1953 Communist Art, slightly modified

The Utopian Vision Driving Green Energy Enthusiasts

Essay by Eric Worrall

A glorious vision of green steel, green cement, green fertiliser, green hydrogen and a green energy export business. Prosperity revitalised. Shame the numbers don’t add up.

Albanese just laid out a radical new vision for Australia in the region: clean energy exporter and green manufacturer

John Mathews Professor Emeritus, Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University

Elizabeth Thurbon Scientia Associate Professor in International Relations / International Political Economy, UNSW Sydney

Hao Tan Associate Professor, Newcastle Business School, University of Newcastle

Sung-Young Kim Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Discipline of Politics & International Relations, Macquarie School of Social Sciences, Macquarie University

Published: July 14, 2022 6.03am AEST

Our clean and green transition is bigger than just renewables

Since Labor took office, we’ve heard a lot about our future as a renewables superpower. Often overlooked is the fact this would mean not just generating renewable electricity and green hydrogen at vast scale but also investing in new industries and processes to grasp as many opportunities as we can. 

This would mean investing in upstream industries such as solar array fabrication and electrolyser manufacture, as well as downstream industries such as green steel, green cement and green fertiliser. These new green products would be produced using locally generated supplies of green hydrogen and cheap clean renewable power, as economist Ross Garnaut has outlined. 

Green energy is no longer a niche concern. Australia’s largest companies are leading the way. 

Andrew Forrest’s new spin-off company, Fortescue Future Industries, has begun constructing a $1 billion project building green hydrogen manufacturing components, cabling and renewable generation in central Queensland. This single project is expected to double the global production capacity of green hydrogen. It will make Queensland home to a new green hydrogen fuel and components export industry.

If our new government can pull this off and turn vision to reality, we could embrace a new green growth economy and begin our own green industrial revolution. 

Better yet, Australia could finally make full use of its abundant land and renewable resources to fast-track the clean economic development of our Indo-Pacific neighbours.

Read more: https://theconversation.com/albanese-just-laid-out-a-radical-new-vision-for-australia-in-the-region-clean-energy-exporter-and-green-manufacturer-186815

I understand why people who prize order find this vision beautiful. The world remade, happy workers toiling in the sun, building a better future. A daydream, a worker’s paradise. In my experience though, the authors of such visions rarely picture themselves toiling in the sun alongside the other workers.

The vision of course is false. The numbers don’t add up, and have never added up. S&P’s massive copper shortfall. Billions of tons of material we just don’t have, a government funded chimera, a colossal, doomed waste of resources which will leave us poorer.

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Tom Halla
July 18, 2022 10:05 am

But it uses so many buzzwords the math does not matter/s

Reply to  Tom Halla
July 18, 2022 10:24 am

[HotScot’s reply was to a spam comment since deleted – mods]

Delete this crap, someone, please.

fretslider
Reply to  HotScot
July 18, 2022 10:37 am

Someone tell her she can earn much, much more on Onlyfans…

Mr.
Reply to  fretslider
July 18, 2022 10:47 am

and you know this how, fretslider? 😜

fretslider
Reply to  Mr.
July 18, 2022 11:24 am

It pays to try to know what’s going on..

“Paying my way through college with OnlyFans was the best decision I ever made’”

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/real-life/paying-way-through-college-onlyfans-27474855

Reply to  fretslider
July 18, 2022 6:19 pm

Someone tell her she can earn much, much more on Onlyfans…”

Her?
Who her?

Reply to  HotScot
July 18, 2022 11:05 am

No, HotScot, leave it up. It’s evidence.

Don Perry
Reply to  Tom Halla
July 18, 2022 12:01 pm

MODS: Please don’t let this kind of spam garbage infiltrate this site. Delete and ban the IP address from which it came or there will be a flood of this crap in everything that gets posted.

Mr.
Reply to  Don Perry
July 18, 2022 3:32 pm

MODS: need to insert a “Comment Deleted” note too.

Otherwise the Reply comments get out of kilter.

Reply to  Mr.
July 18, 2022 6:35 pm

It is better to remove the entire comment to eliminate it fully from the thread.

Mr.
Reply to  Sunsettommy
July 18, 2022 8:45 pm

Yeah but as I said, the reply comments get out of kilter.

HotScot’s reply above is not in reply to Tom Halla’s comment.

And so on . . .

Randle Dewees
July 18, 2022 10:08 am

I’d say the backgrounds of the authors don’t add up

Bruce Cobb
July 18, 2022 10:09 am

That’s the beauty of magical thinking. Like with Peter Pan, all you need to do is Believe.

alastair gray
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
July 18, 2022 1:01 pm

And every time I say “Net ZEro is bollocks” a woke greenie dies. Wouldn’t it be nice . . . . . . .

Truthbknown
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
July 18, 2022 1:10 pm

That’s fiction!…

Reply to  Truthbknown
July 18, 2022 2:16 pm

Nonsense. Peter Pan and Tinkerbell are in the WH right now.

KcTaz
Reply to  HotScot
July 19, 2022 1:44 am

There are a couple of characters in the WH now but they sure aren’t those two. Peter Pan and Tinkerbell wouldn’t set foot in the WH.
It would be fun to think of the characters who would but it’s late and I’m going to bed.

Gerry, England
Reply to  HotScot
July 19, 2022 6:24 am

They would most likely do a better job than Dementia Joe and Commie Kamala.

Joe Crawford
Reply to  Gerry, England
July 19, 2022 6:46 am

“They would most likely do a better job than Dementia Joe and Commie Cackling Kamala.”
— corrected.

Craig from Oz
Reply to  Truthbknown
July 18, 2022 7:56 pm

Not slur fiction by associating it with The Conversation, please.

Martin
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
July 18, 2022 10:00 pm

Don’t forget the fairy dust.

The Real Engineer
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
July 19, 2022 12:53 am

Is that “make believe?”

July 18, 2022 10:11 am

A glorious vision of green steel, green cement, green fertilizer, green hydrogen and a green energy export business.
________________________________________________

https://youtu.be/FQBISd0rZpA?t=40

July 18, 2022 10:17 am

But I like gray cement.
(I’d love to have a green lawn. But a green driveway…)

Reply to  Gunga Din
July 18, 2022 3:38 pm

You can get green (red, brown, probably any color … I haven’t seen blue) but green, like all green stuff, costs about 30% more.

Curious George
July 18, 2022 10:19 am

Not a single technical type there. Why should they be good at math?

Reply to  Curious George
July 19, 2022 6:20 am

My thoughts too: none of them are engineers or hard scientists. They have spent a lifetime in academia producing nothing of any worth. (I notice that John Matthews is into the “circular economy” – junk theory)

July 18, 2022 10:20 am

If you scratch any these green things is there red underneath?

Richard Page
Reply to  Gunga Din
July 18, 2022 11:52 am

It should be – it’s all built on blood.

Ron Long
July 18, 2022 10:24 am

Once again I find myself fretting over whether this Greenie CAGW crowd is stupid, dishonest, or some combination of the two. However, for sure it’s the same thing as our parents told us: follow the money.

Reply to  Eric Worrall
July 18, 2022 2:14 pm

Socialism? Orderly?

I don’t think anyone has ever accused Joe Biden of that.

Old Man Winter
Reply to  Eric Worrall
July 18, 2022 2:42 pm

“the problem with your parable is we’re the weeds”

Nomination: Best Comeback Evah! (still ROFLMAO 15 min later)

He was destined to join a cult & the Commie Cult got there first!

LdB
Reply to  Eric Worrall
July 18, 2022 10:03 pm

What is not to like about socialism you get to stay home and play computer games and you get your living wage and percentage of the countries resources for free. What could possibly go wrong with that vision 🙂

J. R.
Reply to  Eric Worrall
July 18, 2022 11:07 pm

Were Russian citizens sent in an orderly fashion to the gulags?

Reply to  J. R.
July 19, 2022 2:11 am

Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-Trudovykh Lagerey ,

Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps

https://gulagmap.ru

July 18, 2022 10:26 am

The Industrial Revolution put a satisfactory end to our last Green Utopia; its principle features being – poverty, starvation, appalling health, a short hard life and dreadful child mortality rates.

Mr.
Reply to  HotScot
July 18, 2022 10:52 am

Unlike Mao’s revolution, which REINTRODUCED poverty, starvation, appalling health, a short hard life and dreadful child mortality rates.

John_C
Reply to  Mr.
July 18, 2022 4:00 pm

To be fair, much of China had never gotten beyond the poverty, starvation, appalling health, short hard life, and dreadful child mortality. Mao just ensured that those evil people who had managed to improve their lives without worshiping him, were cut down. (Some of) the people following Mao had their lives improved.

IAMPCBOB
Reply to  John_C
July 22, 2022 1:29 pm

Most people who were educated and intelligent, or proficient in the arts, were, let us say, eliminated. Those who remained were the well-known sheep, cowed and obedient to Mao! These are the ones who are currently working the factories and mills. They saw the light, and have no intention of ending up like the others, so yearnings for freedom are FAR from their minds!

Reply to  Eric Worrall
July 18, 2022 2:16 pm

LOL I’m a chemist (retired) BTW

Mr.
Reply to  Eric Worrall
July 18, 2022 3:34 pm

Careful Eric.
Twiggy will be offering you a job.

John_C
Reply to  Eric Worrall
July 18, 2022 4:06 pm

A friend of mine talked of filling balloons with an oxyacetylene rig, attaching a brick and a short fuse, and dropping a paper bag with the lit assembly in street intersections from a moving car after dark. They’d usually be a couple blocks away before it woke the neighborhood. Never their neighborhood.

Reply to  Eric Worrall
July 18, 2022 5:46 pm

But this time it’ll be different.

The Real Engineer
Reply to  Retired_Engineer_Jim
July 19, 2022 1:00 am

Interestingly a good oxy-acetylene explosion is much better than a plain hydrogen-air one, its the carbon and oxygen that does it. Now consider why hydrogen cars are a really bad idea, I know, it is because Carbon is a much better fuel! So petrol is best…..

IAMPCBOB
Reply to  Eric Worrall
July 22, 2022 1:32 pm

Agreed, and I will NOT be buying an electric vehicle in this lifetime, either! All I see in news is stories about them exploding and/or bursting into flames! When one does ignite there isn’t any electricity to even open the doors! The ONLY good thing I have ever read about them is how QUIET they are, especially when they stop running.

July 18, 2022 10:28 am

This single project is expected to double the global production capacity of green hydrogen.

Doubling nothing, is nothing isn’t it?

The Real Engineer
Reply to  HotScot
July 19, 2022 1:03 am

Hm, I wonder where they are getting the electricity from? It seems that everyone is short already, so the price will rocket up, and all to save the planet?

Reply to  The Real Engineer
July 19, 2022 10:23 am

A mere detail. The left knows precisely what it’s doing……….

Peter
Reply to  The Real Engineer
July 22, 2022 5:02 am

They will clear a huge area of farmland and forest for Renewables. It’s where I live in Qld. Then a huge area of desert in Western Australia, you will see it from space. Water to clean the panels,,, a giant deal plant powered by more panels.

The environmental impact will be truly devastating, possibly tens of square miles.

Felix
July 18, 2022 10:35 am

I always get a kick out of Greenies who accuse libertarians of imagining an impossible utopia. There’s a big difference between a fiscal and physical impossibility and a mere philosophical unlikeliness.

MarkW
July 18, 2022 10:35 am

It will leave us poorer, but it will leave them richer. Which after all, was the real goal.

fretslider
July 18, 2022 10:35 am

Green – wet behind the ears – politician

Jam tomorrow as they say…

July 18, 2022 10:37 am

We have reached a point where we are forced to finance virtuous sounding programs instigated by math and economics challenged celebrities who become celebrities simply by espousing their virtuous sounding program time and time again in the various media outlets….who are voted into power by those who simply recognize the celebrity names on the ballot…those voters being a larger percentage than the voters who actually study what the candidates have said. In the end, the situation probably will result in a citizen’s revolt with a dictator holding the reins of power.

July 18, 2022 10:38 am

Just watched Justin Rowlatt go full Griff on BBC News tonight

fretslider
Reply to  Ben Vorlich
July 18, 2022 11:10 am

Get better soon!

markl
July 18, 2022 10:46 am

Typical exaggeration with usual lies thrown in to promise everyone life will be better if you just follow the ideology.

July 18, 2022 10:48 am

Greenhorn.
Someone who hasn’t a clue.
If the cap fits …….. .

dk_
July 18, 2022 10:48 am

Just think about what’s in store

When people start doin’ what they oughta be doin’

Then they won’t be booin’ no more

When a President goes through the White House door

Does what he says he’ll do

We’ll all be drinkin’ that free bubble-ubb

And eatin’ that rainbow stew

Eatin’ rainbow stew in a silver spoon

Underneath that sky of blue\

Merle Haggard

Reply to  dk_
July 18, 2022 11:08 am
fretslider
July 18, 2022 11:20 am

“…we could embrace a new green growth economy”

How many solar panel cleaners will be needed?

Reply to  fretslider
July 18, 2022 2:11 pm

You do’t imagine anyone will be paid do you?

J. R.
Reply to  fretslider
July 18, 2022 11:15 pm

Is that the 21st Century version of a chimney sweep?

paul courtney
Reply to  fretslider
July 19, 2022 10:26 am

Mr. slider: Dunno how many, but Jill Biden says they’ll be as diverse as breakfast tacos!! So, probably alot.

Rud Istvan
July 18, 2022 11:26 am

Certainly are a lot of critically thinking challenged folks out there. Let’s use ‘green’ wind and solar that is inherently expensive and intermittent to power inherently (because of intermittency) underutilized electrolyzers to make green hydrogen which we cannot store or transport unless liquified cryogenically via more inherently expensive and intermittant wind and solar in a therefore inherently underutilized (because of intermittency) cryogenic liquifaction facility.

Great concept, green hydrogen. Except not in reality. Going to be a lot of wasted $Aus. Will make Solyndra look cheap.

J. R.
Reply to  Rud Istvan
July 18, 2022 11:18 pm

A Rube Goldberg machine where the parts don’t work.

Mr.
July 18, 2022 11:29 am

“Nothing “green” ever works properly.”

  • Tim Blair
July 18, 2022 11:30 am

Glorious vision of green..
This is the green build back better LOONS in a nutshell..
Magic batteries for all…
A 50’s tv show…My favorite episode ever 😉 If you have a 1/2 hour to kill, this is a great video..
Science Fiction Theatre The Magic Suitcase
An old man and his grandson invite a lost hitchhiker to stay the night at their vacation cabin. The stranger disappears, but leaves behind a suitcase that generates huge amounts of electricity. Grandpa turns it over to scientists who are clueless as to how this simple device makes so much power.
My favorite episode ever 😉
https://dai.ly/x25362c 

Bob Meyer
Reply to  upcountrywater
July 18, 2022 1:59 pm

I saw that episode when if first aired. Then I thought of myself as the grandson, now I’m the granddad. But neither of us was dumb enough to believe it.

Richard Patton
July 18, 2022 11:36 am

All of us poorer has always been the goal as I discovered when I did a paper for english comp 25 years ago. Not only that, but they feel that all the land between the Cascades-Sierra Mountains and the Rockies should be human free AND the ‘sustainable’ human population, world wide, should be 200million.

Call me a skeptic
Reply to  Richard Patton
July 18, 2022 11:48 am

Ah yes, green utopia. We won’t mind that we”re all broke , freeze in the winter and swelter in the summer. Because of course, we would be living in a green utopia. Thank God for the 2nd amendment. 500 million guns in the US tells me the greenies will not be successful here.

Reply to  Call me a skeptic
July 18, 2022 2:09 pm

Covid death shots are no respecters of firearms.

Deano
Reply to  HotScot
July 18, 2022 11:46 pm

Some of us remain purebloods, and continue to refuse to get the death shot.

Reply to  Deano
July 19, 2022 10:24 am

I’m still waiting for the trials to finish in 2023 before making my decision.

Reply to  Richard Patton
July 18, 2022 5:50 pm

Damn, I thought that it was 500 million.

Reply to  Retired_Engineer_Jim
July 19, 2022 8:57 am

Apparently 100 million have been lost in boating accidents…

edit: oops, wrong reply

July 18, 2022 11:45 am

Nice picture, except Comrade Albanese’s profile is hidden by the lady’s arm.

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