Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Everyone who slammed Australia in the lead up to COP26, for failing to realise our renewable energy “superpower” potential, are now being asked to put up some of their own money.
Australia calls for foreign investment to fund its clean energy target
By Eryk Bagshaw
November 15, 2021 — 5.00amSingapore: Finance Minister Simon Birmingham will plead for foreign investors to return to Australia as Chinese investment evaporates and the Morrison government relies on the private sector to fund its net zero plan.
The pitch to foreign investors at a major Asian investment conference in Singapore on Monday will aim to recast Australia from climate laggard to climate leader.
The government’s technology investment road map is expected to result in up to $20 billion being invested over the next 10 years, but the government is targeting $60 billion in investment from the private sector – much of it from overseas.
“Inbound investment into Australia is so crucial if we are to realise the potential business growth in these sectors,” Birmingham will tell the Milken Institute on Monday.
Australia is the world’s 13th largest economy but is ranked 53rd by population size, leaving it reliant on foreign capital to pump up its economy and investments in expensive clean energy technology such as hydrogen. The Milken Institute Asia Summit also features former US treasury secretaries Steven Mnuchin and Lawrence Summers, along with representatives from two of the world’s largest investment fund managers, BlackRock and Blackstone.
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Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/australia-calls-for-foreign-investment-to-fund-its-clean-energy-target-20211114-p598sv.html
The sad part is Australian politicians mostly actually believe in the hydrogen economy hype, and Australia’s imaginary renewable energy potential.
I would have loved to present this story as a political joke, a successful geopolitical point scoring move against the climate hypocrite leaders of Europe.
But the real joke is on Australia, and Australia’s politicians, who mostly appear to genuinely believe that if they put up $20 billion of Aussie taxpayer’s money, private capital shall rush in and help Australia to create a lucrative new green hydrogen export industry.
I would rank that in the same risk category as investing in China.
This is worse.
It’s a reverse trick of the US infrastructure bill (haven’t researched it myself so far but would be surprised if the info is wrong)
The infrastructure bill is about selling out infrastructure to foreign (= bilderberg investors hiding their asian proxies)
to increase dependency and potential for blackmail.
Your social credit score is bad , you’ll be cancelled by the foreign energy providers the same way facebook ,instagram is cancelling you for exposing Bidens use of the n word
or other wrongthink .
Btw – I’m no expert in terms of financing but I’m sure that Australia is full of rich white leftist guys(400K millionaires and 43 billionaires) ,so getting 60 billion for stupid energy should be easy – so why should they search the money elsewhere?
Btw; The Aussie moneybags got their cash by knowing what is what.
They aren’t going to throw it away on harebrained schemes like this.
Forget hydrogen, Oz is in the perfect position to supply the world with cheap steal.
Just one railway line carrying our east coast coal, to our west coast iron ore, & iron ore back to our coal, & we could have the cheapest steel mills in the world at each site, & no empty return trip as it is with exporting both..
We have high quality iron ore, & the best thermal & coking coal in the world, & flog both off rather than value add when it is a sitting fortune maker if we did it.
That sounds like a good idea. Australia’s open spaces would make it easier to lay new track without too much disruption of people’s lives.
If Australia really believed the global warming models, they would go nuclear. But of course the green blob opposes nuclear, demonstrating their other motives.
The most interesting thing about all these eco marx…green & woke all around the western world is that they ALL not only share the same self destructive values but also the same contradictions.
So if greenie woke in USA and UK is anti nuclear,so are those in NZ,Austrilalia,Germany,Canada
If greenie woke in USA and UK are atheists who criticize the crap out of christianity but kiss islams butt so is the rest in all western countries.
If greenie US&UK woke is protesting a single george floyd while at the same time ignoring that millions of blacks being enslaved the greenie woke in the rest of the western world will instantly adopt these horrible double standards.
The same with climate,lgbt, obama is Messiah – trump is the devil, etc. Etc.
That’s especially interesting if we consider that even the most rigid and tyrannical systems in history never achieved such a massive submission lack of individual and diverse opinion in all relevant topics.
As if the greenie woke is an artificial creation with only one purpose – to parrot all the shit of Hollywood, NYT and BBC –
The American playwright and Hollywood movie script author (The Edge, The Verdict) David Mamet’s autobiographical conversion tale from Chicago Liberal to Free Market Conservative in The Secret Knowledge On the Dismantling of American Culture (2011) describes in eloquent prose the herd mentality of the Leftist mind and why he left the herd as a mature adult after reading FA Hayek (The Road to Serfdom) and Thomas Sowell’s (Knowledge and Decision) and other books.
Both classical free market economists pointed out that there are no solutions to social problems-only tradeoffs. The cost of a tradeoff can be quite severe and punishing for society as a whole. Most of President Lincoln’s decisions made during The American Civil War 1861-1865 can be assessed in this way. The war to preserve the Union became one of Emancipation and the dissolution of the American South as a Slave State within a Free Republic. He never lived to see the 13,14, and 15th Amendments that forever changed the US Constitution written with multiple trade offs to win approval.
Sowell at one point in his academic training prior to entering a grad program at the University of Chicago was a self declared Marxist as were many of his generation.
The Democratic Party Left especially its Climate Change Alarmists, feminists, gays, transgender, BLM, AntiFa, Red China- CCP Panda huggers, and NeoMarxist Academic brigades have no patience for or understanding of the necessity for tradeoffs.
They are ignorant, fearful, hateful, deceitful, and delusional people, both the victims and the perpetrators of identity propaganda mimes that they spread like highly contagious virus particles that poison the minds and the reasoning ability of all they touch and influence. They have lost touch with reality as the ultimate validation of theory or computer modeling and confuse the map for the terrain.
Tom, they have gone Partial Nuclear, recently ordering nuke powered subs from Uncle Sam. I suspect we both would agree this not likely to actually get Ozzies to go full nuclear. Shame.
Sorta correct, Ron.
We have signed a new military technology sharing agreement as part of AUKUS (which if you have ever dealt with ITAR is actually a VERY interesting agreement… maybe.)
We have also declared that our strategic requirements in the middle to long term will not be filled solely by conventional boats (there is an implication reading between the lines that the RAN may operate both SS and SSN in parallel to suit the strengths and weaknesses of the two types. The Collins class boats are to be given upgrades and kept in service – a point usually missed by most commentators) and our RAN future is to involve SSN boats.
Exactly who the boats are purchased from is open to discussion. It is HIGHLY likely to be locked into either US or UK suppliers but is unlikely to be a straight MOTS solution.
Hunter, although based on the UK design, will not be MOTS, so there is no reason to believe the nuke boats will be either.
There is an interesting point that most people overlook – the military do not have to comply with civilian regulations, but tend to out of convenience and the fact the effort required to comply is normally not major relative to the rewards.
A simple example for this is vehicle roadworthyness. Military vehicles are, by definition, MILITARY vehicles, are usually designed to kill our enemies while protecting the crews involved and civilian road rules come way down the list.
So, with regards to the nuke boats there is more than likely the ability to look at all the Green Protests and waving of papers and tell them to go cry into their Soy.
Personally I was a bit shocked. I NEVER through we as a country would ever be mature enough to even discuss nuclear power. Hey, nice to be surprised every so often.
How the ADF use of nuclear power transfers into possible future civilian use? Dunno. Baby steps.
(disclaimer – I spent over 2 years mining uranium. I also once spent about 4 months on a job adding extra bike lanes to a major inner city road. One of those jobs I was ethically opposed to at the time and – spoiler – it wasn’t mining. Read my motivations and biases as you will 😀 )
It is sad that China, India, and Pakistan are adding more nu clear generating capacity than the developed Western countries combined.
Recently the UK ordered modular nuclear generators from Rolls Royce, subject to them completing development, and Australia has agreed to participate.
The UK will also be the supplier of a new design nuclear submarine for the RAN and the RN with Rolls Royce power, and now a top priority project.
as far as we are aware the worlds first nuclear chain reaction took place in Australia, strangely enough a very LONG time ago, caused by build up of radioactive fluvial deposits in a river basin Just a shame that homosapiens were not around at the time to capitalize on it.
There was a natural nuclear chain reaction in Africa, too, I believe. Not sure of the timeframe.
The Greens are communists pure and simple. They are spreading communism while we think they are saving the environment. More fool us. An example: First destroy the rain forest and the uran utang’s habitat and then plant palm oil in a monoculture. Produce palm oil that no one wants and rattle the can at shopping centres to save the primates. Madness yet people fall for it every day. The Greens are destroying our economy and our community so as communism can take over with free stuff and all you have to do is submit.
Take a knee, beg, good boy, girl? Perhaps.
The Green lever.
“Take a knee”
Well, you can take my left one, (full of rheumatoid arthritis) PLEASE.
The Canberra “leaders” got fed slops by their green masters in Treasury and thought it was prime steak. Now they want the rest of us to eat it too.
“Sure, we’ll do it if you’ll pay for it” is code for “give us money and we’ll spend it as we please with just enough results to show we’re trying”. The UN promised gobs of money from the West and every nation wants in on it. So who’s going to pay AGW bill for the West when they give all their money away? Typical Marxist demand …….. give us the money you earned through Capitalism so we can spend it on what we want until you run out then we’ll rob the people until there’s nothing but squalor remaining.
“The government’s technology investment road map is expected to result in up to $20 billion being invested over the next 10 years, but the government is targeting $60 billion in investment from the private sector – much of it from overseas.”
**********
Among governments of the world and the environmental movement, the lack of scientific literacy is getting more and more costly as time goes by. Unless they are talking nuclear power here, stupidity and and the squandering of vast amounts of money seem to be going hand in hand.
So they learned nothing from the previous Rudd Labor government’s vaporization of a paltry $90 million of taxpayers’ money on Tim Flannery’s “Hot Rocks” thermal power generation bullsh1t?
A visionary leader would see Oz as a burgeoning island of cheap, reliable coal-fired electricity just made for heavy industry production using readily available iron ore and all other necessary ingredients, girt by sea and peppered with reliable ports.
Learning nothing and Green Energy go hand in hand. If you learned from the mistakes of others, you wouldn’t do RE.
Are all economists really technically and scientifically illiterate?
Only the ones paid by Governments, Universities and MSM Editors.
the “dismal profession”
I have yet to understand how Hydrogen can be produced in large enough quantities to produce energy that will surpass fossil fuels.
If anyone can tell me how the above can possibly happen, please contact me.
This will not surpass fossil fuels but you may be interested…. http://plasmakinetics.com
Simon Birmingham is one of the dimmest and woke Australian politician. He’s from that money shredder called SA.
All the green energy industries need government subsidies to be economically viable. If the Australian government wants the private sector to invest it needs to provide them with a guaranteed profit. Government “seed” money can’t encourage investment when the businesses are money losers.
This is so stupid it takes my breath away. They acknowledge that renewables are expensive and they can’t afford them, so why the hell are they going down that path? Think about it if even one third the money wasted on renewables was spent on non renewables i.e. fossil fuels or nuclear we would have far more usable energy for a third the cost.
“why the hell are they going down that path?”
To keep the Earth from getting trivially warmer.
“Australia is the world’s 13th largest economy but is ranked 53rd by population size, leaving it reliant on foreign capital to pump up its economy and investments in expensive clean energy technology such as hydrogen.”
Honestly, where do they get such people to write such unconnected twaddle? I do hope no human was actually paid money to come up with such a paragraph that could have been produced by a second rate AI program.
Former Aussie Labor PM Paul Keating put it best, rather pithy this week :
Australia will pay a price for its shambolic foreign policy
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/540108-paul-keating-australia-foreign-policy/
Not everyone in Australia believes the shambollocks!
Morrison’s plan allows for a modest contribution from the governent whilst allowing market forces to invest if they see a potential profit. Most of us here would agree that there is little potential in renewables, lets see what happens . .
I should qualify what I have just in that there is one renewable with all the potential and that is Nuclear power. And eventually it will happen . .
Prime Minister Morrison is the man who sullied the hallowed halls of parliament with a lump of coal (shudder), he trips off to the revivalist gathering in Glasgow and comes back a ‘born again’ climate crusader.
Hydrogen? Here we go again:
Here in Canada the CDN Prairies with PNG & Very Low sulphur content thermal coal has subsidized Canada’s health/social programs, capital projects & federal govt grants for 60 years but central Canada is gung ho on shutting down fossil fuels but getting any extra money for new infrastructure gets a deaf ear.
I don’t believe CO2 is causing ‘climate change’ but recognize many do but what is unacceptable is for the rest of Canada refusing to help the CDN prairies restructure its economy
If the CDN government shut down auto production in Ontario so save those future autos from burning gasoline and diesel fuel, there would be an immediate citizen’s revolt….but shut down oil production in the West…heck, just tell everyone it’s an existential necessity that requires a phased in $170/ton CO2 tax, and if those cars result in oil being brought in from Saudi, well it needs a $170/tonne emissions tax too…..anyone catching onto the forked tongue approach?
Invest in “net zero”…..put in a buck, get back 20 cents….a few years after politicians decide the subsidies are no longer perceived by voters as beneficial.
The clear, tested solution to all these “problems” is to get the many bureaucratic and political fingers out of the economy, to let projects proceed on the known principles of free enterprise.
STOP SUBSIDISING!!! Look at rooftop solar subsidies, electric car subsidies, wind turbines subsidises when there is no wind. …. On and on and on.
Taxpayers and ratepayers are seldom consulted about whether they agree or disagree with a subsidy. Yet they are forced to pay taxes and rates. Kiss your money goodbye. Subsidies have no place in a free market, which passes or fails approval based on its perceived viability ,- perceived by its backers, not by a nameless body of bureaucrats.
Resist the concept of the subsidy.
Keep enough cash to buy copies of “Atlas Shrugged” to give to as many people as you can. Geoff S
13th largest economy begging for money?
Of course it has to beg; up to eyeballs in government and personal debt, welfare state wall to wall, hi expectations with low work ethics, etc
I think this article has got Australia backwards. After a long time thinking that Scott Morrison (Aussie Prime Minister) was getting everything wrong, I now think that he gets the situation a lot better than most and that he is steering Australia very cleverly. I hope I am right.
The point is this: Australia is a small player, and if it steps out of line there is a serious risk that the world’s banksters will punish it severely (they have threatened to raise interest rates on Australia by 1.5% if it steps out of line, for example). So Scott Morrison has a difficult path to tread. What he is saying is that Australia will get to net-zero as demanded by others, and to get there he will let those others put in the money for it. That looks like a fair argument to me: if there are such great benefits from net-zero, then investment will surely flow in.
In other words, Scott Morrison is saying “put your money where your mouth is”.
I’m sure there are a lot of messages circulating that ScoMo is secretly playing a long game, because I’ve seen it all before, when UK PM David Cameron received support from Euroskeptics for his leadership bid by circulating rumours that he was pro-Brexit, that he hated the EU.
The problem with the secret insider game is it is all deniable. Politicians can only be held accountable for their public statements.
An example being Scott Morrison’s several times repeated public statement that Australia has “an aspirational goal” to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 based on research and development for new technology, if possible.
And now a published PLAN to achieve that aspirational goal.
Around 2006 the Government of Australia sold gold bar reserves for a substantial profit as the gold price was rising, the Opposition criticised the timing of the sale and complained that a bigger profit could have been achieved. Treasurer Costello pointed out that the profit achieved as significant and that gold bar reserves are not so important for Australia because the known reserves of gold and silver yet to be mined was far more than most developed nations gold bar and/or still to be mined gold.
And then add the many other deposits of minerals and energy in Australia.
And I agree with the above comment, PM Morrison and his Cabinet Ministers have handled the climate hoax politics very well.
If Australia needs more money, they should dig up some more of that gold.
Aussies are often accused of having an odd sense of humour. Especially, Americans often do not ‘get it’.
Here is an Aussie take on this cursed confrontation of climate change arguments, consuming the energies of some people so deeply in their fight to take ownership, that they fail with the fun thinks in life.
Geoff S
http://www.geoffstuff.com/dogfight.mp4
Even worse we have people spruiking Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)
Another thing we should be doing in Australia when play the Game of Victims is claiming Developing Nation status.
It might work, and in which case the ‘developed’ nations may have to give us money, and if it doesn’t it will wedge the Greens.
After all, we are either a developing nation and need international support so that Australians don’t live in dried creek beds using passing dogs for warmth, or we are a developed nation and everyone lives in ethically sourced rainbows and the hideous problems of drug/alcohol/sexual abuse do not happen.
Some Australians live in utter poverty. Is it not the responsibility of a country’s leaders to deal with that problem first?
True, but governments Federal and State share that responsibility and many have tried to help the disadvantaged people with limited success. And despite allocating billions of dollars for their welfare including housing projects, and as a former State Cabinet Minister told me houses that far too often are vandalised within a few years after being built. The people actually prefer to live outdoors.
I wish there was a way to better deal with the many problems. The Federal Government even established the Australian Aborigine & Torres Strait Islanders Commission (ATSIC) staffed with representatives of the people and very well funded, from memory in the period around 2000 the budget provision amounted to $50K a year for every man, women and child identifying as indigenous. That includes many or most of mixed ancestry. It was a billion dollar plus investment by taxpayers. ATSIC was shut down because of widespread fraud and lack of governance.
There is no medical test to claim to be indigenous, a claimant only needs a couple of other indigenous people to accept them and then they are eligible for the welfare benefits etc. However, those people are around 3 per cent of the population.
Listen carefully to the Australian Prime Minister speaking about net zero emissions, that is not the subject of a signed agreement, it is he says “an aspirational goal” and the plan includes research and development for new technology to achieve the plan, if possible.
Why doesn’t their Daddy Whore Bucks little Georgie Soros pay for it all?
good luck with that.
And if those investors DON’T PUT UP, I’m sure they’ll SHUT UP.
No, wait, they’ll still sic their media lap dogs on the D Nye ERZ
Government Bonds are how Australia borrows money guaranteed by the Federal Government and with an enormous asset backing to secure investor’s monies coupled to political stability.