Essay by Eric Worrall
Australia’s energy and environment minister Chris Bowen has revealed his vision for an Australian renewable superpower which creates lots of well paid green jobs.
Push to cut emissions by 43pc will need an ‘enormous new workforce’
Jacob Greber Senior correspondent
Aug 23, 2022 – 4.41pmThe Albanese government’s push to cut emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 will unleash an employment demand wave that will severely test the nation’s ability to train and source offshore workers.
A “mini jobs summit” in Parliament House in Canberra with 70 to 80 green groups, think tanks, industry lobbies and unions organised by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen ahead of next week’s national jobs summit heard a series of calls for the government to manage the transition.
Labor is particularly eager to emphasise the potential upside of its climate change agenda, which Mr Bowen said could generate more than 600,000 jobs by 2030.
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“We’re going to need an enormous new workforce to address issues around sovereign capability and manufacturing, and reducing our reliance on vulnerable supply chains, and make sure the geographic dispersal of that workforce is done the right way.
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Read more: https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/push-to-cut-emissions-by-43pc-will-need-an-enormous-new-workforce-20220823-p5bc4t
Energy and Environment Minister Chris Bowen explaining how easy it is to store electricity;
Bowen’s message is an appeal to people who yearn for a return to Australia’s manufacturing golden age, which peaked in the late 1950s, before greedy government tax grabs locked in a long term decline. The introduction of capital gains tax in 1985, and the beginning of Australia’s high cost green energy obsession in the 90s possibly dealt the death blow to an already weakened industry.
As Western taxes and heavy handed economic meddling soared in the latter half of the 20th century, Asia presented an irresistible lure to manufacturers, by providing a predictable, low tax, low cost business environment. Taxes stayed at 21% or below in China’s case, throughout the entire period that Australian energy costs and taxes soared. Most manufacturers had no choice, they had to follow the money or perish at the hands of their Asian competitors.
The solution to Australia’s economic woes is obvious. But Bowen doesn’t appear to get any of this, perhaps because for his entire life he has been a left wing activist, and has no experience of running a business. Bowen doesn’t appear to understand that government money is rarely a path to national prosperity – success stories like the spinoff benefits of the Apollo programme are the exception rather than the norm. Low taxes and predictable costs were and are the keystones of the Asian miracle.
In Chris Bowen’s fantasy world we really can store electricity like water, high tax high cost Australia can out compete China at manufacturing, on the back of expensive, unreliable green energy, with a little government help, it really is worth training people long before the jobs are ready, and hundreds of thousands of well paid workers will be required in the green energy factories of the future.
Sadly millions of Australians desperately want to believe in Bowen’s fairy tale.
If you are interested on more background on the impact of taxes on manufacturing, the Asian Miracle, and why government meddling doesn’t work, The Trillion Pound Horror Story is an excellent documentary which delves into these issues. The same people also produced The Great Global Warming Swindle.
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They actually believe forcing 72 people to change a light bulb is how you create jobs.
Fooling the voters from the high tower is a full-time job. It does require a heavy dose of lobbyist nonsense designed to win the day with short term gain and long term deflection, distraction, or avoidance. That short-term gain provides a gold mine for the lobbyists and the political promoters. A good analogy is stock broker pitchmen for new investment strategies that the customers or trustees don’t fully understand and have never stress tested. That short-term gain is increased fees and bonuses while the clock ticks away on another costly dead end idea or hidden-risk time bomb.
The shift to Asian production was an anti-union (labor cost) move and some anti-enviro cost and regulation move. Since that shift started the enviro and regs barrier has grown 5x and the likelihood of reversal of significance is small. I think everyone knows that, but it still leaves room to play lobbyists messaging games like promoting part-time solar install jobs as permanent or replacement jobs as new. As usual, the highest cost per watt renewable activity of installing solar on residential roofs is over-counted while subsidizing the least competitive activity to expand it. These should be taken as clues by the educated observers.
kinda stupid to believe that more workers to produce less electricity is progress
‘“We’re going to need an enormous new workforce to address issues around sovereign capability and manufacturing, and reducing our reliance on vulnerable supply chains, and make sure the geographic dispersal of that workforce is done the right way.’
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I presume from this statement that the Aussie govt plans on manufacturing their solar panels and wind turbines in house, correct?
Do they plan on starting and opening up the mines necessary for the raw materials for these solar panels and wind turbines? Or are they going to buy everything from China?
If they plan on doing all of this in house, I find it rather ironic when one considers that Australia has vast reserves of uranium and thorium for nuclear power — some of the largest in the world. The energy density of nuclear has wind and solar beat by a mile, or more.
I can’t even begin to imagine what the logic and reasoning is to justify this road that Australia is going down. But of course, they are not alone. It’s like a disease that spreads as fast or faster than COVID did. It is like the quote from the old 19th century book that says humanity loses its mind in great herds and only comes to its senses slowly, and one by one.
It’s worse than that. They are counting temporary jobs in utility scale with imported panels and a lot of jobs in the high cost, low productivity rooftop segment. That’s after sidestepping all the failed demonstration projects to nowhere like concentrating solar with mirrors.
If you have the same amount of product being generated by 10 times as many workers, then by definition, each worker must be paid only 1/10th as much.
The idea that you can make people richer by lowering productivity is something so dumb, that only a socialist or an academic could believe it.
Bye, bye Australia….in a few short years the constant hum of fossil fuel generators will fill the suburbs across Australia because of Bowen.
Bowen… ”we can store the renewable energy if we have the investment”
What a tool.
That’s a lot of labor hours and investment. I wonder what better uses the labor hours and investments could have been applied to. Things that benefit peoples’ lives. Things they want. Can’t see how a less reliable electric grid benefits anyone except the people who made money building it. The opportunity cost is huge.
For context: In July 2022, Australian employment was 13,558,400 people.
They are using the same green jobs lobbyist claim that was used elsewhere. Too bad it only works on the uninformed.
Hey dumb down the productivity and you can claim even more jobs.
Irony – a man claiming that water is easy to store and control in a country that has regular and damaging flood, many of which could (should?) have been prevented by better use of dams.
Well done, Chris. Hope Penny gives you a nice pat on the head.
Another worthless administrator/bureaucrat, what more can I say?
I am deliberately putting off my departure from this mortal coil so ‘I can see that’.
Bowen has swallowed and seemingly bathed in the green kool-aid. The link is quite a good overview of the minerals aspect of the green nonsense.
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/mines-minerals-green-energy-reality-checkMM.pdf
Labor promised this during the electoral cycle. It’s rubbish, they knew it was rubbish but knew that the average voter would be sucked in by it. It’ll be as green job creating as Obama’s was.
Bowen makes a sack of potatoes look smart.
Bowen is an idiot. He has had portfolios in the past, immigration and treasury, in both of which he failed miserably. In a government of dim light bulbs Chris’ is barely visible. His policies may create jobs but he fails to subtract the millions of jobs that will be lost. He is convinced that wind plus batteries is cheaper than coal or nuclear. A back of the envelope calculation finds that to replace an 1800 MW coal plant, to shut next year, will cost 1800 wind turbines, miles of new transmission and 14 South Australian batteries ($100 million each) to keep the lights on if the wind stops for ONE hour. If it stops for 36 hours as it did in June he will need 36*14 batteries. Since Turbines and batteries only last 20 years and 12 respectively the cost keeps going up. My estimate to replace that coal burner over its life of 60 years with wind and batteries is $240 billion at today’s prices. Chris thinks that is cheaper but then he is probably only thinking about the wind component. As I said he is an idiot.