Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Australia’s latest climate guru Saul Griffith thinks if we put solar panels on most of the roofs and EVs in all the driveways, we can meet our climate targets.
Climate change solution could come from ‘electrifying everything’, Australian inventor Saul Griffith says
ABC Science / By technology reporter James Purtill
Key points:
“Electrify everything” is the cheapest, fastest route to emissions cuts, experts say
Households would replace petrol cars, gas heaters and other items with electric alternatives
These changes would be minimally disruptive, but provide large emission reductions
Speaking from San Francisco, Sydney-born inventor Saul Griffith explains how Australia can rapidly get most of the way to net zero emissions using existing technology.
Also an entrepreneur and adviser to US presidential campaigns, Dr Griffith is one of the most prominent global advocates for an approach best summed up as “electrify everything”.
“If I had to choose the country for whom electrifying everything is the best economic win in the shortest amount of time … it is Australia,” he said.
…
What would this cost households?
Dr Griffith estimates the acquisitions would cost about $100,000 per household.
Multiplying that by Australia’s 10 million households equals $ 1 trillion.
But a lot of this is money that households would have spent anyway to replace cars, heaters and so on, Dr Griffith points out.
The only difference is they’re buying an electrical version.
…
The government could offer a system of cheap loans to help households to electrify, he proposed.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-09-07/climate-change-solution-electrify-everything-saul-griffiths/100428158
I doubt Saul’s estimate covers the cost of electrifying industry, and likely does not even fully cover the cost of electrifying households. But lets run with his numbers for a moment.
The biggest issue which jumps out at me, the expenditure Saul proposes is not a one off. If everyone continues to replace their appliances every 10 years, we’re talking about an additional $1 trillion or $100,000 per household which will have to be part financed by additional government soft loans every 10 years.
Since none of this government loan backed electric stuff has a positive impact on productivity, the result of everyone spending more for life’s essentials would be that everyone would end up poorer. The net impact is ordinary people would have to divert significantly more income towards servicing the ongoing government debt burden Saul has “slam dunked” into their lives.
Less money for retirement, or enjoying the fruits of hard work. More dependency on the government, if you hit a rough patch and struggle to repay your “cheap loan”.
Dreams of the proverbial “pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow. So, who will take a knee? Will they be a class of white, black, or brown diversity?
Fairies!
https://youtu.be/hHEGDHQXWxA
Everyone knows you should put all your eggs in one basket.
The renewable energy dream is only electricity from breezes and sunshine.
Has Australia found the clones or generics to the manufactured oil derivatives that are the
basis of more than 6,000 products that we did not have before 1900 that the wealthier and healthier countries now use daily?
Electricity by itself cannot support the military, airlines, cruise ships, supertankers, container shipping, trucking infrastructures, and space program. Nor can electricity alone, and especially that generated solely from intermittent renewable sources such as breezes and sunshine, provide the thousands of products from petroleum that were virtually non-existent before 1900 that are essential to our medical industry, electronics, communications, transportation infrastructure, our electricity generation, our cooling, heating, manufacturing, and agriculture—indeed, virtually every aspect of our daily lives and lifestyles.
Well said! Add to your list farming, construction, mining, logging, heavy manufacturing and a host more of everyday products and services!
also add emergency services (fire, rescue, etc.)
After doing that, put together a list of who doesn’t get to use the diesel vehicles. Who doesn’t get to use their work vehicle for personal use as well (so they don’t have to have two or three redundant vehicles). Who doesn’t get to have back-up diesel (or gas) generators for their home or business. Etc ….
Make sure the list is an absolute “who doesn’t get to”, instead of a generic ‘who does get to’, so everyone can see what is going on and how it will impact them..
Q: How did the EV cross a desert?
A: Carried on a 4WD diesel truck tray.
No windmill in it’s entire lifetime, produces enough power to cover it’s reproduction & instillation, counting extraction & refining of the metals, making the cement, building & transporting & erecting the thing at it’s ultimate site.
Sacrifice for whatever color of “justice” is politically congruent (“=”), trendy. That said, throw another baby on the barbie, it’s over.
Every topic isn’t about abortion.
but if we do everything our betters wish there will be no war nor need for such extravagances. just sit in your hovel and sustain yourself with local flora and fauna like your ancestors did centuries ago. be happy we allow you to live, you ungrateful trollop!
meanwhile, back at the dacha…
breezes? Let’s electrify hurricanes. That should provide enough power. It should be just as easy as the other plans.
It is worth considering why sailing ships were replaced firstly with steam engine ships, why flour and other windmills were replaced with water wheels and steam engines, and generally why the Age of Agriculture and horsepower became the Industrial Age.
And this is how the unintended consequences start.
“unintended ” ??
More likely a “feature”
Assuming that these consequences are unintended at this stage is not necessarily correct. These people have been warned for years and years about the easily foreseeable consequences of their proposals, but they continue to push them.
Hanlon’s Razor at least needs to have a three strikes and you’re out caveat.
FOLLOW THE MONEY … they don’t care so long as they’re making a buck out of it. Remember, the idiot called Saul has a sideline company to harvest subsidies.
When will this incessant madness stop?
When people begin voting on the tax increases involved (and experiencing recurring power outages). To date, its all been free money and subsidies hidden by the “salami principle.” The continuing incremental cost increases, which have been nearly invisible to the public because they have been incurred in “slices,” are beginning to accumulate into big piles. The wacky net zero dreams would incur vast costs and result in significant decreases in Western standards of living. Not going to happen; even politicians recognize governments would fall.
They’re going to learn when they are confronted with paying for it. For now it is “somebody else’s” money … our taxes. I’m a boomer, semi-retired now, my tax paying days are nearly over … they’ll be paying for me to ! To the point, I don’t care 😉
Unless your pension and savings are inflation proof you are likely to get a rude awakening during retirement.
I don’t think so.
So your basement is full of cigarettes, ammunition, and gold coins ?
That is my question also…..please some one answer that!
It will stop when we make it stop. We will make it stop only when the pain being imposed is greater than what we have to lose. Presently, people in the western world underestimate the pain that is heading their way and also still have too much to lose (jobs, homes, cars, friends, hobbies…. all of the things that make life enjoyable).
People can either realise that what is coming is the total destruction of all that is good in the world to be replaced by city sized prisons where they will be allocated sustenance and accommodations on the whim of the “ruling elites”. Or they can wait until they have lost enough to become truly free.
This is just starting to happen now. Though, you won’t hear about it, at least not through main stream sources. The western world is much more heavily censored than most think, and it’s getting much worse. Soon enough, you will see some poor sap being paraded in front of the media, labelled a “terrorist”, they will say he plotted online to do some horrible act. However, know that even in Australia, the government can now legally go online and assume your identity on social media; edit, delete or post whatever they want, then use that as evidence against you. Orwell had no idea how bad it would be.
“When will this incessant madness stop?”
There are several regions, States, Countries, that are quite close to maximum unreliables. At some point, after serious power failures, people will begin to realize that the unreliable power supplies such as windmills and solar are not capable of powering our modern society.
That won’t stop the madness about evil CO2, but it will stop the madness of bankrupting ourselves further by continuing to focus on unreliable power sources.
The alarmists will just have to pivot and go for nuclear power generation, or give up trying to control the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere.
However, they’ll just blame it on something else, as was done in Texas this past winter.
I agree. Once the lights start going out, people will start to realise what’s going on.
And if it’s getting so much warmer, why is this bozo wearing a woollen hat?
He’s in San Francisco.
In addition to frequentfleet renewal, I suspect there are some details that were overlooked in this estimate.
Does Dr Griffith’s estimate also cover the cost to install 3x the currently installed reliable (coal and gas) generation in order to generate the country’s electricity from ‘green’ generators while allowing for a ~35% capacity factor?
Does his estimate cover additional generation to meet the demand of 20.1 million registered vehicles (of which only 1.8% are ‘other’ fueled; LPG, EVs in January 2021).
Does the estimate then also cover the CAPEX for substantial railway electrification and new generation to meet the additional demand (plus new wood burning steam traction for lines where electrification is unjustifiable)?
Does the estimate cover CAPEX for ‘green hydrogen’ plants to service aviation and shipping?
Does the estimate cover aenough mega batteries to stabilise transmission voltage fluctuations?
Does the estimate cover production and recycling costs for the material throughput required to maintain electrrified everything?
what colour is the sky on this individual’s home planet?
Dr Griff – “acquisitions would cost about $100,000 per household.”
“By 2030, 100 per cent of homes would be saving [$5,000 or $6,000) a year”
So at Zero % interest, minimum 20 years to payback. Bit hard on an average 10 year useful life of solar panels.
And where does the power to Make the Glass panels come from?
Of course not , Greenies can only ever ‘under’ estimate their dream costs .
Never the other costs . That would be a nightmare called reality .
“Dr” ? Only a month or so ago he was and undergraduate who went home to his mud hut in the mountains south of Sydney.
This idea of having everything electric has been around since the ’50s. I may have been just a little kiddo but even then I knew that an all-electric house was a bad idea. Wet snow storms bring down power lines, hurricane winds bring down power lines, no power lines and no heat if your furnace is electric. And now they want to do away with all the ways to generate a lot of electricity cheaply and quickly and make all this electric stuff totally dependent on the wind and sun. This is a very bad idea and it will not end well.
There is no “end” for the promoters, there is only process and the associated rewards of that. The “end” for those few promoters could be comfortable at the beach though after they write it off with “who could have known” excuses.
I too remember the Gold Medalion homes. One went up across the street from the 1940 something house I grew up in.
Note that with an electric thermostat, it doesn’t matter what kind of furnace you have – no control if the electricity goes down. Unless the thermostat and other controller devices have battery backup.
Is what he meant to say.
Remember when it used to be “a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money”? Now it’s a trillion. Pissed into the wind/sunshine. Oh my.
There is a reason why no country of a relevant size ever went 100% renewable though everyone claims it goes along with well paid jobs and wealth.
It is neither sustainable nor reliable nor economical and can only survive with outside help.
Once again we have repeating patterns where reality is on the opposite side of woke narrative.
Rich people buy front beach properties because sea levels aint rising.
Ski resorts arent closing because snow is not a thing of the past.
Obama is making huge maskless birthday parties with his epstein island ped.._political friends and Weinsteins willing rape victi._actors because everyone knows the covid survival rate is 99.98% and masks are useless.
That will only take 1,000,000 slaves in western China to pull that off with solar and battery components, chemical processing, and the coal power plants to power all of that and the slave barracks. Row well and live says the green slaver.
1,000 million slaves more like it
So you never buy any Chinese consumer products?
So you are OK with slavery, so long as they aren’t used to make consumer products?
Not if I can help it, although I have been taken in a few times when the seller has not been honest about the source of the object.
I try my best to avoid products made in China even if they cost double. If I can find products made in Europe or the USA I’ll happily pay twice the price as they are better made and last much longer. As my father used to say “you get what you pay for”.
I did recently buy a Chinese solar panel for my camper.
But its undisclosed “gain of function” turned my RV battery into a campfire.
Considerations:
1) I know that 50-60% of silicon solar panel components for the world are sourced in forced labor camps in western China.
2) I know from news links that coal plants have been constructed in western China to power the production at forced labor camps
3) I do not own any rooftop silicon solar panels and I’m beginning to call out those that do have slave labor products on their roof.
4) I’m invested in thin film U.S. and SE Asian solar production–not China and not western China.
5) The independent audit trail of consumer products and components sourced in forced labor camps in western China has recently been shut down by the CCP. Nike, Amazon, Apple, and many other companies now have less information to cite for investors and consumer product advocates.
Don’t be a Griff and stop deflecting facts and issues like a professional troll.
Griff, I would GLADLY buy products Made in the USA, IF II could find them! It’s now time we demanded that America resume their rightful place as a giant manufacturing nation, like we used to be! Cheap labor (from slave labor) is not enough reason to give up our place at the table!
Are you this twat Dr Griffith?
No griff is the twat that lives in the UK as far as I know. Unlike griff though, this guy either has a calculator or the back of an envelope and a pencil. He did, however, stop short of calculating what it would do to the climate. Given that it’s a nice round number, let me oblige – sweet F-all.
Wooooo woooooo though:
What would this cost households?
Dr Griffith estimates the acquisitions would cost about $100,000 per household.
Multiplying that by Australia’s 10 million households equals $ 1 trillion
That’s the most complicated math I’ve ever seen a climate crackpot aspire to.
Given the fact Australian politicians sold out manufacturing to China years ago gives little choice to people. When given a choice, I buy Australian owned/made.
I recently found out my energy provider is Chinese owned. My provider will be changing soon.
This is not a claim but predictive programming to make people accept what has been planned long time ago.
How will It work in reality when you try to replace high density energy with low density energy?
Try to replace theatomic drive of an aircraft carreer with sailes and solar panels and you will know the results as you will need 2 weeks to just leave the harbour.
Thing is that renwables can only exist like your parasitic neighbor with the pure heart of gold who never worked a day in his life and is an eternal college student (a common thing in countries with free college ).
As long as someone else does the work(conventional energy ),
then you neighbor can shine with his humanism,
but as soon as everyone behaves like your neighbor
everything turns to sh!t like everything else the woke touch,and woke energy won’t work until solar panels double their efficiency and batteries quadruple their capacity.
I strongly suspect “solar panels double their efficiency and batteries quadruple their capacity.” is a gross underestimate!
You are probably right ,but i guess an overall increase of 800 % may be the point where things can get reliable in sunshine states as a modern tesla battery with 4* the capacity should be able to power an average household for many days and 10 solar panels could be enough to produce 5kw/h to fill those batteries in an acceptable timeframe.
(my suggestion is not based on a 1:1 replacement,but on one that covers the basic needs without dropping to low life commie standards)
Those Tesla batteries? Ask the people who had them and lived amoung the trees on Melbourne’s outskirts some months back when a major storm ( its the weather) bought lines down for a week or longer.
They thought the batteries future proofed them but didnt realise they would run out the next morning. You can only live off grid completely for a day unless you change immediately to a energy frugal lifestyle and then maybe get 3 days. When the sun returned the solar panel recharging didnt happen as doing it from a ‘flat’ battery requires the juice only the grid provides.
Yes, I saw a pic of a guy there holding a set of jumper leads while looking forlornly at his Tesla.
Screwed every which way, he was.
Tesla’s use jumper cables?
Driving/owning a Tesla looks complicated. More so every day.
No, I’m positive they don’t use jumper cables.
But hope springs eternal when there’s no electricity to be had anywhere thereabouts.
The cheapest, fastest way that would actually work is still nukes… Solar and wind mills still need trillions in short lifespan batteries.
Neither cheap, nor fast… EDF is still building 2 reactors after 10 years, nobody can fund new UK nukes beyond Hinkley, which will add to all electricity bills for 30 years
Other countries manage to build nuclear both fast, cheap and safe.
What these other countries don’t have are nut case environmentalists who do everything in their power to prevent them from being built and requiring rewrites of the regulations every year or two.
You are partly right, griff, but the Koreans have much cheaper nukes which would have been a much better deal than Hinkley is going to be.
Yes, griff, wwhat you say may be a good summing up of the shenanigans, irresponsible decisions, incompetent technical advices, etc. (I may be wrong, I got my information from several mainstream media during the last few years) …
“nobody can fund new UK nukes beyond Hinkley, which will add to all electricity bills for 30 years”
Griff, did you know that UK windmills and solar will add to all electricity bills, too?
I’ve pointed out to griff a number of times that almost 23% of all UK electricity bills is not for electricity used but for susidising unreliables and that by 2024/25 these subsidies will be of the order of £12.5 billion.
However about 20% of the power generated in the UK is from nuclear plants. In addition the UK imports about 6% of its power from France which is also nuclear generated. So a significant proportion of UK power is generated by nukes.
But the way ahead is green. So how about importing wood chips from the US and Canada and burning them in old coal plants ? Enviro-biomass, that’s the answer particularly if you don’t count the CO2s from burning wood chips. CO2 problem solved.
The Guardian luvvies liked the idea to start with …https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/19/burning-wood-instead-of-coal-in-power-stations-makes-sense-if-its-waste-wood
but now seem to have turned aginst it -https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/drax-faces-prosecution-over-health-risk-dust-biomass-pellets-allegations-employee-safety-power-plant
Seems even they can work out that shipping bits of wood across the Atlantic to generat power is not “Green”, it’s not even slightly sensible.
The EU has been spending 7 billion dollars a year sudsidising “Green ” biomass power generation – https://www.nrdc.org/media/2019/191120
Thank [insert your deity here] for Brexit
Nothing made in Western countries is cheap, but reliable power generation and electricity distribution are fundamental to the stability and safety of societies and states. It would do you a lot of good to step out of your predictable and shallow bias and reflect on why nothing in the west can be made cheap or fast.
I think you took a wrong turn in your thought process – the idiots with their hands out would get a loan from the green idiots to replace perfectly good gas devices the first time round, but after that they are on their own when the appliances and cars wear out.
The biggest stupidity with this switch to electricity now craze is that the grid isn’t ready, and will cause utilities to keep or restore their coal fired plants and end up generating more emissions for the same use level, especially for home heating.
The green mob is shooting itself in the foot and in the interim making everything crazy expensive, more than what the current pace of wind and solar was causing.
The climate does not care about CO2 targets of Australian warmers.
On factor that has been forgotten is EMP go read about the carrington event
Well of course it can…
Claim: Renewables Could Meet 100% of Aussie Demand at Certain Times by 2025 – Watts Up With That?
What is it about griff and his long running skill at citing articles and studies that completely disprove the point he was trying to make.
Amazing, innit?
I blame griff’s self-inflicted wounds on gremlins.
Griff is an alright sort. It’s just those #@&! gremlins that cause griff’s crazy posts.
Can’t help it. Can’t stop it. GREMLINS!
“What is it about griff”
We’re the only people who talk to him. If he walks into a pub and people are standing in a group having a nice conversation about music, sport, and other normal stuff. He says “wibble, wibble, sausages, sausages” and they disperse, hastily.
So he logs on here and says the equivalent of “wibble, wibble, sausages, sausages”, still not knowing he’s actual cyber cannon fodder, converting many to the scientific truth. Alternatively, I still think he might be a false flag operative.
“What is it about griff??
–
phil: “We’re the only people who talk to him.”:
–
You know, I think you’re right.
Between us and griff’s mom bringing griff cookie and cocoa, I think that’s about it.
Can anyone give a cite of griff discussing Twaddler of Farcebook or any other social media? I can’t.
That’s all there is to it. Click all the down votes you want, bad publicity is better than no publicity in our griff’s mind.
–
griff claims to not be paid for the trolling. Fine. The propaganda masters pay griff nothing and get nothing of value, given griff’s posts.
He doesn’t understand what “at certain times” means
Yeah, that’s like saying “this parachute works much of the time”…..
You want to appear well educated? Give us an estimate of two things, 1) the amount of transmission capacity that must be added to high voltage transmission lines all the way to expanded drop capacity along with the cost, and, 2) what is the cost to upgrade from 100 amp service to 300 amp service to handle the additional home heating, cooking, and charging requirements .
His education didn’t rise to being able to handle simple arithmetic.
I know the answer to 2), although for upgrading our house from 125 amp service to 250 amp – $US10,000 (2018 dollars). But that was only the part to do with the house. After we got the quote, we were laughing so hard, we never got around to asking the electric company what it would cost to upgrade the service to our breaker box.
Over the last 12 months, according to NEM data, wind makes up 12% of the fuel mix, solar only 4% and hydro 8%.
These are not static figures of course and depend entirely on the weather gods, for example hydro for 2020 was 6.4% and only 5% in 2019.
Reliably unreliable sources of energy.
You believe in 4 years Australia will close the gap shown on this graph?
What are you smoking?
Griff talking about something he knows nothing about, again!
Edward Griffith may have the tiniest Balls but he for sure must have the biggest butt.
Considering how many things he is pulling out of his S all the time it must have the size of the empire state building and his brain must be located there too
as Griff has accumulated during the past 10 years so many informations that exposed global warming as crap that simply recycled the global cooling scare that instantly started after the Rockfellers started the club of rome(which was abondoned and replaced just because it couldn’t be used to implement a world wide tax)
but still shows no signs of understanding .
Griff scored an own goal.
I read the other headline: Coal and some gas fired power stations do meet 70-80% of Aussie Demand at all times, regardless of the prevailing weather conditions and time of day.
I can’t get over the fact that he thinks putting solar panels on roofs is going to be enough to power all those electric cars. Much less electrifying home heating.
That guy probably has a roof thats 10x bigger than the average roof so it may work out for him
and this is again proof that communism is a thing only rich people can afford.
(there is a reason why Wall Street billionaires funded the Bolshevik ‘revolution’ and why trotzky lived in a luxury hotel in New York with Limousine and chauffeur before he started the revolution in russia)
But as soon as you dont belong to the more equal animals of communism your life sucks so much that you will instantly understand why the very first thing the more equal communists do to succeed is to go after the guns to make sure they cant be forced to give up their more equal lifestyles and live real communism.
I could be 100% wrong, but something tells me that it would take considerably more than 10X bigger to even have the energy potential needed to meet the demands of a modern life that is fully electric. Solar panels aren’t capable of utilizing the full energy available and only have a relatively short half life. Their output diminishes rapidly with age.
People would be paying off one set of panels just as they require replacements.
I’ve a freind who went solar about 15 years ago. He is rarly homw through the day, so his entire output is being sold back to the grid. Being an engineer, he has measured his output, and it has declined ~4% overall in 15 years. He must have gotten the good panels.
I’m always willing to hear a good success story. I wish him all the best with his system. I have a friend who uses what seems to me to be a ridiculously small, Pelton wheel hydro-electric system. I believe the inverter and batteries has been his biggest outlay (aside from the cost of the water pipe to power it). I’m all for depriving the grid of custom.
But what happens when the panels do fail and need to be replaced?
https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/why-everything-they-said-about-solar
Even if it is 10X bigger, very few roofs are angled to get the best light for solar panels.
what about night time and indoor sporting events? How many solar panels and how much battery storage is required to power a 60 lanes of bowling? not just the pin setters, ball returns and scoring but A/C, lighting, cafe, lounge and gameroom for the tykes (of all ages). Cinemas? Restaurants?
I reckon we will have to forego much recreation and entertainment to please the morlock.
My climate target was a decent summer
Target well and truly missed!
Has anyone checked this guys bio? He hasn’t actual done anything. He us a Ted Talk, all futuristic predictions but no actual real world product.
What you would expect from a guy who wears a stocking cap when it is warm outside.
Good point
“MIT LEGO Fellow 2000”The subject of his PhD thesis was “self-replicating machines”.
He’s so afflicted by Dunning–Kruger effect that he needs a hat to keep his massive brain protected.
Preaching to the choir here, but using high grade electricity (especially solar PV) for low grade thermal heat, either space heating or hot water, is not the best use of that electricity. Thermal solar, especially in the tropics, would be a much better application of collecting solar heat and using it for hot water, or even refrigeration/AC, as we see with millions of absorption type refrigerants that could be used for freezers/AC.
My 12 cubic foot RV fridge/freezer works off a propane flame that is about 3-4 candles worth of heat, (200 watt equivalent) and needs 2-3 watts 12V to run the DC computer board. This is old fairly simple tech that could be used for A/C, which does take a fair bit of electricity to run, even for the newer mini split A/C units. I am not against progress, as long as it doesn’t ‘tax’ others with stupid subsidies that would have meant that installing solar panels to heat water with electricity was really a crime against common sense.
People replace things every ten years?
They’ve obviously got more money than sense. I replace things when they break so badly they can no longer be economically fixed.
Examples: The refrigerator and dishwasher in my kitchen have been there since I remodeled it last in…about 1996…25 years.
My Microwave oven is the first one I ever owned. I bought it from the Navy Exchange when I was stationed in Rota Spain so that would have been about 1985…36 years ago. It still works great and as long as it does, it’s not going anywhere. They don’t build them like they used to.
I’ve lived in this house for 27 years. I replaced the water heater once…about 15 years ago. It will probably go in another 5 years or so, but it could last another 15 if I’m lucky.
I have a chest freezer that I bought used in about 1989 and it was already 10 years old then. Still working great. I have a “garage fridge” for beverages that I also bought used. I believe it dates from the 1970’s as well.
The newest appliances we have are our washer and dryer and they’re getting close to 10 years old.
My point is, they may “estimate” that everyone buys new appliances about every ten years, but that’s flat not true of everyone and they’re going to be placing a huge burden on people who don’t…especially low income people who just can’t afford to.
Not to mention that they may have to upgrade their electrical systems to go all electric. I don’t know how the Australian power companies work, but in the US, you only get the level of service you need. If you have gas or oil heat, gas stove, gas water heater, you probably only have 100 amp service. To switch to all electric, you’d have to upgrade to 200 amp service, meaning new meter, new supply cable, new power panel with additional circuits for all the added equipment etc etc etc. Plus in the US (again, that has to be my reference point because I don’t know anything about how Australian building codes work) if you get a new power panel put in, it would have to meet current codes, so if your house was built in the ’50’s (like mine was) and still has a lot of old two wire outlets, all the old wiring in the house would have to be upgraded to meet the new codes when the new panel is put in. Even more expense.
This guy is obviously one of those academics who doesn’t actually live in the real world and has no idea what the unintended consequences of his brain-child would be…and how huge an impact it would have on the poorer people in the country.
Australia; The lucky country. Actually no. It is the laughing stock of the world being proven every single day with COVID restrictions, lockdowns, fines, arrests etc etc.
The old English jail wardens (Dictator Dan) of old have returned, to punish the ‘prisoners’, many of whom were originally deported from Northern Ireland and/or other low level undesirables from the British Isles and the rest of the Empire. I am surprised that many of the Aussies are taking this lying down. Was just reading about a woman from Oz that was arrested and jailed for advocating online protests to reign this in, and she has refused bail so is stuck in prison now. Truly absurd.
Most Aussies are too busy watching crap on TV while Dictator Dan and his like are destroying this country and, quite literally, deleting human rights and liberties in the process. I do understand that, pregnant, woman was released after arrest and fining. She is going to challenge the arrest and fine in court I believe. Good luck to her.
The situation here in Australia is utter madness.
You have my sympathy. I aways thought Australian’s in general had a broad streak of individualism, if not libertarianism. Seems to have gone amiss of late.
They should try hooking up a dynamo to their money printing presses.
bitcoin?
A sphincter says what?
Bubble. Lousy investment idea.
Bitcoin?
Not when the balance in my “wallet” depends on what Elon might or might not tweet today.
See, Griff, I’m a stickler for things having some demonstrable substance underpinning their reliability.
On that score, I’m with Warren Buffet.
Straight question for you Griff – were you around when the ’90s DotCom farce happened?
(If so, did you take any lessons from that lunacy?)
I seriously doubt the Australian government will accept bitcoin when taxing every household in Australia $100,000.00 to pay for their trillion dollar green pipe dream. But isn’t it nice of them of offer households low cost loans? Bankrupt everybody, then offer them a loan they can’t refuse. That’s what government calls a win-win.
To electrify everything, you have to spin the wheel all the time. You also need to mine and smelt the metals used to construct electrical motors and conduct electricity or its useless.
You cannot electrify mining, smelting or transportation of mined ore. So electrifying everything is a ridiculous proposal.
Floating solar panels to boost efficiency at Chilean copper mine | Reuters
Massive mine truck and a Baja off-road racer both find use for fuel cells | Ars Technica
electrical smelting has been around for 100 years…
Of course every suburb has a copper mine with a tailings pond on which they can float solar panels.
(And FYI, remote mining operations have been using wind and solar auxiliary generation for > 5 decades to save charging batteries by diesel power whenever they can. “It’s all about the Benjamins”)
And again, every household and business will be just salivating over the chance to own an experimental hydrogen fuel cell / battery off-road rally car to compete in the Dakar Rally every year.
Keep us posted on all this please Griff.
Or not.
Like to see you use electricity to smelt iron ore.
Floating cells. With the slightest wind, those things will start rocking and totally mess up the amount of energy that can be generated. Beyond that, the fumes off that tailings pond will probably corrode those panels even faster than normal panels.
Fuel cells. Possible, but where is the fuel going to come from?
Electrical smelting has been around, however the power for it doesn’t come from wind or solar.
Once again, the word “everything” escapes your grasp, although it has been around for more than 100 years.
😁
“Genius”???
Is that the new name of “Expert”???
Or does it mean “Expert-Plus”????
… a bit confused with the expertology…
I read the article. There are so many financial problems with his “figures”
What will the cost of L-ion batteries be when the demand multiple quintuples?
What about the cost of recycling the solar panels?
etc.
And then this gem:
Please! Someone tell how this would be done. Am I ignorant or could this actually be done? Giant extension cords from Australia to Singapore?
An extension cord to Singapore has been proposed. Proponents are working to obtain financing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia–ASEAN_Power_Link
Thanks for that Eric. I swear the Singapore reference was totally random. Who knew?
Electricity can be transmitted long distances. See:
Pacific DC Intertie – Wikipedia
I’m going to call BS on official rooftop solar numbers.
Supposedly places like Adelaide have 30%-40% rooftop solar.
Any browsing of google maps satellite seems to say otherwise.
Additionally, SFA of actual panels on the roofs.
I’m guessing they didn’t last and were discarded. The inverters die after a couple of years, and often so do the panels.
Eric
What is surprising, is the lack of solar panels on commercial and industrial buildings.
If solar panels were really competitive on a level subsidy playing ground, c&I buildings should be covered with them
The government slashed subsidies after they started haemorrhaging money. People on the original tariffs have to accept the new tariffs on any additional capacity.
the company I worked at adecade ago went on a water saving drive. our customers were extremely impressed by the savings until one noticed our extravagant landscaping.
In 2017, the latest available data, solar PV supplied a mere 1.4% of primary energy.
According to government data 2018-19 all renewables made up only 6.4% of energy consumption (Table 2.2)
Where will all the copper for renewables come from?
Another rainbow and pot of copper.
Australia seems to be in the grip of both climate alarmism and covid fascism.
I would say in the grip of delusion. As long as the footy (Football/soccer/AFL/RNL etc etc) isn’t affected, most Aussies don’t give a hoot too busy while the country is being sacked.
The output of a typical refinery might be 50% gasoline and 30% diesel plus jet fuel, so let’s not forget about the conversion cost for all those truckers and farmers to electrify and as for electric airplanes, I just don’t see that ever happening.
If Saul is so clever why doesn’t he invent solar panels that produce electricity 24 hours a day?
Already been invented by Spain 😉
https://theecologist.org/2010/apr/16/spanish-nighttime-solar-energy-fraud-unlikely-uk
😆
The same principle applied to wind:
Great cartoon. It could equally apply to “green” hydrogen.
Wow, that gave me a brilliant idea. Charge up your car all day. Have solar panels on the inside of your garage door, reverse in, close it, keep the headlights on, and voila …… a perpetual motion machine, no ????
In addition: panels made from hemp and that last 50+ years.
If only he could ‘re-invent’ baseload nuclear power and its acceptance in society .
Do whatever you want, just don’t ring my doorbell.
I just put down the baby and the dogs.
Peace reins in my realm, any interruption might be met with deadly force.
Might is not the right word, it will be.
This guy is living proof that the ability to obtain advanced degrees is no guarantee of competence. Qualified, competent engineers do not promote fantasies.
News for the idiot called Saul, the government has already moved to contain domestic rooftop solar … there’s no market for excess generation and it can’t afford to pay households for excess energy it can’t use.
And the Australian Energy Market Operator has voiced concern about the intermittent bursts of rooftop solar energy supply to the grid causing disruption and potential destabilisation, and recommends that households be restricted to using rooftop solar at the premises and not exporting that energy to earn credits.
This reminds me about a tiny village near the NSW and QLD border, since the 1960s a land of dreamers and climate worshippers, where the locals were asked if they wanted their village to disconnect from the main electricity grid and go solar. A majority said yes, no surprise given their lifestyle choice.
That was years ago and today the village remains connected to the grid, the cost was unaffordable and home and business electricity price with repayment and maintenance costs included shocked the dreamers.
After all, there is no solar power after the sun sets and until the hours between 10 am and 2 pm the solar system supply would have been minimal, batteries could have provided a boost but diesel generators were needed to keep the batteries charged.
Rubbish somebody will reply, claiming that they live off the grid, failing to explain their full cost structure including making provision for replacement of solar panels and accessories over approximately 20 years. Or that they do not have the convenience of being able to use all electrical appliances and lights whenever they choose.
Economics is not Griffith’s forte.
Typical socialist, happy to spend everyone else’s money for irrational reasons.
We have a diesel truck (8 tonne carrying capacity) in our fleet that was built in 1977. It still runs just fine, even if not used for extended periods….I’d bet my left nut that an electric truck the same age would have been onto its 4th or 5th battery pack by now! If it even still ran?
South Australia to be first gigawatt scale grid to meet all demand with rooftop solar | RenewEconomy
South Australia to be first gigawatt scale grid to meet all demand with rooftop solar
AEMO now considers reaching 100 per cent “instanteneous” renewables penetration on its main grid by 2025 as a “base case” scenario, and is scrambling to ensure that it has the protocols and systems in place to be able to accommodate that.
It is also predicting that rooftop solar could account for up to 75 per cent of total demand across the country’s main grid within five years
Australia’s response to the climate hustle:
(24) Talking duck in Australia can say ‘you bloody fool’ after learning to imitate human speech – YouTube
Nothing beats fossil fuels as a source of energy. Solar and wind are ridiculous! Can you run a factory with a windmill?
Read the book that explains why
The moral case for fossil fuels
love to kick his SNAG butt a looong way!
100k as an affordable figure? over 5x what i live on per yr and the claim of refitting homes and replacing cars?
2nd hand car bought for 1400$ so far run fine for 6 yrs with a few repairs 2 sets of tyres
a dose of reality and head out of fairyland would be useful for this pratt
Saul Griffin doesn’t think; so why give him air space? Perhaps it is the editors that are not thinking, or maybe it is just the race after clickbaits.
I’m pretty sure I can build a time machine. All I need is a few trillion dollars.
Classic error in logic. Electricity is not a power source. It is a distribution method.
Australia emits approx 1.7% of the worlds CO2. So after you convince yourself that CO2 is the drivers of all climate drivers, THEN you must convince yourself that reducing CO2 output 0.1% or even 0.5% (33%!) will have any global affect at all. I think Australia could cease to exist and not have any affect on global CO2 period.
Loan? Never to be repaid.
If CO2 is making the world so hot, why is Saul wearing a hat? Is it just to hide his silly man-bun? Or does he think it makes him look like he’s been out doing field work and has some knowledge of what he is talking about?