By Jo Nova
Finally, twenty years too late, Australian leaders are talking about the galactic cost of making a spare energy grid that might, maybe, hopefully one day reduce world temperatures by one thousandth of a degree. Sadly they are still not talking about why that’s a pointless quest, why CO2 feeds the poor, warmth is good, humans emissions are irrelevant, or how science has become a turgid swamp patrolled by dead sacred cows. But it’s a start!
We got the trifecta: Our car-crash energy bills, the revolution of common sense in the US, and the appearance of our own election on the horizon have set off the Air-raid sirens to wake a sleeping nation.
It’s only half a trillion dollars
The Minister for Energy says the cost of renewables by 2050 will be $122 billion (AUD). Not convinced, the Opposition commissioned a study that estimates it’s more like $650 billion. But what’s a half a trillion dollars when you have hope, faith, and a fantasy to make storms a bit nicer? It’s a horror show. The Labor Government wants every family of four to spend something like $100,000 on their wind and solar vision over the next 25 years. There goes the house deposit, the uni fees, the family holidays. There goes our lifestyle.
Australian energy is twice the price
Things are so bad here in Renewable Crash Test Dummy World, that the CEO of Glencore said Australian energy costs twice as much in the US, Canada, China and India. Glencore, is the largest coal miner in Australia, the fifth largest miner in the world, and employs about 140,000 people. Gary Nagle went on to tell the Daily Telegraph that Australia has a bad attitude:
He argued that the negative attitude to coal in Australia was increasingly out of step with other parts of the world.
“Many stakeholders globally are now taking a more pragmatic view about coal,” Mr Nagle said.
It’s such a first world problem. Imagine being the world’s largest coal exporter nation every other year, and spending billions to undermine one of your two largest industries? How did we get here, standing on a plank, sawing the ship off?
Tricked by “free energy” scam
The electricity-fashion-queens chased a vision of fairy-energy so they could win cat-walk parades at the UN, but lose in every other race that matters. The wind and sun appear to be free, but cost us the Earth to collect, and the Universe to store.
All the politicians had to do was get scientists and engineers to debate in public and they would have realized that they can’t keep electricity in a shoe-box, or post it from the Simpson Desert to Sydney harbor. Instead, they employed the yes-men who agreed with the vision, and sacked, silenced or never funded the 1,000 engineers who could have told them it was stupid.
That, and they all watched the ABC:
Bowen, others should be ashamed of our $650bn renewables disaster
Robert Gottleibsen, The Australian
Since Federation, Australian ministers on both sides of the parliament have made major mistakes and misleading statements. But nothing in our history matches the looming renewable energy conversion financial disaster.
The Bowen calculations are based on “net present value”, or NPV, which involves calculating the final cost and adjusting it back to the current dollars. But commercial infrastructure projections work on what will actually be outlaid. Frontier have now done those outlay calculations to 2050 for the governments and now the public.
And of course, by 2050 all the windmills and sacred glass panels will be due to expire and we will need to find a very big hole to bury them in, and start again with the fire-hose from the bank account spraying direct to China.
The only hope, as Gottleibsen says, is if the protests from farmers and country towns have glued up the plans enough that we can pull the pin before we sink any more into it.
It only makes sense if imaginary “carbon credits” had some value:
So, the state and federal governments devised a system which I would call “rigging the books”. But they would justify it by saying carbon savings had a value which must be counted in the project.
And so, a transmission network hypothetically costing $100m would be given a carbon credit, which would reduce its “cost” substantially and justify investment. Frontier calculates that some $80bn of the $650bn came from these carbon credits.
And this half a trillion doesn’t include half the country (the Western half and the Northern Territory). That price can only rise.
Despite the blockbuster costs, Frontier Economics have almost certainly underestimated the true cost of converting Australia into a third-world nation. The direct costs are bad, but the secondary costs are existential. Once the factories and mines are gone, who is left to defend the green-God ideology?
Black-Out Bowen, RESIGBN NOW.
This bloke has stuffed up EVERY portfolio he has had.
A bloke with a little bit of knowledge is dangerous.
A bloke with NO knowledge is a disaster.
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He should be at COP29 by now enjoying his beef ribs, champagne and caviar.
Not much to see from the Lame Stream Media about COP29. Have they forgotten about it?
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The closing paragraph of the article hits the nail on the head.
What are the people to do for work when there is no manufacturing in Oz?
You can have ruinable power but you can’t have it with heavy industry. And that means the end of a lot of employment. No job, no money for food. This has started badly and it’s going to end a whole lot worse.
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Exactly.
You can’t run a country and its economy by selling each other coffee, haircuts and real estate – especially if nobody’s got any money to pay for any of it.
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Be positive. The worm is turning. Onwards and Upwards. The USA is leading the charge for the West. The West is the Best.
And this is the end for “Albo Sleazy” and “Blackout Bowen”, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXqPNlng6uI
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When a trillion dollars disappears from any economy for no productive outcome, there are consequences.
THIS is the primary cause of the housing crisis.
That money ought to have remained in the hands of working Australians, not lining the pockets of the Green scam racketeers.
Vastly more people would now be in homes with mortgages, paying them off if this outrageous scam had been prevented.
Only when the 20-and-30-somethings realise this, when that penny drops, can we see change.
Unfortunately their indoctrination in schools has prepared them for a lifetime of victimhood.
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It is far worse than “no productive outcome”. All that expenditure has opened the door for those with wealth to extract income from those without wealth and it will continue as long as the mandated theft from electricity consumers continues.
Any government majority could stop the mandated theft in a matter of weeks. The wind and solar farms are not going to go on strike. They will just stop producing when the price is zero rather than minus $40/MWh.
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Germans have a long record of technological achievement, and their green policies have now introduced a new word into the political vocablary: Schwachkopf. It is fair to suggest that Schwachkopf defines all modern marxist theory (MMT). Think green, think red, think Schwachkopf.
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Jo, great article. An old image but I love the expression “standing on a plank, sawing the ship off”. Small typo wih an “as” missing in the 4th para: Australian energy costs twice as much AS in the US etc.
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Things are about to change albasleezie and bo bo are about to be trumped
https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7021513567682142208
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To complete the card game analogy Labor has called a “MISÈRE” which is a declaration (as in the game of Whist/Euchre/500 et al) by which a card player engages to lose every trick but win the hand. Trouble is they’ve stacked the deck with Green/Teal cards
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Let’s hope this is the beginning of Dutton’s core election strategy. Please God, grant us a meaningful government to vote for. Amen.
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At the moment it looks promising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Australian_federal_election
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“But what’s a half a trillion dollars when you have hope, faith, and a fantasy to make storms a bit nicer? It’s a horror show”
More like Faith, Hope and No Charity.
Give the LayBore Partee an Abacus. Net Zero is the collective IQ of this Feral Guv’ment.
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Love it!
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When you are on song Jo (most days) your subtle humour brings a welcome smile and sanity into a world increasingly run by nincompoops. But be careful with the misinformation before your site falls victim to the thoughtless police. For example, some of your contributors probably think that the person standing on the plank sawing the ship off was really doing the reverse? Hopefully the Senate will reject such illogical conclusions by not passing the government’s stupid attack on freedom of expression this week.
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A trillion here, a trillion there. Soon you are talking real money.
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When there is little food left on supermarket shelves and service stations have fuel available only every 2nd day (if your lucky) some Australians may wake up. Perhaps not. OK, how about no power to charge smart phones? That’s likely to focus attention!
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If Finkel had produced an honest report, this fantasy could have ended long ago. His report set Australia down a track of economic annihilation. All heavy industry in Australia is now on life support.
My submission to the Finkel enquiry determined the lowest cost option for solar and storage to meet the winter NEM demand was 240GW of solar and 750GWh of batteries. I did not offer a cost but such a system would cost of the order of AUD1,500,000,000,000.
I concluded that any combination of intermittent generation and dispatchable generation was unlikely to yield a lower cost power supply than 100% dispatchable that is predominantly based on coal fired steam.
There are economic uses for solar and storage. In Australia now, that is many suburban households. But only because the retail price of electricity has increased so much.
The CSIRO and BoM are the most culpable for their promotion of the climate scam. The funding method of tertiary education also needs to be overhauled. Peter Ridd’s dismissal highlights how screwed the present funding model really is.
Just Trump’s election has been a blessing for the entire world as the climate scare mongers crawl back into their boxes. Why should the USA fund the UN when they are pushing an anti-USA agenda.
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I raise you….
£300,000 per household.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/net-zero-could-cost-300000-per-household
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Australia has a very mild climate by global standards. Most people live near the coast, which rarely gets above 35C and frosts are rare on coastal regions. Farms further inland can experience wider extremes.
The mild climate results in relative low demand for household energy.
The climate in UK is generally on the colder side. Much of the UK will get snow today. Nowhere near as bad as Canada or Russia but still relatively cold so energy demand for each household is greater than in Australia. So the GBP300k per household is likely close to the money. It would not be practical to run a UK household on solar power but it is in Australia.
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Hi Jo,
This is an absolutely brilliant distillation of the Frontier Economics Report that the Coalition commissioned. The Report itself is heavy going but well worth the read for the economists among us. Is it possible to provide an ungated link?
Well done you.
Cheers,
Paul Miskelly
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Paul can you tell us the real Australian CFs of W & S?
I thought perhaps 35% for wind and about 15% for solar, but some other guesstimates now seem to go higher. Any ideas?
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Hi Neville,
TonyfromOz has the numbers from looking at the AEMO data over the long term, so I hope he will hop in with a reply. He has said a little less than 30 percent for wind and falling as more sites come on line. I confirm, but did so from only 2 years of AEMO data.
Similarly, I think he supplied a figure of 15 percent overall for solar. I have seen a figure of 25 percent from 2 years only of AEMO data for an individual solar farm that I looked at in northern NSW, but I expect they vary widely, as do the wind farms.
I hope this helps and, even more, I hope it prompts Tony.
Cheers,
Paul Miskelly
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Thanks again to Jo for taking up the fight against toxic W & S and yet this has already cost the OECD countries many trillions of dollars over the last 30 years.
The return on investment is SFA and yet this waste of time and money doesn’t seem to penetrate their thick skulls.
I hope Trump can make a difference but I’ll believe it when I see it. But I’ll be voting for the Coalition in 2025 and the clueless Labor and Greens last.
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Coalition do not yet deserve your primary vote.
They have not yet taken up the cudgels to bash renewables nor Climate Change.
Vote Lib Dems, PHON and UAP first, Coalition a distant 4th , then Labor,Teals and Greens at the bottom.
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Spot on. LNP need to get the message that it is time to stop the climate scam. Bring back Tony Abbott or get Peta Credlin into the top spot.
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Sky news will have a special on Nuclear plus the full net zero cost tonight at 8 pm.
We can only hope some of the more stupid members of parliament have the time to try and learn something.
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If you have not seen this video that Chris Wright made then you should:
https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7021513567682142208
This guy will be instrumental in making USA great again.
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Thanks for the link Rick. Chris Wright would seem to be an ideal choice as Trump’s Energy Secretary. Makes one wonder who is the equivalent bureaucrat in DCCEW giving advice to our Chris Bowen. For when it comes to technology portfolios there are very few politicians capable of mastering their brief. Bowen is an obvious example of a Minister out of his depth.
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Never forget that the scientists don’t believe we can make a difference even if we stopped all Human co2 emissions today.
Their reference is the Eemian world’s temperature plunging into the next full glaciation and then the thousands of years lag before co2 levels dropped.
And co2 levels 115,000 years ago were only 275 ppm at the end of the Eemian.
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But the Eemian was 8 c warmer than our Holocene and SLs were 6 to 9 metres higher then today in 2024, according to the co2 Coalition scientists.
Again co2 levels today are about 423 ppm , but only 275 ppm in the much warmer Eemian.
You’d think this would make Scientists more sceptical about the co2 control knob?
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To Neville at #14.1
Hi Neville,
I have had some difficulties posting a reply.
For wind the AEMO data shows, long-term, something less than 30 percent and falling as more wind farms come on line. Yes, that’s not a misprint. It’s nowhere near the 35-40 percent claimed by proponents. The 30 percent figure comes from TonyfromOz’ long-term, exhaustive, examination of AEMO data.
I think your 15 percent figure for solar also comes from Tony’s work.
I confirm 29.9 percent overall for wind, looking at AEMO data back just 2 years earlier this year.
I hope this prompts a more comprehensive reply from TonyfromOz.
Cheers,
Paul Miskelly
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