Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Renewable energy does not deliver a useful product, but some greens appear to be having trouble accepting this simple simple explanation for why the green revolution is faltering.
Climate change action stymied by Australian business lobby, UK think tank finds
By The Business host Elysse Morgan
Posted Yesterday at 9:01pm, updated Yesterday at 10:14pmA UK-based climate think tank has named the Minerals Council of Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the NSW Minerals Council as the three organisations most responsible for undermining climate policy in Australia.
Key points:
- A new report finds the Minerals Council of Australia is the “single largest negative influence on Australian climate-related policy”
- The Business Council of Australia, two state-based minerals councils and the main oil and gas lobby group are also fingered in the report
- InfluenceMap, which wrote the report, has previously found Australia’s climate policies are consistent with a 3-4 degrees Celsius temperature rise
Mining giants BHP, Santos, Rio Tinto and Glencore were found to have the most concentrated network of links to industry associations that “continue to work against Paris-aligned policy for Australia”.
The new report was written by InfluenceMap, which was launched shortly before the Paris Agreement in 2015 and provides data and analysis to major shareholders and investors on how businesses are affecting climate policy around the world.
…
Why do I believe the anti-renewable conspiracy theories are baseless?
Simple. Renewable Energy is happening all around us.
Compare building new renewable installations to say getting approval for a new coal mine. The approval process for the gigantic Australian Adani coal mine has dragged on since 2010. The owners are only now seeing some hope for a return on their persistence.
In the time the Adani approval process has lingered, many new renewable installations have been proposed, approved and constructed. Bureaucrats practically fall over themselves to approve renewable projects. Yet somehow climate activists still see evidence of shadowy conspiracies to impede progress.
If people who criticise the green revolution were having a significant impact on the progress of renewables, it would be the other way around – coal would receive an easy ride, while renewable project approvals would be mired in bureaucracy.
Renewable energy is failing to take over the world because it does not work. The technology is simply not up to the job of delivering reliable, affordable energy.
No matter how much government assistance an industry receives, at some point it has to deliver something of value. But Renewables have no value to offer. All renewables deliver is economically damaging electricity price rises and grid instability.
Re willis me ect Australian jo anne nova site This site is absolute shite it was pushing covid lockdowns for months and endangering millions of Australian lives and work and now we find that Sweden is the ONLY COUNTRY without Lockdowns without any cases Ms Nova you are not a Virologist please do not promote idiocy you seem to be more stupid than the premier of Victoria glad I left Australia years ago I have pity on my offspring there what a horrible country Australia has become not third but fourth world police state dictartorship no one will want to ever emigrate there what a dump. What happened to Lord Mocktons push for lockdowns? He seems to have dissapeared as well! Of course you wont publish this because you are part of the dictartorship but I will retain for other sites cheers and get a life jo nova Lets see if you can publish Mr Watts i doubt it BTW I respect her climate stuff no problem but a loit of harm and damage has been done by people who are are not qualified in virology/ Covid 19 is not a threat to anybody get that through your skull the common flu is much worse for very old people with comorbidities
RU OK, Eliza?
No.
Eliza, tell me more about your mother…
Wow, AI loose in the wild.
Free people have different views Eliza, freedom is the right to disagree with each other, yet still be civil about it. No need to get upset.
Eric as always spot on .
That’s not just Upset but unhinges on Sock Puppet Upset
You’re not alone. I’m glad you left too.
I left the UK to come here, because it’s a much, much better country in several important ways. Having said that, I’m not very happy with the way it’s going and the levels of systemic corruption. When I get access to my super, I’m off somewhere else.
But I’m not bitter about it. I’m just very glad to have the ability to choose. Being bitter about it is a personal choice and does not do you nor others any good at all.
I wish you a more pleasant life somewhere else, but I doubt you’ll get it. Our problems tend to follow us around, and for a very good reason!
“Zig Zag Wanderer September 24, 2020 at 3:56 pm
When I get access to my super…”
Yes, working and tax paying plebs like you and I in Australia have to WAIT until 67 to get access to OUR super funds that we’ve worked all our lives to contribute to all the while the ATO and the fund “managers” take their cut every month. Politicians on the other hand get access to their funds right after retiring from Parliament.
You don’t believe fund managers should be paid until they retire?
60, actually. For those born before 1st July 1964, even earlier.
And you can avoid the fund manager fees by self-managing, you can make more money (10% pa is not unrealistic) , but pay accountants instead 🙁
In fact, our super system is one of the best around once you retire. 100% tax free once you access it, up to $1.6 million. Nowhere else I know allows that, every other country seems to tax your pension.
I agree about the pollies, though. Trough-feeding parasites in the main.
In the USA, many business folk and educational types have tax deferred plans (401k or 403b; after the section # of the law creating them.
The idea is to put some of you money into a plan that allows the money to grow without taxing it. Then, after retiring, the money as it is taken out is considered as a part of your taxable income.
There are other sorts of plans, all of which can get complicated. Comparisons are difficult, and country to country comparisons even more so.
actually our politicians don’t get access to the funds right after retiring for Parliament anymore. That changed 10 years ago. That said based on the clear evidence of dementia exhibited at the coronavirus enquiry in Victoria amongst ministers and senior officials in Victoria, there must be something in the water down there.
Personally I think it’s time that we installed smart meters on all homes identified as green or in green electorates and supply them only with green power. We know green power is being generated which is pretty much most nights in Australia, then their power will go off because they won’t want anything other than green energy will they. That’s more likely to cause a reality check that any amount of talking. Alternatively they can go off grid andinstall their own battery, which will cost a motza and last about 10 years.
I have quite a few friends living in South Australia where their former Premier boasted about being a green energy fuelled state.they live in suburban Adelaide and every single one of them has a diesel generator for when the power fails in summer when it is stinking hot at about 45°C. Ah! the joys of Suburban noise created by generators.
“Eliza September 24, 2020 at 2:26 pm
…Sweden is the ONLY COUNTRY without Lockdowns without any cases…”
No. There are several pacific island nations that had no cases and no lockdowns.
North Korea apparently has no cases either 😉
They had at least one because Kim Long Un just apologized (!) for having him killed and his body burned.
Nurse!!!!
A couple of kangaroos loose in the top paddock?
Clarky …. hadn’t heard that one before … I will be borrowing it for sure but might not make much sense up here in the frozen waste lands of The Great White North / Canada.
Screw loose OK … Oz Roo Loose – Better
Ungrateful. That’s how I have to characterize the tone of this post. True, the influencemap.org did not yet notice that Australia is no longer a colony, but they care anyway. You should be grateful for their selfless advice. They are thinking and tanking for you.
Ha! They all still treat us like a colony! My wife is Welsh (the first colony) and she treats me (an Australian) like a colonial. It is in there DNA!!!
My wife treats me like that too! We are both generations into the Stone Age past Brits.
It may be a gender thing ?
I promised to stop dragging her through the lands by her hair and to retire my club but no change in relationship. 😍
Amusingly, an English emigre to Australia, an earl, is a descendent of the Plantagenet line, and would be the king of England if it could be shown that one of the Tudor monarchs was illegitimate.
A recent research discovery has shown that a Tudor monarch WAS illegitimate. (There’s a long YouTube video on the matter, including an interview with the earl and his descendants (His grandson: “I’m a prince? Yay!”).)
So it would be amusing if Britain had to crown a monarch with a Strine accent (which m’lord has picked up). Maybe the prospect of King Chuckles will force them into it, as a lesser evil.
well weve crowned French, Danish, Norwegian, German, Dutch and bloody all sorts if you include Roman emperors, so an Aussie cant hurt
Evil capitalists, conspiring with high school level physics, to keep green unicorns from saving the world.
In 2017 South Australia shut down and destroyed its last coal power plant. They wanted to save the planet.
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/01/south-australia-blows-up-cheap-electricity-jobs-in-ideological-anti-coal-quest/
Also in 2017, the NYT reported that 1,600 coal power plants were under construction or planned to be built soon in 62 countries around the world, all of whom had signed the Paris Climate Accord.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/climate/china-energy-companies-coal-plants-climate-change.html
It’s great news that BHP, Santos, Rio Tinto and Glencore have a concentrated network of links to industry associations and continue to work against the Paris-Agreement in our interests. There is hope yet if we support the evil Aussie Capitalists who may eventually see us right.
Do not know about Glencore but BHP, Rio and Santos all strongly support the Paris agreement.
BHP and Rio are selling down coal assets. They are boosting their investment in iron ore. Wind generators need an extraordinary amount of steel and copper and that is where the future is for them. They still recognised coal is needed for steel making but margins for coal are a fraction of what can be made from iron ore.
Santos is making bundles out of gas as dispatchable generation shifts from old coal to new gas.
To shift electricity generation from coal base to weather dependent generators requires an extraordinary amount of steel for wind towers, copper for generators, steel/copper/aluminium for transmission, aluminium/steel for solar panels and gas for reliable supply. The scale of investment needed is unprecedented. Any mining company, other than a pure coal miner, should be cheering on the conversion. The investment in hardware designed to make the weather perfect is unprecedented. Probably the pyramids of the modern era. What mining company would not want a slice of that and for it to continue forever.
It will be decades before the folly is fully appreciated but Rio and BHP shareholders will make squillions over those decades. On the other hand someone may actually make a battery that costs $50/kWh, using abundant materials and lasts for 50 years to make the current generation of WDGs more viable.
Can you imagine the disillusionment when the current generation of school kids get into middle age and realise the Global Warming there were actually taught at school was a con job. But then it is no different to any religion in that regard.
Rio and BHP chief executives regularly make bad business decisions that cost their shareholders tens of billions of dollars, generally by making ill-considered acquisitions at the top of the resources cycle. Tom Albanese and Marius Kloppers, take a bow. Luckily for them the gargantuan China construction boom, with steel production of close to one billion tonnes in 2019, more than the rest of the world combined!, saved their bacon. Iron ore rocketed from $10 a tonne in 1998 to an incredible peak of $180 before moderating to its present level of $80 or so. Rio’s tasty 65% ebitda margins on iron ore dwarf its more normal 20% margins on copper.
But if and when the China bubble, floating as it does on an ocean of $40 trillion in debt, at least a third of which will go bad, bursts, things will get, let’s say, interesting…
China will remain viable providing they can continue to fund the UNIPCC to keep demonising fossil fuels. China can grow their fossil fuelled industry without restrictions to supply the monuments to Climatology throughout the rest of the world while the rest of the world loses its manufacturing capacity.
There is something fake about the Chinese economy. How they can make and sell a sledgehammer with a fibreglass handle for $2 wholesale I don’t know.
The minerals council of australia has been taken over by greentards in the form of CEO, Tania Constable. The previous CEO, Brendan Pearson was a strong advocate for coal and argued against the subsidies received by renewable energy providers.
The reason he has gone is because the big players, Rio and BHP, realised the Paris agreement meant unprecedented demand for most of the commodities they mine. They wanted the Minerals Council to be lobbying for them not against them. Both are selling down coal assets or are out of them.
The Paris Accord presents the opportunity for mining companies to grow exponentially for next few decades. Basically the entire global economy needs to be directed at the effort to convert and maintain an economy no longer reliant on fossil fuels. It is a fruitless exercise but the mining giants willl become all powerful as they gobble up global resources in the conversion process.
In the days of Brendan Pearson the MCA published a document showing the payment and distribution of energy subsidies from the federal government. Around 2015/16 I recall over 3 billion in subsidies being paid out with 98% going to renewables and 2% to coal. The grant to coal was largely to research the failed technology of CCS.
The ‘Paris agreement’ is being subverted by realpolitik as countries figure out that meeting the meaningless NDC goals will have significant negative impacts on their economy, industry, or both.
Capitalists don’t hate renewables, physics does.
Physics doesn’t care about anything. The widget either works or it doesn’t. You can use physics to figure out why.
So, who is crying out for subsidies in Australia? Wind and Solar? No, they produce the cheapest power. Against all reason, those puttin their hand out are the coal and gas sector by –
1. Trying to get a hundreds of millions of govt. $ for coal power plant built in North Queensland, even though there is no demand for it. No bank will lend for it.
2. Trying to hundreds of millions of govt. $ for subsidised gas infrastructure and power plants.
If WUWT readers dislike subsidies, they should be cheering on wind and solar, in Oz , at least. I think I’ll wait for hell to freeze over first though.
Just trying to balance the MASSIVE subsidies paid to wind and solar.
To somehow keep the grid stable as UNRELIABLES infect the system.
Wind and solar would not exist if it weren’t for subsidies and feed-in mandates etc.
They COULD NEVER bid on a requirement for reliability of supply.
Intermittent generators lay claim to being cheap by producing an excess an excess when it is not required. Reliable generators, being fewer in number now, are able to charge a higher price by producing energy as required. Germany and California, for example, often have an excess of solar during the middle of the day and are forced to dump it elsewhere, sometimes at negative prices. During the peak periods they have to pay for reliable power at premium prices. Same goes for South Australia.
Coal produces the lowest cost energy by a long margin in Australia. All coal generators bid in a block of energy near the floor price of MINUS $1000/MWh to ensue they are always dispatched. The windy and sunny wimps pull out as soon as the price goes below MINUS $40/MWh, the value of their subsidies. They simply cannot compete because they cannot guarantee they will be producing during the evening peaks when the coal generators crank up the price to make an unsubsidised living.
Curtailment has become such a feature of the wholesale market in Australia that the lost potential is now estimated and charted. It is evident by the faint orange dotted line on this chart:
http://nemlog.com.au/gen/region/sa/
Rooftop solar is forcing grid scale WDGs out of the market because rooftops are not centrally controlled. The only way they get curtailed is through the system going into over voltage. In South Australia, the Sunday lunch demand is approaching ZERO. A new challenge for the grid operator to maintain stability. It is fascinating to watch this unfolding train wreck and the scramble to keep it under control.
The administrative cost of managing the National Electricity Market in Australia has doubled in the last 4 years since the last coal power station was closed down. Demand has fallen. There are a huge number of interventions required to ensure grid stability and that is labour intensive work. Australian consumers pay 60c/MWh just for market administration; up from 30c/MWh just 4 years ago. Not much yet but at annual increase of 12% it is destined to be a significant part of the power cost.
” It is fascinating to watch this unfolding train wreck and the scramble to keep it under control.”
Yes, that is what we are seeing.
Tony. I’m sure you must be very happy in your little personal sphere of delusion
Tony
According to a study, completed in 2017, for the MCA, Solar received $214, Wind $74 and coal $0.40 per MWh in subsidies for electricity produced over the year 2016 (last full year of data). Now tell me who is being subsidized and how cheap renewables are.
John
Many of those taking up roof-top solar did not know about the inequity of the Renewable Energy Target (RET) and its effects on the lower income group of our society and therefore could not have taken that into account when they purchased roof top solar. However, most of the ones I have talked to are uninterested!
The RET, as this document explains (https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1314/QG/RenewableEnergy), forces electricity users to subsidise inefficient, intermittent and very expensive renewables as there would be very few renewables about otherwise. This has the effect of increasing the price of electricity as electricity users must pay the subsidies forced by the RET. Of course increasing the price of electricity is a large part of the aim and it has certainly achieved that. It is unfortunate that lower income groups are disproportionately affected, many left in energy poverty. Many have had their electricity cut off as they could not pay their accounts. We saw how hard being without electricity was to put up with during the recent bush-fires.
Businesses, commercial and industrial users have been affected, many closing as a result. The high price of electricity makes them unable to compete with goods produced overseas. Some, very big users of electricity like the Aluminium plant in south western Victoria which uses 10% of the states electricity, are near collapse because of the price and unreliability of the electricity.
The effect of roof top solar is much worse still. Each household with them is reducing the electricity purchased from electricity retailers, from the grid. This means that there is a smaller amount of electricity being sold to spread the cost of the subsidies among and that drives up the unit price of electricity increasing the total bill for all users without solar.
It is even worse than that though. Those on low incomes, renting accommodation or like myself refusing to buy roof top solar on ideological grounds must therefore bare a disproportionate amount of this unnecessary burden. I have stated that I would not purchase roof top solar on moral grounds. That is true as have known about this for over 12 years and it would have been reprehensible on my part to do so.
The RET with its subsidies is driving our reliable generators, mainly coal-fired, out of the market gradually leaving the inefficient unreliable renewables a larger and larger share of the market. The retail price of electricity has doubled, in real terms taking inflation into account, over the last ten years, mostly due to the RET. I have electricity accounts going back 10 years and they show that the unit price of electricity has tripled, not taking inflation into account.
When in 2017 the Victorian Hazelwood coal-fired power plant was closed down years earlier than necessary due to the huge advantage that the RET gives renewables, the wholesale price of electricity went up over night by 3 times in Victoria and in NSW by 2 to 2.5 times. There have been rolling blackouts in Victoria and some in NSW as a result. It must be very pleasant when stuck in a stopped train in Sydney with the temperature close to 40 degrees C during such an outage. The problem causes trains to back up through the network inconveniencing many more commuters.
In South Australia where they have huge uptake on roof top solar, solar farms and wind farms the price of electricity is much more expensive than ours and they regularly have rolling blackouts at certain times of the year. Poor commuters!
That is why I state roof top solar was not for me. By the way this is not idle speculation, I have proof. The RET document is a great part of it.
John
don’t know what you’re smoking Tony but I had a phone call earlier this week from someone talking about the government’s initiatives to put solar panels on my roof. They offered me a number of subsidies to help pay for the panels in the first place and for the cost of electricity put into the grid. This is the ACT government in Australia which likes to pretend that it is run entirely on green energy whilst connected entirely into the New South Wales grid and totally ignoring where the energy comes from at night (hint: it is coal and gas-fired power stations).
There is a long list of large scale Solar Farms in progress at present in Australia. Some of which are over a GW, with a huge footprint, consuming thousands of acres. The existing HV network is struggling and requires extensions and upgrades, to cope. It is obvious that there will be an excess of, day time, energy available once these solar farms come on line. System stability will be an ongoing problem.
Our son works in mining here in Australia at a good pay scale, pays his taxes which help to fund these losers. We are invested in corporations which also pay their taxes, as do we. These people are economic illiterates with both eyes closed.
And Scomo our famous coal carrying Prime Minister has recently announced Australia will never build another coal fired power station yet curiously is happy enough for a certain Asian nation to burn our coal. I am not sure which way is up anymore.
Depends which way the wind is blowing IMO.
We have the same issue in Canada at multiple levels.
The premier of Bc, genius that he is, is dead set against dirty oil, pipelines, tankers, etc
Huge BC export to Asia?
Coal
We so smart
…..cleared acres of forest, killed hundreds of thousands of birds and bat, produced 10% of promised energy, driven thousands mad with their constant drone, stood idle when the wind didn’t blow, stood idle when the wind blew too hard, lost blades, caught fire, consumed energy through standby generation usage, failed to live up to the promises, came to the end of their life despite a promise of 30 years, got buried in landfill because they can’t be recycled…..
Coal stocks in Australia have really been hammered. One of the biggest, Whitehaven Coal, has seen its share price drop from well over $5 in 2018 to $1 today. Its market cap is under A$1 billion. I can see the Chinese opportunistically moving in and slyly taking over these miners with their massive in-ground coal reserves and efficient operations, at these depressed prices. The Australian superannuation industry, dominated by heavyweight leftwing union ” industry ” funds, is avoiding coal and promoting the green gospel. Energy lunacy is the result.
As someone above mentioned, wind turbines, their cabling, and the general electrified future, will need massive amounts of copper, steel, lithium, and other metals. Coal is very cyclical and often low margin, although it’s a reliable cash cow for Glencore, the BHP-Mitsubishi Alliance, etc. It sounds like the big miners will likely have their cake and eat it under the Paris deal. Nice to be them. You would think with the upcoming Covid recession that governments would have to reign in their green subsidies and hide their checkbooks, but maybe they will just print a few trillion more Powellbucks. (Bernankebucks sounds better, doesn’t it. Janet ” Mo Money ” Yellen was certainly no financial wowser, either, lol.)
This is the agenda of Marxism, to turn the logic around. The other day I read an article saying the right are the eco-nazis, when in fact it was a term invented to describe militant environmentalism.
Anyway, Marxism will never win in the free world, because it cant convince a wealthy working class that the middle class are evil. You can do that in Feudalism, but not in capitalist democracy.
What we need to do is recognise Climate Change for the Marxist vehicle it is. Why this isnt clear to world leaders is beyond me.
And yes, capitalism, like democracy, is not perfect, but it is the best we have, and any attempt at a planned economy/society like Agenda21 is going to fail. It always will. Only individualism succeeds, Darwin tells us this quite clearly.