usually blow out in Australia (due to union corruption and/or other factors), I’d say $7-9 trillion is extremely optimistic.
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But wait! There’s more!! SMH running propaganda for the Govt.
“‘Game changer’: Your electric vehicle can now power your home and the grid.. The Clarkes..were part of a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology trial. They’ve made a killing. When two units went out at Eraring power station in NSW in May last year, they made $570 in two hours. When a similar event happened at Yallourn in Victoria last month, they made $370… the couple are among the first in Australia to profit from what is known as vehicle-to-grid, or bidirectional charging, allowing people to store power in their car batteries during the day when the sun is out and power is cheap, and sell it back during the evening peak”
And you don’t bother about driving it, (that’s what your Dodge Ram is for) its a cheap house battery-
“after researching home batteries and realising that the cost per kilowatt hour of storage was significantly lower in a car. “I got a 60 kWh battery for $60,000, while a Tesla Powerwall costs $15,000 for 13 kWh,” he says.”
More gushing..
“When EVs become batteries on wheels, a city full of solar on rooftops and EVs in driveways becomes a distributed power plant, making it more possible to switch off the ageing coal-fired power fleet.”
NOWHERE does it mention what you do when you wake up in the morning and your car battery is flat!
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/sustainability/game-changer-your-electric-vehicle-can-now-power-your-home-and-the-grid-20250702-p5mby3.html
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I hope the SMH informed the readers that the only reason that private car batteries are being used to “power the grid” is due to the lack of generating capacity.
This is due to the policies of our governments.
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or alight.
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What did the car cost to buy? $60K? Someone amortise this for me lol.
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Plus! 6 Ginzu steak knives!! The first hints of who to blame for not closing the coal power stations..
“Power line problems put nation’s renewable rollout on backburner- Major delays to the expansion of Australia’s outdated east-coast power grid are stalling the nation’s renewable energy growth, raising the likelihood that polluting coal-fired power stations will keep running beyond their scheduled closure dates…Rennie said if EnergyAustralia pressed ahead with Yallourn’s scheduled closure date in 2028, he expected another investor would snap it up.”
I didn’t realise our grid was ‘outdated’! Maybe the updating of somethinng else has caused it, it used to work perfectly well!
Of course everyone has their oar in, especially unions when Labour is in power!
“The Albanese government has set a target to raise the proportion of renewable energy in the electricity grid from its current level of 40 per cent to 82 per cent by 2030. Electrical Trades Union national secretary Michael Wright said governments must reform planning and approvals processes to achieve their goals.
“Fixing project planning and approvals so they work better for workers and their communities as well as industry and the national economy should be a major priority for government,” ”
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/strung-out-power-line-problems-put-nation-s-renewable-rollout-on-backburner-20250711-p5me8b.html
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…and they take a smack at anyone who doesn’t agree with their propaganda of course!
“There are a handful of people who still deny the science behind climate change. But there are also plenty of sensible people with reasonable concerns about the best way forward for Australia.
One- the concern that the rest of the world is not moving to net zero, so Australia taking action is pointless…But just because everyone else is sleepwalking towards a cliff, it doesn’t mean we should follow.
Two- Australia only accounts for about 1 per cent of world emissions, so it doesn’t matter what we do…The clear moral argument is that we should still play our part…as green iron becomes more crucial in the quest for a net zero world, the costs of producing the stuff will change…Rather than sending off all the ingredients, Australians could make the entire green product here ourselves.
Three-some people ask why Australia can’t use nuclear energy or carbon capture and storage rather than renewables such as solar and wind power…“Nuclear energy costs are now three to five times that of firmed renewable energy.” The possible exceptions to this trend – South Korea and China – have more opaque costings for nuclear and have been helped along by heavy government subsidies…”
have been helped along by heavy government subsidies…”
Ah, good for ruinables, but somehow bad for nuclear! It pretty well sums up the whole article, blatant propaganda for the Govt again!
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/nuclear-is-off-the-table-but-we-should-be-paying-more-for-our-energy-20250710-p5mdye.html
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Peta Credlin has recently written about “up tp 9 TRILLION $ ” in her Herald Sun column.
And the recent IPA meeting mentioned TRILLIONS of $ as well.
So far the T word is like the F word was decades ago, but I just hope more Aussies begin to understand the horrendous debt we will have to pay back for the rest of the century if this delusional nonsense goes ahead.
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I fear many in the UK – and very possibly in Australia and elsewhere, too – struggle with the numeracy of millions, billions and trillions.
I try to use millions – only.
So a brand-new Rolls Royce costs about a third of a million pounds [more with a bespoke gun compartment & fizz fridge, I gather];
A new shiny new hospital will probably cost about a thousand million;
[‘Royal Liverpool Hospital project has seen its initial £335 million budget significantly increase, with the final cost estimated to be over £1 billion.’];
The UK Government is paying about 109 thousand million pounds a year in interest on its debt
[yes, about £1500 for every person in the UK (Official figures …)].
The UK Government owes about £2,700 thousand million – £35,000 per head -ish!.
Not sure everyone would grasp even that, but some will.
Auto
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The specialised ships needed for the construction are a major problem, and that alone will probably mean that offshore wind here in Australia will not proceed.
You think, well, yeah, one ship!!
But wait, there’s more.
Read about it at my own Post from last December.
Tony.
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It’s a long way to bring one of those crane barges from the Northern hemisphere all the way down here.
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Particularly as they don’t seem to have much of a “storm worthy” rating
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coal and gas are free solar energy.
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Mosts warmists/Leftists wouldn’t know that.
Just how they also think the earth is static and unchanging and don’t know its continuously remaking itself.
Yesterday Greg in NZ mentioned that in NZ climate change was blamed for making rivers change course. But that’s what rivers do – constantly!
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Dr Matt Ridley and John Anderson explore why Climate fanaticism will destroy us and they also check on what went wrong during the pandemic.
Matt Ridley has recently written a book about the pandemic and compares Sweden to the rest of Europe.
Please have a look if you have the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdWP2KywAQU&t=2555s
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That’s the plan!
And working well!
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Imagine if you will…
a world where people believe
that the temperature of the planet
can be controlled by giving more money
to the government.
Science Fiction
at its most
fictional.
Theatre of the Absurd
at its most
absurd.
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It may have been a simple typo, but “The Conversion” is perhaps a better descriptor of that academic safe space, since it seems the contributors are members of an other worldly cult.
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At the bottom of the article Jo writes…
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Big unreliables projects getting cancelled in OZ, wind and solar for the Tiwi Islands canned, and a 500mw wind
factory in western NSW failed to proceed.
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As a certain US congress woman might say “the maths ain’t mathin”
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As my horse trainer used to say, there is no free lunge.
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Hate to be a party pooper but free lungeing is when you’re lunging the horse and the horse is at liberty. (So to speak, because the horse is actually confined by fences.)
The horse is being lunged in response to voice and body language signals, no lead, no rein.
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Disappointed there are only three comments at The Convo. I love to watch renewablistas clutch their pearls.
Although “We must remember that the price of renewable energy is constantly falling despite the doubling or tripling of prices in making wind turbines” gave me a laugh.
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You have to remember that in order to be left wing you have to have no grasp whatsoever of economics and have full belief that the Magic Money Tree will always deliver. For example just look at the UK and our Chancellor who claims to be an economist yet just worked as a gofer at the Bank of England and then in Complaints before being asked to leave for skiving off work to do political things.
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I read the description of The Price is Wrong from Jo’s link. The answer to the unprofitability of wind and solar for the commercial market is …….. for Governments (ie taxpayers) to take over all the projects! Still won’t make them any cheaper and Grim Jim would have to double taxation.
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The moment our idiot minister Miliband opened his mouth to say our generation will be Net Zero BY 2030 he had already failed. As this article shows, there is a shortage of ships for all the proposed windmills offshore and as far as the UK goes, there are no cable laying ships available until AFTER 2030. So even if you can build them – and that is a big IF – you will not be able to connect them up.
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Mind blowing
https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/the-great-property-heist-how-climate
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When I was a younger man, living in the raw reality of a world which had just completed its second “world war” in half a century, there was, in hindsight, an extraordinary acceptance of what life was about.
If you wanted to eat you grew some food in the backyard.
If you wanted money to buy food, which others had grown, you went to work for someone who would pay you.
If you wanted that job you had to be honest, hard working and reliable.
Then, of relevance to this post: if you wanted to be an engineer you had to able to grasp all previous truths that were inherent in that profession.
The greatest truth was expressed as follows:
“An engineer is someone who can do something for a shilling which anbody else could do for a pound”.
A good expression of a now long gone Reality.
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Think about this.
A wire passing through a magnetic field induces current flow. (hence a voltage production, and as Power equals current flow multiplied by voltage, then power is ‘generated’)
Increase the size of the magnetic field and the current flow is larger. Use a material with a higher magnification factor and the current generation is higher. Cool that magnetic field and the current generation is increased. Wrap that magnet in wires and pass a current through it (your typical electromagnet) and the current generation is even higher again.
Increase the speed of the wires passing through that Magnetic field and yet again the generated current is higher again.
So, how about a humugous number of wires then, just sitting there, (a Stator) as the magnet rotates at amazing speed. (a Rotor)
What speed, how many wires, how much magnetic force, what to drive it with.
Okay, theoretically okay then. That’s a generator. It just sits there. We now need something to drive it.
How about a turbine.
It would have to be big.
Okay, now, how do we make that turbine move then.
What about using steam, and having a three stage turbine.
Umm, then how do we make the huge amount of steam to make that turbine turn over.
A furnace, where we boil the water, and then pressurise it to a really high pressure, and then use that pressurised steam to drive the turbine.
How do we get the humungously high temperature to make the huge amount of steam required.
We need something that can burn freely to use in the furnace.
Like Coal??
Yeah, that would work.
So then, let’s see.
Crush the coal to the consistency of talcum powder, force it into the furnace at the rate of one tonne every 12 seconds, with forced air as well, hence a huge temperature, feed in water, which now boils to a very high temperature steam, then pressurise that steam to a very high pressure, then use that steam to drive a three stage turbine to drive a really large generator, say 660MW, and have four of these Units at the one plant.
Voila, 2640 MW of constant, reliable, dispatchable, readily available power, available as needed.
Huh! Simple isn’t it? That information just, umm, ….. fell out of the sky, eh!
THAT’S what an engineer thinks of.
Naah! That sounds like a fairy tale to me.
Man, and here’s me thinking it just comes out of the hole in the wall.
Tony.
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😀
Yes That’s Engineering, the linking together of processes.
The rotating turbine component has massive weight but once it’s brought up to speed the energy input is much lower so after that it’s just maintaining the revs and overcoming bearing friction.
Until the bearings wear out.
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The UK government’s strategy for tackling climate change received a new boost…
A wind turbine in every garden? Ed Miliband has lost the plot
…it will require ferrying and craning wind turbines into the gardens of roughly a quarter of Britain’s homes. They will then have to be wired up to the grid, which will only be able to draw power from the turbines when the wind is blowing. Each installed turbine could cost between £10,000 and £20,000 in upfront costs and involve three to four days of installation. And afterwards, expect a lot of complaints from neighbours about the view and the noise once operations begin.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/07/09/a-wind-turbine-in-every-garden-ed-miliband-has-lost-the-plot/
Bonkers.
We don’t call him Mad Ed for no reason…
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