The following article from Spectator Australia
The market was working pretty well 20 years ago and is not expected to be much larger by 2030. It involved a capital asset base in terms of transmission at about $22 billion and for the electricity energy itself, in today’s dollars about $100 billion.
We now have two national plans for the future: Rewiring the Nation, which the ALP took to the last election, and the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) Integrated System Plan (ISP), which focuses on the transmission needed to support its view of future production and consumption patterns. Both plans seek to replace coal by renewables on rooftops and through wind and solar farms. By 2030 coal is to be reduced from two-thirds of supply to 21 per cent with wind/solar lifting their share from 25 per cent to an astonishing 78 per cent.
AEMO’s Plan was developed by regulators who owe their positions to having views broadly in line with those of the politicians who actually control the market. That said, the ISP had to be adapted to incorporate ministerial demands. These include an insistence on Renewable Energy Zones in New South Wales and Queensland, measures that complicate the viability of other planned transmission lines, and a hostility to using coal and even gas for firming up the unreliable renewables.
Both plans contain implausibilities but there are some critical differences between the two. AEMO does not try to explain these but says:
- ‘The Commonwealth Government intends to enable and support delivery of transmission investment needed for this transition with its Rewiring the Nation policy.’ But AEMO’s rewiring policy involves a cost of $12.7 billion, while that of the government is costed at $20 billion in direct taxpayer-funded costs and a further $58 billion in costs incurred by the private sector.
- ‘Governments could further support the transition through a range of potential mechanisms such as changes to the regulatory framework, financial mechanisms to better align benefits with costs and the timing of their imposition, and improved recognition of the impact on landholders and communities hosting the required infrastructure.’ AEMO realises its blueprint requires additional, unquantified renewable energy subsidies.
AEMO avoids specifying the total costs involved. But, from an interview with Daniel Westerman, the head of AEMO, the Australian Financial Review construed it at $320 billion (about $12 billion a year) to 2050. This excludes the cost of the distribution system – 40 per cent of the total costs – which will require massive augmentations if the electric vehicle aspirations are to be met.
The planned new system brings much higher prices. Compared with under $40 per MWh prior to 2016, spot prices are now running at over $200 per MWh. That’s over twice what any of the experts hired by the regulators predicted. This is the historical and forward picture.
To replace coal, AEMO’s scheme requires nine-fold the current grid scale wind/solar and fivefold current rooftop solar capacity. Because renewables operate at only about a quarter of their maximum capacity, rather than 90 per cent in the case of coal, three to four times current generating capacity is required. The new generation involves costs of some $200 billion.
But there is a need to ‘firm-up’ the renewal capacity because it is not always available and there can be days on end when there is very little sun and no wind. To do this, AEMO envisages installing 47 GW of dispatchable power in the form of battery and pumped hydro plus another 10 GW in gas. Even at AEMO’s estimated costs of $1.3 million per MW (half that incurred in building recent facilities), this means a total cost well in excess of $60 billion.
Below, the costs of the current system are compared with those of the ALP and AEMO plans.
| Investment cost ($B) | Current system | ALP Planned | AEMO Planned |
| Generators | 100 | 200 | 200 |
| Transmission | 22 | 80 | 13 |
| Firming | – | 60 | 60 |
| Total | 122 | 340 | 273 |
Allowing for inflation, a coal-based system supported by hydro and some gas would offer us prices ex-generator at about $60 per megawatt hour. Having undermined that system with renewable subsidies, the price has been increased five-fold. Though blame is attributed to the Ukraine War, nobody is any longer talking about us returning to the previous prices. And yet, with Australia’s easily recoverable almost infinite supply of coal, this is readily achievable.
So, the Brave New World of ‘clean energy’ will involve us paying a capital cost of some $340 billion (under the ALP plan) or $273 billion (under AEMO’s plan). These sums compare to the system which they are to replace, which has a cost of some $120 billion.
The system we are planning will, even if everything goes right, deliver electricity to the local network at about four times the cost of the coal-based system it is to replace. And hand-in-hand with this is a reduced level of reliability and a planned higher level of disconnections.
In addition, there are many hidden costs associated with the planned new system. Among these is the infringements of property rights involved in the new transmission lines – rights that will be fought over in the courts. There is also a considerable, not yet identified, costs of disposing the toxic waste rich waste of decommissioned windmills and solar farms.
Maybe the crunch will come with the higher costs these plans involve. On current prices, people can expect their electricity bills to double this year. This is already happening in Europe and, together with other costs that higher energy prices entail, has led to considerable industrial relations unease. But, as in Europe, Australian governments will blame ‘legacy’ coal plants and foreign wars – anything rather than admit current outcomes stem from their own meddling, which has undermined the previously low-cost reliable electricity supply that provided cheap power for households and industry alike.
The soap opera that was the demise of Boris Johnson has little apparent bearing on the UK government’s climate policies. Other than one outsider, Steven Baker, none of the front-running aspirants for the job have been vocal in questioning ‘Net Zero’, and the otherwise highly capable Sajid Javid pioneered the goal. The outcome of these policies in lower living standards and a consequent wave of industrial unrest is however a key reason behind the dissatisfaction with Boris Johnson.
This is even more evident in the Netherlands, a small country that is the world’s fifth largest food exporter. In pursuit of ‘Net Zero’, the Dutch Government foreshadowed a closure of a third of its agriculture with high cost increases imposed on the rest. Farmers and other workers have blocked ports and borders – the protests have also involved spraying manure on public service offices and even the seizure of a military jet. Needless to say, the Paris-based International Energy Agency has heaped praise on the Netherlands’s ‘notable progress on its transition to a carbon-neutral economy’. This will not stop the government from falling.
Responses
CLIMATE CHANGE CON
EXPOSING THE GLOBAL CLIMATE ENGINEERING COVER-UP
https://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/
CO2 COALITION
https://co2coalition.org/
**** WHAT DO CLIMATE SCIENTISTS SAY >
https://climatefeedback.org/working-page-transcript-of-prager-us-video-what-do-climate-scientists-say/
Malcolm Roberts One Nation – Climate Fraud
https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/portfolio-item/climate-fraud/
How Stupid is Australia !?
While many nations are re-opening from ‘lockdown’ and building new coalfired power stations, Australia, with one of the world’s richest mineral supplies, remains shackled AND shutting down ALL coal plants to ‘save the planet.’ Who is to blame? Corrupt politicians or the stupid people who vote for them.
https://principia-scientific.com/how-stupid-is-australia/
According to Australia’s Prime Minister Mr. Anthony Albanese – even though the sun doesn’t shine at night as we all know, he says your solar Panels will charge your vehicle for free overnight.
https://youtu.be/nBQ-xsvhul0
Comment >
Stop Global Deforestation and keep planting countless amounts of trees globally continually.
Small additions >
CLIMATE CHANGE CON
EXPOSING THE GLOBAL CLIMATE ENGINEERING COVER-UP
https://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/
CO2 COALITION
https://co2coalition.org/
WHAT DO CLIMATE SCIENTISTS SAY >
https://climatefeedback.org/working-page-transcript-of-prager-us-video-what-do-climate-scientists-say/
Malcolm Roberts One Nation – Climate Fraud
https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/portfolio-item/climate-fraud/
How Stupid is Australia !? While many nations are re-opening from ‘lockdown’ and building new coalfired power stations, Australia, with one of the world’s richest mineral supplies, remains shackled AND
shutting down ALL coal plants to ‘save the planet.’ Who is to blame? Corrupt politicians or the stupid
people who vote for them
https://principia-scientific.com/how-stupid-is-australia/
Number of operational coal power plants worldwide as of January 2022, by country/territory
https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-power-plants-by-country/
According to Australia’s Prime Minister Mr. Anthony Albanese – even though the sun doesn’t shine at night as we all know, he says your solar Panels will charge your vehicle for free overnight.
https://youtu.be/nBQ-xsvhul0
Comment >
Stop Global Deforestation and keep planting countless amounts of trees globally continually.
Lauren Moret: Global Nuclear Cover Up
http://www.leurenmoret.info/
I just can’t comprehend how many Australians have fallen for the fake green fairytale alternative energy production propaganda.
Some years ago it was front page news in a local newspaper that a small town had received a small grant to fix their ailing power supply. The locals had a meeting and decided they would use solar and wind power and get their energy free from mother nature and use the excess production to build a large industrial area and create lots of employment.
I saw the energy calculations an expert had done (using figures at noon on a hot windy day) and for the amount of money spent ,10% of the residents could boil an electric kettle at the same time if everyone else turned every thing off.
Even those figures didn’t include the huge amount of energy needed to produce the batteries or take into account the number of deaths of 10y/o boys in the safety free Congo cobalt mines.
On the other hand it is
very encouraging that a few genuine younger members of the enviromental movement are seeing through the anti nuclear propaganda.
The older manipulated members still quote Chernobyl as an example.
Chernobyl was a primitive plant built with long abandoned designs. Experts had long warned of the inevitable danger but it was ordered to be kept going in the economy which had been destroyed by one of WEF’s main men , George Soros.
George Soros is a big funder of anti nuclear protests and a promoter of wind /solar energy in 3rd world countries….If those countries used nuclear energy they could develop and use their resourses to feed their people. They would be independant of him and he could no longer build them up and then crash them and buy them up at a fraction of their worth, leaving destruction and famine in his wake.
The actual death toll from Chernobyl is only a small fraction of what we are lead to believe. 20 years after the accident 50% of the initial emergency crew were still alive and they had essentially sacrificed their lives in the high radiation.
The green movement forget that the real deathtoll was a drop in the ocean compared to death from abortion all across Europe(some say 200,000+) when pregnant mothers were told horror stories of potentially deformed babies.
As far as our WEF puppet prime minister’s statement about the night time solar battery charging ,he is so deluded that he actually believes there is someone in Australia who thinks the sun shines out of his ar**.
The people should be very grateful for your article giving them the truth about this “green energy con” and it must be stopped – it’s absolutely insane how Globalists/corporate masters/ treacherous Politicians have destroyed so much of our world as we once knew it. And through the fraudulent Pandemic Scamdemic the globalists added massive fortunes to their already massive fortunes whilst so many lost Jobs homes lives and The damage and destruction and deaths from the Clot Shot jab injections and no Mandates should ever have been enacted especially so with the entire system corrupted with systemic and extensive conflicts of interest.
In 2021 we all noticed Price rises in everything and I mean everything it’s got to stop !! – food prices, petrol, toxic neurotoxic and carcinogenic fluoridated water supplies already costing the people a fortune !! Both in cost and Harm to Long term health ! shocking and even a council rates rise in July 2021 and now another rise in July 2022. The poor homeless people, the rent crisis and the rent increases, the loan interest increase and the destruction of so many small businesses All part of the monstrous Globalist Build Back Better Deadly Con it’s not build back better it’s Globalists/ Elites and Their treacherous treasonous political accomplices/ Totalitarian Lunatics Regimes taking control of OUR WORLD.
The World Economic Forum / Globalists/ WHO et al have Infiltrated most Democratic Countries’ Parliaments and this has to be addressed before full throttle Totalitarianism is here permanently.
As well as the Covid Plandemic Scamdemic corona virus is the common cold, they will like in America interfere with food supply, surprise they’re already doing this too.
Electricity prices Up and the mob we’re with killed our pensioner discount. They continue over time to keep reducing the feed in tariff and in 2028 I believe it is ALL feed in tariffs will be killed.
GREEN ENERGY is another globalist scam which is going to cost the population so much.
This is all part of the global total takeover of democratic countries by globalists/ World Economic Forum / World Health Organisation / UN et al and the treacherous treasonous politicians who are salivating at their Tyrannical Power.
Only the people globally can stop this happening to arise in peace and love for once was our beautiful free countries.
I am confident that there is a lot of wonderful honorable Law Enforcement Officers who don’t like what’s been happening and they and their children and grandchildren and so on and extended families and friends, surely also would not want to live under Tyrannical Government Totalitarian Regimes controlling EVERY Aspect of our what will be totally miserable lives.
We want our country back, our full freedoms rights and choices and to live our lives in peace love honour kindness respect for everyone and everything and do not allow the destruction of it.