Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Our old friend Tim Flannery, whose advice helped convince the Australian Government to squander billions of dollars on useless desalination plants, claims that renewables are a “huge economic opportunity”.
IT IS being hailed as the next big boom that has the potential to revolutionise our economy.
But unless Australia ramps up its commitment, experts warn it could pass us by.
A week before world leaders are set to meet in Paris to discuss setting agreed targets on reducing carbon emissions, the Climate Council of Australia has released a report which it says shows the world is in the midst of a dramatic energy revolution.
According to the research, clean energy investment grew 43 per cent globally, while the number of renewable energy jobs
nearly doubled to 7.7 million worldwide.
Climate Council chief councillor Tim Flannery said plummeting costs of renewables and the creation of jobs meant there was a strong economic case for scaling renewable energy that wasn’t clear in 2009.
“While in the past tackling climate change has been considered a moral imperative, it is now also a huge economic opportunity as countries make very significant commitments to growing renewable energy at the same time that the costs plummet,” Professor Flannery said.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/climate-council-report-finds-clean-energy-investment-grew-by-43-per-cent-over-six-years/news-story/2c6cef52c5de1b4527d3d0cf29342ba1
If costs are “plummeting”, why do renewables need such generous government support to prosper? Could it be that renewables are still ridiculously expensive, despite any alleged price drops?
Britain recently “reset” their energy policy, de-prioritising renewables. Many other European countries have forced renewable subsidy cuts, some of which well and truly left investors stranded.
In my opinion, recent history in the renewables sector more than demonstrates that it is pretty risky investing in a business, whose profitability is wholly dependent on the fickle whims of politicians.
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You know, this is a bit OT, but, all of this nonsense is directly due to fiat currency. (That is a currency not backed by gold or whatever, just the “full faith” etc of the govt). In fact, most of our government sponsored nonsense is due to a fiat currency. Politicians can just spend whatever they want without worrying about balancing the books anytime soon, that is, never. In the extreme that can just devalue the currency and pay debts with cheap money.
So, if we want the govt to stop being so crazy, maybe a return to the gold standard, or SOME standard, might be in order.
Now, I would never want to mingle the fight for honest climate science with the fight to return to the gold standard, but, we should at least recognize the root cause of this problem.
Can we afford a move from a fiat currency to a gold currency, given the huge trade deficit?
Could Bernie Madoff afford to go straight, pay off his debts and balance his books?
It’s roughly the same situation!!
There is a reason the WORLD left the Gold Standard — it is not an economically viable system of Monetary Policy.
For those you say the gold standard wasn’t viable, we had one until Nixon went off it in the early 70’s I believe. So, for most of this country’s history, we were on a gold standard (or silver). He went off it because the USA was simply not living within its means after Eisenhower left office Remember the Great Society, or the large military build up under Kennedy? Not to mention huge amounts of money for oil imports when foreign oil was 5 dollars per barrel. To keep the unearned consumption going, Nixon left the gold standard, and voila, govt spending, and corruption, without limits. If you don’t think the govt is corrupt, pay closer attention. Think about the buying power of a dollar in 1970 versus 2015. That’s fiat currency. It is not a way to conserve wealth.
Note that the most dramatic improvements in the American standard of living happened when this country was on the gold standard.
So, in the long term, the problem is not the climate scam. The problem is corrupt government. The climate scam is just one aspect of its corruption.
This, BTW, is similar to the forces that destroyed the Roman Republic. The Romans of course didn’t use paper money. They minted coins from precious metals. But, the Republic was destroyed by the corruption that followed the gigantic influx of wealth from the newly conquered regions as Rome expanded its power. That money allowed individual Senators to amass so much power it destabilized their system of checks and balances. Some Senators could field their own private armies. Imagine if Bill Gates build an army large enough to challenge the US Army. You get the idea. It is interesting to read about it and has lessons for us even today.
Don’t delete my comment, ‘bro. This is really about climate change and the Roman Climate Optimum.
Why would any sensible person listen to a proven f*ckwit like Flannery?
He was brought in to Alberta, Canada to advise the newly formed climate change panel for the newly elected provincial government. Wrap your head around that little nugget of information. I can’t.
The small annoying thing with doing business with the mafia is that you have no legal recourse if the contracts are repudiated.
The small annoying thing with doing business with the state is
I think we need to unload our wimpy, coddling ideas about prohibiting child labor, and hustle the young tikes back into the labor force. Face it, all you softies, if the new world demands it, well you gotta’ do what ya’ gotta’ do.
Now, from what I understand there’s about three hundred fifteen million of us two leggers plodding across the surface of the US. I figure about half of them work. Maybe. Probably less. We know newborns and children don’t work – yet. Students don’t work. There’s still some stay at home parents. Disabled people don’t work. Old farts and retired old farts don’t work. The unemployed don’t work otherwise they wouldn’t be unemployed; duh. So, we can figure, at most, about one hundred fifty seven and a half million of us Americans work. According to American Progress (yeah, they’re liberal but it’s good enough for government work) about 1.9 million people are employed in the oil industry in the US. According to my arithmetic that works out to one for every 82 working people.
Now, there’s 7.125 billion of us two leggers plodding around on top of this rock. I think it’s reasonable to assume that only half of them work too. After all, the US is still the major manufacturing nation (hard to believe, eh?) in the world. Women work in the US (unlike Islamic countries). So, let’s assume that a bit over 3.56 billion of the world’s inhabitants work too.
If 7.7 million people, worldwide are employed in the renewable energy industry then that works out to one for every 462 people.
See the problem? If renewables supplied 20% of the world’s energy requirements those 462 employees would reach parity with the 82 employees of the oil industry. But, everybody knows renewables aren’t even close to supplying 20% of the world’s energy. So, if one’s going to brag about the numbers employed in renewables perhaps they should gear up to send the kiddies off to make the boats, ships, trains, plains, automobiles, bicycles, beer, wine, whiskey, … well, you get the idea. ‘Cause their ain’t gonna’ be enough workers otherwise. Us adults are going to be working on wind turbines and trying to avoid getting sliced, diced, zapped, or toasted on them.
Sure, I know the above is over simplified and forgets that there’s other sources of energy than oil. But renewables sacrifice the most important efficiency of all: human output in all its varied and wondrous forms. Too bad; it’s off to work kids. And don’t play hide and seek on the assembly line.
Straight out of Mel Brook’s Producers – Renewable Energy is the Broadway flop. The investors get to keep the money.
You can make more money with a flop that with a hit.
This from the shrieking girl’s mom’s business website:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140330022756/http://creative-conceptsllc.com/news/encon-solar-and-westport-celebrate-the-opening-of-metro-norths-first-solar-transportation-hub/
Really? A 27 kW solar installation “…will provide the power for the interior of the station house, platform, and parking lot lighting, and four electric-vehicle charging stations outside.” Oh, and there’s “room” to expand the charging hub to accommodate up to 20 vehicles. All from 27 kW.
My 5kW system produced 330 watts on one particularly foul winters day, no snow just rain and constant heavy cloud cover. The station sounds like a good prospect in NE with all that snow. Park in autumn, drive away in spring.
I didn’t have an outdoor powerpoint, so I thought I’d be clever and install a 15W solar cell, to run a 5W outdoor project. It only works in direct sunlight, or with very light cloud cover. On a bright day on the edge of the tropics, any more than wispy cloud cover, power output falls below the 5W the project needs.
Hey Eric,
You should spend a couple of days on Lady Elliot Island.
There is a big PV Solar system there, funded by the Queensland Government.
I had a good look at the system, and all the panels are covered with seabird poop.
All the meters, volts and amps, are / were reading zero in the middle of the day.
And out the back is a bloody big diesel gen set that runs 24 / 7.
Plus, in a wander around the island, you will see all these signs that explain how climate change and sea level rise will wipe the island, and us, out.
The signs were also installed by the Queensland Government.
Sounds hilarious Chris, get some pics next time you’re out there, send them to Anthony 🙂
http://wattsupwiththat.com/submit-a-story/
Yeah, “renewables” and “green” energy are all the rage.
Not unlike tulip bulbs were some 350 years ago.
Renewables are like a new uni’ graduate being appointed straight to the board of directors in their first job; possessing lots of potential but over-promoted before they’re market-ready. Result; economic carnage!
In November 2009, the Rudd Government (Australia) gave Geodynamics $90 million towards building a green power plant using hot-rocks technology.
It’s been downhill all the way ever since.
Perhaps you could understand Rudd handing out such a huge grant, given that now Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery – a Geodynamics shareholder – swore the technology was a doddle:
In 2007, he warned that “the social licence of coal to operate is rapidly being withdrawn globally” by governments worried by the warming allegedly caused by burning the stuff.
We should switch to “green” power instead, said Flannery, who recommended geothermal – pumping water on to hot rocks deep underground to create steam.
“There are hot rocks in South Australia that potentially have enough embedded energy in them to run Australia’s economy for the best part of a century,” he said.
”The technology to extract that energy and turn it into electricity is relatively straightforward.”
One more green scheme in strife. One more example of Labor waste. One more example of the dangers of governments picking winners.
Oh, and one more reminder of the insantity of trying to phase out coal-fired power before proper alternatives even exist.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/flannerys_green_investment_in_deep_strife
The share price has dropped from $2.00 in 2008 to S0.030 cents today.
Having designed and executed some very large fracture treatments of gas bearing tight sandstones in the very hot rocks in the Cooper basin in the early1980s a couple of us looked into the engineering practicalities and the economics of using the heat for power generation in the event that we could not make the gas production economic. Whichever way we looked at it we could not find a way of economically extracting the heat – the NPV was decidedly negative in the best case and the risked EMV was dismal. The Cooper basin is a remote high cost oil and gas province and the well costs – drilling, completing, fracturing and connecting – are relatively high. At an unrelated fund raising meeting in the early 2000s for prospective investors in hot rocks in the Cooper Basin the attendees heard how the technology and economics were assured – just give us your money and we’ll send lots back later. Hoping to hear how another engineer had calculated the heat transfer in this downhole heat exchanger, this being the key issue, I asked the question about steady state log mean temperature difference in the huff and puff configuration they were proposing for their fracced wells and what this would imply for the economics of the project.. The promoter flinched but then brazenly said that that had all been figured out and immediately moved on to how we could all invest our money. The technicalities were irrelevant it appeared I lost interest in the project and did not attempt to follow its progress. A couple of years later my doctor turned a 5 minute consultation into a 40 minute discussion when he realized that I might be able to teach him a little about the engineering of hot rocks projects. It turned out he had put money into the project; he pulled out of the investment soon after that. The promoter extracted a tidy fee for himself. What I ultimately learnt – follow the money. Always follow the money, especially your own. And ignore people with spinning bowties and dollar signs on their eyes.
And another example of no one going to jail after robbing the taxpayers.
You can tell how great “green” and “renewable” energy is by the way they had to kill coal, and shovel the green stuff down our throats.
So we already have an energy system that’s cheap. How can switching over at great cost be an economic boom. The economy is more than the energy sector. It’s mainly activity that uses energy. So while energy investment and employment is booming what happens to jobs in the other 99%of the economy? Cretin!! What is Flannery professor of anyway? Certainly not economics. I’d like to see his investment portfolio.
Hi first degree level qualification is English literature.
Marsupial bones , iirc
Ask Warren Buffett How much of a tax write off he gets from the Wind Turbines he owns.
At his last shareholders meeting Buffett admits he will go to any means necessary to pay the lowest level of corporate taxes possible under the law, including building things like wind turbines he wouldn’t want to build otherwise, telling an audience in Nebraska recently: “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate. For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them.”
Read that again. “THAT IS THE ONLY REASON TO BUILD THEM.”
Now please provide credentials/data proving that you can make more money by selling Wind energy (kWh not subsidies), rather than making money like he does by cutting his tax obligation, collecting subsidies and getting low cost loans (the only way to make money in renewables.)
Every year our electric company adds 4500 MwHr of Wind turbines, Every year our electric energy rate goes up by 5 – 10% and only 100 MwHr of power is added to our total usable/salable generation. DO THE MATH.
Ethanol is my favorite boondoggle. We must import fossil fuels to grow the corn to make the ethanol. No one is bright enough to use kudzu to make ethanol. And millions of pounds of food are being wasted for the ethanol disaster. And the stuff ruins engines, especially small one-cylinder types. It is good for ADM, but very bad for the rest of us.
Same for solar cells. Night: no power. Snow: no power. Clouds: little power. Can’t store the energy.
Wind farms: kill the birds, the bats. Ecological disaster.Screw up the wind patterns.
But the lobbyists sure get rich from all these adventures!
So very true.
So much nonsense.
What Flannery and the rest of the climate parasites are really saying is “Give us more money and thgings will work out great. For us.”
What has he done that has worked?
Chris4692 advises that I am mistaken in that no GT standby units have to be allocated as such for WT’s and neither do the GT’s acting in “standby” mode operate less efficiently. He also states that additional/enhanced Power Transmission works for WT’s are not more or more expensive than for GT’s! He is blatantly wrong on all counts.
Base Load standby’s for WT’s are required to maintain the same available installed capacity of base load PS’s, as needed to meet the national power demands at all times and for whatever weather conditions throughout the year, including typical extended periods of no/low winds during winter periods of high power demand. GT’s are used because independent trials for the UK government have shown that only GT’s can reliably and practically accommodate and top up the on-going, very variable shortfall of power output of 0-100%, from the WT’s as dictated by the capricious wind. They are needed to reliably meet current national power demands. This interfacing problem gets more difficult to manage the bigger the proportion of WT power capacity is provided within the national Power Supply. So if 100 units of CFPS were shutdown and replaced by 100 units of WT then, in addition, an increase in the overall national installed capacity has to be provided – the 100 units of GT supplies. These GT’s work far less efficiently at higher cost than GT’s acting alone as base load units!
WT’s are built where open spaces are available and sufficient wind is experienced – open moors or fields and bare hill tops or out at sea – and, unlike GT’s or CFPS’s or even nuclear plants, not in areas of major power demand. If follows that new and enhanced Power Transmission works are needed solely to connect these WT’s into any national Grid! Existing Power Transmission works have been provided to link up with existing or past fossil fuel plants, and so the vast majority of new GT’s can be sited at shutdown PS sites without the need for additional Power Lines.
Chris4692 is correct, at least for the US. Per FERC regulations, US grid operators are required to have standby capacity for the largest source of generation or transmission. Grid operators are very good at managing load changes. Here is an example.
http://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx
In the US, we are also good at predicting how much power is produced by wind. Notice that power produced for BPA is much greater than local demand. The excess power is exported to California.
The standby’s I’m talking about are over and above any normal standby’s to cover break down or maintenance shutdown periods. You can have periods where WT’s often meet local power demands but, typically, in any year WT’s only provide 25-30% of their plate rated output regardless of power demand – that’s why these additional standby GT’s are required. At times the WT’s produce no power – either because the winds are too high, risking damaging the WT or because there’s insufficient wind. That means the GT standby capacity has to be as much as 100% of the WT plated capacity to maintain available reliable overall system base load capacity capable of meeting power demands!
Missing or misunderstanding the points made!
Ask Warren Buffett How much of a tax write off he gets from the Wind Turbines he owns.
At his last shareholders meeting Buffett admits he will go to any means necessary to pay the lowest level of corporate taxes possible under the law, including building things like wind turbines he wouldn’t want to build otherwise, telling an audience in Nebraska recently: “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate. For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them.”
Read that again. “THAT IS THE ONLY REASON TO BUILD THEM.”
Now please provide credentials/data proving that you can make more money by selling Wind energy (kWh not subsidies), rather than making money like he does by cutting his tax obligation, collecting subsidies and getting low cost loans (the only way to make money in renewables.)
Every year our electric company adds 4500 MwHr of Wind turbines, Every year our electric energy rate goes up by 5 – 10% and only 100 MwHr of power is added to our total usable/salable generation. DO THE MATH
Warren Buffett is an investor. So it would be more correct to say the only reason for Warren Buffett to build them.
When Texas governor Bush and later POTUS proposed incentives for wind generation, we were building LNG to import natural gas. Incentives were also provided for modern coal plants and new nuke plants. At the time it was good economic policy.
Can you name the nuclear incentives?
The UK is doing its bit and promising to sequester a billion pounds just in time for COP 21 in Paris-
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/25/britain-budget-carboncapture-idUSL8N13K4AR20151125
Couldn’t they do that by burying all of their paper and cardboard?
The renewable energy fixation will collapse as it becomes more widely known that CO2 has no effect on climate.
The last 500 million years of substantial atmospheric CO2 with no sustained temperature change is compelling evidence CO2 has no effect on climate. This is documented in a peer reviewed paper at Energy & Environment, Volume 26, No. 5, 2015, 841-845 and also at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com which also discloses the two factors that do cause reported average global temperature change (sunspot number is the only independent variable). The match between calculated and measured is 97% since before 1900.
“Peak Renewables” will occur 10 seconds after the feed-in mandates and massive subsidies are removed.
25 Nov: Washington Examiner: John Siciliano: Democrats rise in opposition to Obama’s climate change agenda
Hundreds of Democrats from 32 states are aligning against the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate change agenda, the Clean Power Plan, which they say will cause unnecessary economic harm from increased reliance on renewable energy…
“As Democrats committed to a prosperous America and a healthy environment, we believe the United States has a unique opportunity to lead the world in addressing the global climate challenge, and yet do so, as we must, without unduly burdening the American economy or the American people,” the Democratic coalition called CoalBlue said in a letter sent Tuesday to Obama.
The group joined with hundreds of Democratic officeholders and state, local and party officials in telling Obama that the Environmental Protection Agency’s emission rules for power plants pose “serious and overriding concerns,” representing the wrong approach to the problem of climate change…READ ON
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/dems-rise-against-wh-climate-change-plan/article/2577114
Forbes, 24 Nov: SunEdison “shares have tumbled nearly 50% over the past month and nearly 80% year-to-date”
24 Nov: EconomicTimesIndia: SunEdison to put 400 MW of upcoming solar capacity on sale; calls off Continuum buy
By Arijit Barman & Baiju Kalesh
A struggling global portfolio is eclipsing SunEdison’s mega solar dreams.
The world’s largest renewable energy developer is significantly downsizing its India footprint by monetising its entire 400 MW of solar capacity that is expected to come on stream by early next year. Investment bank Goldman Sachs has been mandated to manage the sale as the Belmont, California-headquartered SunEdison Inc. is looking to prune its global portfolio and cut costs…
This development also comes immediately after SunEdison pulled out from buying Continuum Wind earlier this month…
SunEdison had said in October it would cut 15% of its 7,260-strong global workforce. It has already terminated a $700 million deal to buy renewable energy firm Latin American Power, which operates assets in Chile and Peru. Plans to absorb its Vivint Solar unit are also reportedly in trouble…
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/energy/power/sunedison-to-put-400-mw-of-upcoming-solar-capacity-on-sale-calls-off-continuum-buy/articleshow/49899154.cms
24 Nov: CarbonBrief: Simon Evans: Analysis: UK government quietly slashes renewable energy forecast
The UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has slashed its forecasts for new renewable power capacity by more than a third over the next decade, Carbon Brief analysis shows…
http://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-government-quietly-slashes-renewable-energy-forecast?utm_content=bufferc9db4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
“Plummeting Costs” = “Other people’s money”
“Now you see it, now you don’t. Keep your eye on the Pea.”
If renewables are so good, they don’t need any more of those subsidies. Also they will run all night and when the wind doesn’t blow.
Spain report
” that Spain’s “green economy” program cost the country 2.2 jobs for every job “created” by the state. However, the figures published in the government document indicate they arrived at a job-loss number even worse than the 2.2 figure from the independent study.
https://pjmedia.com/blog/spains-green-policies-an-economic-disaster/
Up to 70,000 British jobs ‘are at risk from Brussels climate change law’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2253507/Up-70-000-British-jobs-risk-Brussels-climate-change-law.html#ixzz3sYQkQhIO
Need I say more.
If Tim Flannery says something, the opposite is true. This is why politicians gravitated to him. LOL
Why exactly would I care if Australia and Britain decided to commit economic suicide.
When I could pick up the pieces, and declare the need for a new world order ?
Elementary dear Watson. Because I’m the better benevolent dictator and Fearless Leader and my new world order is far superior to yours.
touché
I want to be Third Grand Vizier. Where do I apply?
From the side of the political spectrum that refused to subsidise the car industry and keep an industry and 70,000 people in work.
The Aussie car industry probably would have been fine, if energy wasn’t so expensive.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/03/obama-may-finally-succeed/
When Ford and Holden decided to pull out of making cars in Australia, energy costs (And that is energy costs to suppliers too) were cited as one reason. The other reason was labour costs. It costs ~4 more to make a car here in Aus as it does in Asia and ~2 times more than in Europe. It’s simple. By far the biggest contributor to the pull out was…high wages. And you can thank unions for that in Australia.
“By far the biggest contributor to the pull out was…high wages.”
Agreed.
Guys sweeping the floors on $120,000 pa !
“Chris in Hervey Bay
November 25, 2015 at 9:01 pm”
At least they were doing something useful. Flannery, on AU$180k for a 3 day week, was a waste of money and did nothing of any use.
“Mjw
November 25, 2015 at 5:21 pm”
If you are talking about the Aussie car industry (Which in effect is just assembly IMO, Ford and Holden (GM)), Rudd747 gave Toyota in 2007/2008, maybe 2009, ~AU$72m to develop an Aussie designed and made hybrid. It never happened.