“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” – Warren Buffett
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” – James Hansen (The Godfather of global warming alarmism and former NASA climate chief)
AUSTRALIA’S once key economic advantage and proud boast of having the cheapest power prices in the world has been sacrificed at the altar of climate change by its politicians’ obsession with global warming theory and subsequent mad rush into large-scale unreliable ‘energy’ sources – wind and solar.
BIPARTISAN appeasement to the UN climate gods has come at a major cost to Australian businesses and households, now exposed to some of the highest power prices in the world, South Australia officially the highest.
JUST as socialist central planning failed miserably before it was replaced by free market economies, green central planning will have to be discarded before Australia will see a return to energy security and competitive pricing.
Throughout the western world over the last 20-30 years in particular, we have witnessed the tightening hand of the state, which has become ever more bold in insisting where and how we live, who we can work for or employ, what we can say and think, whose car we can get into, whose home we can stay in, and what we’re allowed to put into our mouths.
But these remarks are about how government intervention has destroyed the electricity market in Australia and throughout much of the western world, and what it means for personal and economic liberty, now and in the future.
Let me start by outlining what a market should be, and how it should work with electricity.
A real market is simply a place where consumers and producers meet, and agree on a price and means to satisfy consumer demand.
A real electricity market is one open to all fuel technologies – coal, gas, uranium, wind, water or the sun. Where producers compete to grow market share and increase their profit based on efficient production, with all consumers – household and business – the winners.
WELCOME to the Australia! The lucky country with the world’s cheapest energy sources that now boasts the world’s highest electricity prices!
ENERGY rationing has always been a key feature of the Left’s misanthropic agenda of depopulation deindustrialisation, enforced through punitive emissions controls, protected by the indisputable cloak of ‘climate change’ – the emotionally powered eco-cause engineered by the environmental movement in the 1970’s who realised that doing something about supposed catastrophic man-made global warming would play to quite a number of the Left’s social agendas.
IN 2016, Victoria’s premier Dan Andrews took his State one step closer to Ehrlich and U.N. Strong’s energy-free utopia, with the closure of Hazelwood coal-fired power station, culling 22% of Victoria’s cheap, reliable energy supply and flipping the state from a power exporter to an importer.
COAL-fired power plant closures have become the order of the day for Australia’s virtue-signalling and global warming theory-obsessed political class who think that destroying the country’s industrial heartland, and imposing crippling energy-poverty on its citizens is a worthwhile price to pay for “saving the planet”.
“UNDER the guise of saving the country from so-called ‘climate change’ (which was previously known as ‘global warming’, until the evidence ceased to support that little theory), Federal and State governments have all created Soviet-era quotas, mandates and targets. The Federal government fuelled the fire by guaranteeing $60 billion worth of subsidies to wind and large-scale solar under its Large-Scale RET; the cost of which is all borne by Australian power consumers.”
Wrecking a power market and a power grid is a piece of cake: just add massively subsidised, unreliable and intermittent wind and solar.
Ontario, Denmark and Germany provide pertinent examples.
But there’s none better than Australia, particularly because it’s blessed with abundant coal, gas and uranium reserves, the envy of the World.
Hijacked by renewables rent-seekers and infiltrated by eco-zealots, all levels of Australian government are complicit in its power pricing and supply calamity.
Under the guise of saving the country from so-called ‘climate change’ (which was previously known as ‘global warming’, until the evidence ceased to support that little theory), Federal and State governments have all created Soviet-era quotas, mandates and targets. The Federal government fuelled the fire by guaranteeing $60 billion worth of subsidies to wind and large-scale solar under its Large-Scale RET; the cost of which is all borne by Australian power consumers.
ANTHROPOGENIC “climate change”, and the control of carbon dioxide (energy) has deep roots in a radical, yet gravely misguided campaign to reduce the world’s population.
GLOBAL warming aka climate change has little to do with the “environment” or “saving the planet”. Rather, its roots lie in a misanthropic agenda engineered by the environmental movement in the mid 1970’s, who realised that doing something about “global warming” would play to quite a number of the Lefts social agendas.
THE goal was advanced, most notably, by The Club Of Rome(Environmental consultants to the UN) – a group of mainly European scientists and academics, who used computer modelling to warn that the world would run out of finite resources if population growth were left unchecked.
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that .. the threat of global warming.. would fit the bill.. the real enemy, then, is humanity itself.” – Club Of Rome
THE Club Of Rome’s 1972 environmental best-seller “The Limits To Growth”, examined five variables in the original model: world population, industrialisation, pollution, food production and resource depletion.
NOT surprisingly, the study predicted a dire future for mankind unless we ‘act now’:
AROUND the same time, influential anthropologist and president of the American Medical Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Margaret Mead, gathered together like-minded anti-population hoaxsters at her 1975, North Carolina conference, “The Atmosphere: Endangered and Endangering”. Mead’s star recruits were climate scare artist Stephen Schneider, population-freak George Woodwell and former AAAS head, John Holdren (Barack Obama’s Science and Technology Czar). All three of them disciples of Malthusian catastrophist Paul Ehrlich, author of the “The Population Bomb”.
THE conference concluded that human-produced carbon dioxide would fry the planet, melt the ice caps, and destroy human life. The idea being to sow enough fear of man-made climate change to force global cutbacks in industrial activity and halt Third World development.
WE are given clues as to the motives of this extreme agenda from various statements by prominent environmental ‘icons’…
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the
equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
– Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
“The Earth has cancer
and the cancer is Man.”
– Club of Rome,
premier environmental think-tank,
consultants to the United Nations
“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of
saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have
an ecologically sound society under socialism.
I don’t think it is possible under capitalism”
– Judi Bari,
principal organiser of Earth First
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“
– TimothyWirth,
President of the UN Foundation
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
“In Searching For A New Enemy To Unite Us, We Came Up With The Threat Of Global Warming” – Club of Rome,
premier environmental think-tank,
consultants to the United Nations
VIV Forbes on how the control of population growth and people’s lifestyles manifests today through the control of energy supply…
The “zero-emissions” zealots want to force us backwards down the energy ladder to the days of human, animal and solar power. They oppose the main thing that sets us apart from all other species – the use of fire from explosives, coal, oil, gas or nuclear power.
They have yet to explain how our massive fleet of planes, trains, tractors, harvesters, trucks, road trains, container-ships and submarines will be powered and lubricated by windmills, treadmills, windlasses, solar energy, distilled whiskey and water wheels.
Western nations, driven by a global agenda of climate alarmism, are destroying their profitable industries with carbon taxes; and their promotion of expensive, intermittent green energy is pushing us back down the energy ladder; and our competitors in Asia are climbing the energy ladder as quickly as they can. At the same time, the enormous waste of public money on government promotion of the climate industry has created a global fiscal mess.
Unless reversed, this wasteful de-energising policy will drive much of the world’s population back to the poverty and famines which often prevailed in the past. Some see the inevitable de-population this would cause as a desirable goal.
JO Nova on how the radical environmental movement has succeeded in the implementation of draconian climate change policy that has created an era of energy poverty that is destroying western economies and hurting the poor…
Electricity prices declined for forty years. Obviously that had to stop.
Here’s is the last 65 years of Australian electricity prices — indexed and adjusted for inflation. During the coal boom, Australian electricity prices declined decade after decade. As renewables and national energy bureaucracies grew, so did the price of electricity. Must be a coincidence…
Today all the hard-won masterful efficiency gains of the fifties, sixties and seventies have effectively been reversed in full.
Renewable energy: powering Australia in more ways than one
James Wright
A jobs boom is sweeping across regional Australia and there’s one industry to thank – the renewable energy sector. From places like Gordon in southern Tasmania to Pindari in north-east NSW, new solar installations, windfarms, battery arrays, solar towers and pumped hydro facilities are springing life into regional towns. How are they doing this? By injecting desperately needed investment and job opportunities into remote locations.
——
This is great news! But despite the steady stream of new developments in regional areas, we’re actually being short-changed. Policy uncertainty due to ongoing internal squabbles in the Federal Government is strangling the growth of this sector and costing regional Australia the true jobs boom it deserves.
——
If politicians could simply commit to a modest and achievable 50 per cent renewable energy target, this would create 28,000 new jobs. The vast majority would be in regional Australia where they are greatly needed to breathe new life into struggling local economies.
NO one would deny that job creation is a good thing especially in regional centres and remote locations in Australia. Areas with often high rates of unemployment and limited opportunity.
BUT, where the ‘green energy jobs’ argument falls down is not only in the longevity of the full-time jobs available after installation, but in the fact that these jobs are a direct result of green central planning. Green jobs are like ‘Fiat money’ – a currency without intrinsic value established as money, often by government regulation.
WITHOUT massive government subsidies, estimated at $60 BILLION by 2030 under the Australian government’s RET (Renewable Energy Target), their would be no ‘green’ jobs as advertised by The Daily Advertiser. The private sector simply will not invest in weather-dependent ‘energy’ sources when in competition with cheap, efficient, reliable base-load sources like coal and gas on a dollar-for-dollar or subsidy-equalised basis.
“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” – Warren Buffett
TELLINGLY, the piece by James Wright (chief executive officer of the Future Business Council)in The Daily Advertiser not once mentions the private sector as a direct player in the ‘green jobs boom’. His argument relies solely on government and politicians:
“Policy uncertainty due to ongoing internal squabbles in the Federal Government is strangling the growth of this sector…”
“If politicians could simply commit to a modest and achievable 50 per cent renewable energy target, this would create 28,000 new jobs…”
“we can’t let backwards politics spoil this once in a generation opportunity…”
GREEN central planning like economic planning of failed socialist regimes gone by is doomed for failure. Market distorting policies that pick winners only work until the money runs out.
THIS is the intrinsic problem faced when big government and statist green central planning displaces the commercial sector. Market mechanisms are eliminated, the very mechanisms that promote checks and balances and ensure accountability to make sure stuff works.
THE “green” energy revolution with its touted “green jobs” is largely survived by rent-seeking corporations entering the “save the planet” sector in pursuit of the lucrative government funds, grants and subsidies on offer, supported pro bono by the virtue-signalling, “save the planet” mainstream media.
GREEN JOBS?
WHAT is set to be Australia’s largest wind farm will provide only 20 full-time jobs once it goes into operation next year…
Australia’s biggest wind farm to generate just 20 full-time jobs
“Renewables are a welcome part of the energy mix but they don’t sustain long-term jobs or provide baseload power,” said Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington.
What is set to be Australia’s largest wind farm will provide only 20 full-time jobs once it goes into operation next year.
Construction started yesterday on AGL’s $850 million Coopers Gap wind farm at Cooranga North, 250km west of Brisbane, 10 years after it was proposed. The state government, which is committed to a 50-50 split between renewable energy and fossil fuel energy production by 2030, has endorsed the project, with Energy Minister Anthony Lynham turning the first sod.
Two hundred jobs will be created during construction of the 123-turbine, 453 megawatt facility, which will provide enough power for 260,000 homes.
—-
During the election campaign in November, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk spruiked her clean energy policy at the under-construction Clare Valley Solar Farm in north Queensland — a project that will employ up to 350 people during construction, but offer only five to 10 jobs once operational.
ADVICE to marketers of the unreliable-energy jobs ‘revolution’. May I suggest lobbying the private sector and extolling the virtues of so-called “cheap, clean and green” energy to them, rather than writing propaganda, puff pieces in the daily rags and insulting the intelligence of your audience…the ones who now have to pay the highest power prices in the world thanks to the unreliable energy ‘revolution’!
DO let me know if any private sector orgs will take up an investment opportunity in the unreliabels sector without access to the $60 Billion taxpayer-funded RET…
“A generation system that throws 2,000 MW into the grid over the space of minutes, without warning, and collapses by the same margin over the same time-frame, again without warning, and irrespective of the demands of users, is not a system, at all. It’s chaos.
Now that that chaos is repaying wind and sun worshippers with mass blackouts and forced load shedding across two States, slowly but surely the proletariat is reaching the same conclusion.”
SPOT-on STT.
“Never before in our recent history have we seen on this scale governmental incompetence and arrogant disregard for the well being of communities in the quest for green votes.”
Alcoholics call it a ‘moment of clarity’. In wind powered South Australia and Victoria, hitherto fans of renewables call it a ‘mass blackout’.
In 1919, after Engineer/Soldier, Sir John Monash returned to his home town of Melbourne from the Western Front, to a hero’s welcome, he set about establishing an electricity grid that would serve his home State, and the coal-fired power plants located in the Latrobe Valley that would power it.
Immediately after the Armistice was struck with the Germans on 11 November 1918, Monash sent officers to infiltrate German coalmines near Cologne and elsewhere to get an understanding of how the Germans managed to achieve the successful use of their brown coal reserves, similar to those found in the Latrobe Valley. Armed with knowledge of the German’s techniques and engineering, Monash drove the development of those reserves and their exploitation, and Melbourne and Victoria never looked back: the…
“Even the most virulent supporter of renewable energy can, after enough waterboarding, admit the link between more renewables and increased power prices.
“…and bring in diesel-powered generators to stop the lights turning off. It is surely the biggest admission that our renewables experiment has been a failure when you have to call in generators to burn pure fossil fuels.”
EXCELLENT read on the unreliable-energy fiasco that is wreaking havoc on the livelihoods of Victoria and South Australian taxpayers…
Comparing 2016 (red) and 2017 (blue) average wholesale prices of electricity by state
South Australians have a Labor government and its deranged, ideological obsession with wind and solar power to thank for their status as an international joke.
Paying the highest retail power prices in the world (with much worse to come – see above), routine load shedding and statewide blackouts, and a grid on the brink of collapse, is all the inevitable consequence of attempting to run an economy on sunshine and breezes.
One of the reasons things got this way (and it happened in a bit over 16 years) is the manner in which the useful idiots in the mainstream press pumped wind power, as if it was a sacred gift delivered by some magical and benevolent deity.
In South Australia, the wind cult kicked off around 2002 when its then Premier, Mike Rann started tilting at…
Comparing 2016 (red) and 2017 (blue) average 
Recent Comments