Guest essay by Eric Worrall
How important is reliable power? Australia seems to be suffering more blackouts recently, as coal plants are decommissioned and shiny renewable installations fail to deliver. Trendy urbanites are starting to notice.
When the power goes out, so does civil society
You don’t need to be one of those wild-eyed doomsday preppers who bury steel containers in their backyards and fill them with canned food to recognise we’re a stalled power plant away from chaos.
Tony Wright
The power went out at our house and across our suburb around dinner time on Wednesday.
Outside, neighbours returning home sat in their cars in a street as dark as a tomb, their garage doors refusing to answer their electronic clickers.
We searched for candles with the light of mobile phones, discovering only that we’d burned them to nothing at dinner parties.
We weren’t prepared for this return to an unfamiliar era at all.
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No serious investor or bank, mindful of the world’s concerns about climate change, is going to provide funding to save ageing coal-fired power plants forever. One by one, they’re going to wind down.
Wind and solar haven’t had the national support to build a big enough network to take up the slack yet, and despite Elon Musk’s promise to establish the world’s biggest battery in South Australia – which will hold off a blackout for all of an hour in the worst case – it isn’t enough.
Enterprises trying to exploit potentially endless geothermal and tidal power haven’t received anywhere enough government support to make their efforts worthwhile. Malcolm Turnbull’s promises to boost the Snowy Hydro will still take years to be met.
Gas remains the would-be saviour, at least for the present. But in the mad rush to flog off Australia’s national resources, we’ve contracted to sell vastly too much Australian gas, too cheaply, to other nations.
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You don’t need to be one of those wild-eyed doomsday preppers who bury steel containers in their backyards and fill them with canned food to recognise we’re a stalled power plant away from chaos.
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A few years ago when Cyclone Yasi laid waste to a fair stretch of the north Queensland coast I was holed up in Townsville.
It was a wild night, but the next days were worse. And it was because the power supply went off.
Tempers frayed as air-conditioning sputtered out in the tropical heat, food went rank in refrigerators, parents became desperate as baby’s milk heated and soured, vehicles were stranded because fuel stations couldn’t pump petrol, and a lot of people couldn’t buy anything because ATMs weren’t operating. Pockets of looting were reported and signs went up that business operators were prepared to shoot. When an ice factory kicked in with auxiliary power, several fights broke out between large men elbowing their way to get blocks of the stuff that might otherwise have cooled tempers.
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Tony Wright works for the Sydney Morning Herald, and regularly champions green perspectives.
But there is nothing like a small dose of reality to wake people up to the impending Aussie energy supply disaster. The government AEMO warned back in March that Australia faces looming energy supply problems.
The problems are self inflicted. It is ridiculous that Australia is facing an energy supply crisis – we have some of the most abundant energy resources for our size of population in the world. But as JoNova pointed out a few weeks ago, in just a few short years, Australia went from having some of the cheapest energy in the world to the most expensive.
Shutting down cheap coal plants and directing investment towards expensive, unreliable renewables likely had something to do with this unpleasant, economically damaging price inversion.
This energy price and reliability disaster could easily have been America’s story. But thanks to President Trump, the USA is turning away from economically catastrophic renewables, and re-embracing reliable energy and economic growth.
When the Aussie and European energy reliability crisis really start to bite, the US example of how to get it right will help save the rest of us. In the meantime, lets just say my household backup generator just got a major upgrade.
Aussies being big beer drinkers will revolt if our beer gets warm .
I thought everyone in the Commonwealth drank their beer warm, and only clueless Yanks had it served cold to disguise the lack of flavor of domestic brews.
My dear sir, that’s fighting talk in Australia…
Some acquaintance of mine was traveling around Great Britain and asked for a cold beer. They put a couple of ice cubes in it.
Griff can’t get anything right: the correct quote is “Thems fight’in words!”
The thing of it is that you can reduce the outages by building more renewable capacity, but in doing so you increase the cost because duplicative capacity cost money, regardless of how seldom that capacity is used and , what’s worse, just adding more 18th century technology windmills often simply means that more turbines quit when the wind quits. So now the greenies have the solution : batteries!!! But battery capacity is limited , whereas the ability of the wind not to blow is not limited and what recharges those batteries? And when? Renewables make everything a complicated morass. Australia: if you really want to reduce carbon and have cheap electricity and eliminate your (stupid) fears of nuclear power all in the same breath, simply sit back and wait a few years for the commercialization of molten salt nuclear reactors. Even diehard doomsday folks can’t argue that a few years can make any possible difference. Greenies are technological morons, living in the 18th century.
It’s all because the government didn’t invest in more renewables! Ha how many socialist policies have to fail before people realize that they don’t work. It’s like The ACA here in the US it was supposed to lower rates by $2,500 per household and lower deductibles and slow the rate of premium rate growth, it did the exact opposite. Yet all we here is that we need more government to solve the problem. When are people going to learn, even when on rare occasion the government does solve a problem it invariably creates other problems that are worse than the first ever was. How many 2*4’s have to hit you on the head before you wake up. All we have is make bigger and more intrusive governments around the world and are things getting better on the whole? For everyone thing the government makes better 10 get worse. More often than not there were other options for fixing the one issue other than government control anyway.
It’s the laws of physics that is the cause of governmental inadequacy. The laws of physics prohibit the perpetual motion machines, devices, processes and systems that would make possible the fantastical. When any government does anything, additional cost is generated. When additional cost is generated, the cost has to go somewhere to become a part of the personal and household cost of living of someone or some household.
Most people don’t see that, though, Thomas. Bastiat wrote about it.
If this happens during the European winter, cAGW backlash can be observed. How exactly remains to be seen.
Matt Chambers, Resources Reporter for The Australian (Aug 23 2017)-
‘The nation’s biggest coalminer and copper producer, Glencore, has called for the abolition of the renewable energy target and suggested delaying Paris climate commitments as Australian industry struggles under the weight of rising power costs.
And in comments backed by big manufacturers, Glencore says Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s proposed clean energy target will not be enough to save heavy industry, which needs pricing concessions from policies designed to tackle emissions reductions.
Speaking in Sydney yesterday, Glencore’s senior Australia-based executive, its global coal chief Peter Freyberg, said 10 years of poor policy development was coming home to roost.
“Electricity prices have got to a level where many industries, both large and medium, are either suffering or are becoming uneconomic because of high energy prices,” he said. “Either we intervene now to protect those businesses or we let them go — that’s a government decision.”…
“All we have is a renewable energy target that is seeing billions of dollars chucked into renewables and baseload power being shut down,” he said. “We are seeing the consequence of that in elevated energy prices and businesses going out of business.”
He said that if something had to take a back seat in solving the so-called energy “trilemma” of affordability, reliability and emissions reductions, it should be emissions.’
““Either we intervene now to protect those businesses or we let them go”
What a fiasco the politicians have created for Australia! All self-inflicted. They only wake up after disaster happens.
“He said that if something had to take a back seat in solving the so-called energy “trilemma” of affordability, reliability and emissions reductions, it should be emissions.’”
Every single time a businessman or a conservative (or sometimes both) refers to “emissions” they should add “especially since we’re talking about just a trace gas in the atmosphere that plants thrive on and that we ourselves exhale with every breath we take.” (or something similar)
The greens refer to CO2 as “carbon” for a reason. It sounds dirty. People need to fight that nonsense on a daily basis or it inevitably takes hold. Every single time a news source, government official, or businessman, refers to “carbon” or “emissions” when referencing CO2 they need to receive letters, texts, emails, and phone calls by the hundreds, reminding them that it is essential to life on earth.
I refer to CO2 as plant food.
Consumers (private and business) will respond to changing market conditions in the very short term – days, weeks or months. .
Generating capacity responds only in the long term – somewhere between 2 and 20 years depending on the nature of the project, cost, local planning regulations, complexity etc etc.
Energy companies like all businesses are driven by the short term – quarterly/annual results, share price, competitive pressures etc. They do not have long term horizons, and are largely unconcerned with peripheral issues – pollution, environment etc except to the extent there is a regulatory requirement or financial benefit. .
Governments need to provide mechanisms to bridge the gap between short term pressures and long term requirements as neither business or private consumers will be remotely motivated. The goal of finding economic greener solutions to energy generation and consumption is entirely worthy – the only real question is whether the government has adopted the right strategy or whether it needs tuning.
Terry, your understanding of business is quite warped, and wrong. Talk to Google or Amazon or Netflix about thinking long-term. It’s all they do. Or check with any large oil company and see if they have a 20 or 30 year plan for developing their resources. Or talk to a person just starting a business and see if he has thought at all about where his business will be in five to ten years.
Government needs to set rules for all to observe, while not excusing a favored few from following them (see windmills/birds/bats), and then stand back and let human ingenuity take us all to the next level of prosperity. Sadly, few in government share that view, even among conservatives today.
“despite Elon Musk’s promise to establish the world’s biggest battery in South Australia… in just a few short years, Australia went from having some of the cheapest energy in the world to the most expensive.”
It ain’t coincidence. When you see SolarCity and Tesla, it spells expensive energy and huge government subsidies.
Dear Lord Government, give me subsidies and I will save the world
http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/57daed95b0ef97b3088b5f74/elon-musks-tunnel-project-wont-cut-down-on-la-traffic–at-least-not-at-first.jpg
It’s official according to the local rag and we’ve now beaten the Danes with the world’s highest power prices.
South Australia leads the world but would it be too much to ask if we’ve managed to save the planet for yo’all yet because nothing is being saved around here 🙁
We have a couple of generations (mine and my children’s) that have never seen a world war, rationing, or other serious privation. I suspect it is this that allows the magical thinking which states we can wean ourselves rapidly off of fossil fuels and still enjoy all the benefits of modern civilization. It is sad that we may have to do so much damage to what has brought civilization to its current state of progress before we realize our own stupidity, but perhaps that is what it will take. Generations who truely suffered would not be so foolish as to squander the bounty of so much history.
My father’s generation went through the Depression and WWII. If a generation can have a motto, their’s would have been “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” You are right, relative comfort allows one to ignore wondering about things like “Where does my food actually come from?” Folks in OZ are likely to start considering such questions in a very serious way, but they will be only the first.
Very well stated!!!! I have lived without all the modern conveniences the vast majority of people take so for granted. You can not explain it to them, and far too many people seem determined to live through it, apparently to prove how virtuous they are. Deluded morons.
ENCOURAGE THE WARMISTS TO PUSH HARDER! The US will benefit to not interfer with the global warming narrative. As Europe and Ausraila cut their economic throats driving the cost of energy through the roof, the USA will be back in the position it was after World War II, the only place business can thrive outside. If their is a cooling trend kicking in, Europe and Austraila are screwed, and the next 20 years could be a golden age in America. Thank you Al Gore and Michael Mann. 🙂
“…haven’t received anywhere enough government support…” tells me everything I need to know.
Electricity operates on mathematics. Green ideology operates on unfounded feelings. A clash of “civilizations”.
Here’s hoping that the voters in places like Germany and Switzerland (both of which voted to shut down their nuclear plants) will discover the magnitude of their errors while there is time to reverse the decision before all the plants are destroyed.
I predict two, or more, repeats of what happened to Gray Davis after California started having blackouts.