Essay by Eric Worrall
If it is a profitable opportunity, why is government intervention required to make it happen?
Australia could become the world’s first net-zero exporter of fossil fuels – here’s how
Published: June 18, 2025 6.09am AEST
Frank Jotzo Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy and Director, Centre for Climate and Energy Policy, Australian National University
Annette Zou Senior Researcher, Centre for Climate and Energy Policy, Australian National University
…
Emissions embedded in Australia’s exports do not count towards our national emissions targets. But they contribute to climate change – and they’re the reason for Australia’s international reputation as a fossil-fuel economy.
On the bright side, Australia boasts huge potential for low-cost renewable energy and a knack for resource industries.
We can, and should, become a “renewable energy superpower”. This term refers to the potential for Australia to use its bountiful renewable energy resources to make commodities such as iron, ammonia and other products and fuels in “green” or low-emissions ways.
So how does Australia give salience to this idea on the global stage, while our fossil fuel exports continue? The solution could be a new net-zero target for Australia, in which emissions from green exports are tallied up against those from fossil fuel exports.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/australia-could-become-the-worlds-first-net-zero-exporter-of-fossil-fuels-heres-how-259037
There probably is a market for boutique green energy products. If your luxury sports EV costs a million dollars, it probably doesn’t matter if the steel or aluminium used to manufacture that vehicle costs $100 / pound, because it was manufactured using green energy. Likewise, there are people today who are driving hydrogen powered vehicles in California – at least those who haven’t yet blown up.
But is a boutique scale market something which can sustain an entire nation, on the same scale as Australia’s multi-billion dollar fossil fuel exports?
Here’s a thought. Rather than pushing for the government to rig the market, to make your unprofitable green energy scheme look marginally viable, how about waiting until there is a real market for the product? A market whose profit potential genuinely attracts private investment?
That way, Australia’s push to be a “renewable energy superpower” might make money for Australia, instead of draining the productive economy to fund yet another green boondoggle.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
If you really want to know who has the most to gain from Government Grift…Follow The Money
Lies have a difficult time selling because supply so grossly outstrips demand.
Britain won’t become the world’s first net-zero importer of fossil fuels.
Just as well:
Spain’s disastrous national blackout in April was triggered by solar farms switching off in response to plummeting power prices, an official investigation has found.
Plunging prices triggered a mass switch-off, which sent voltage and frequency fluctuations cascading across the national grids of both Spain and Portugal. Back-up systems meant to guard against such fluctuations were not in effect
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/06/18/solar-power-to-blame-for-spains-disastrous-blackout-official-investigation-finds/
A warning to us all.
Why this obsession with “what the world thinks”?
I doubt that the most populous countries in the world like China, African nations, Indonesia, etc etc give a flying fvck what Australia does about its industrial or domestic emissions, because they just don’t matter.
All “the world” wants from Australia is iron ore, coal, gas and uranium.
There are many valid reasons why uncontacted tribes just want to be left alone.
https://survivalinternational.org/articles/487/3604-Uncontacted%20want%20to%20be%20left%20alone
Perhaps these determined uncontacted tribes were once shown a copy of The Guardian as a reason why they should welcome modern civilization.
And they promptly, unanimously said –
“piss off!”
(and can we blame them?)
And the occasional Mad Max movie.
Two “researchers” from Australian National University. Proof positive that if you go there, you get indoctrinated rather than educated.
ANU is short for anus.
I sent them yesterday’s piece about the old CO2 from rivers. No response.
But capitalism is a settler-colonialist conspiracy!! So using wishful thinking, excuse me, green socialist economics is required!!!/s
“Send your money to me, I’m your Uncle, Nutty Z!”
Story Tip
Accpording to a story in the UK Telegraph a Chinese company which makes key components of wind turbines and EVs has gone broke.
The ironic and revealing thing about this story is in the reasons for their demise.
Wigan-based Electric Glass Fiber UK (EGFU), which is owned by Nippon Electric Glass (NEG), makes vital components used in wind turbines and electric cars. Its closure puts net zero supply chains under threat.
Both turbines and EVs are seen by the Government as critical to its industrial strategy amid moves to decarbonise the British economy and to build up domestic supplies of critical products at a time of tariffs, wars and mounting geopolitical rivalries.
The British operation was profitable as recently as 2022, but made losses of £3m in 2023, mounting to £12m in 2024, according to the Japanese owner, which first invested in the UK arm in 2016
.
It blamed competition from Chinese imports as well as the rising cost of raw materials, in financial statements published in last year, which could only be partially passed on to customers in the form of higher prices.
The business also said rising energy prices were putting pressure on operations.
Notice the last line?
This is the end point of the renewables madness. The companies supplying the components will increasingly not be able to afford the power which their equipment generates. The higher the percentage generated by wind and solar, the less viable their business becomes.
So far its just an add on throwaway remark at the end of a story. But its the first sign of a growing crisis. There is only so much you can do to disguise the fact that though the wind is free, using it is prohibitively expensive. And in the end these costs find their way into the power used by the renewables supply chain, and wreck its viability. Of course, they are wrecking the viability of all manufacturing. Look at the cancellations of wind projects, the price rises for what they generate, and you are seeing a failing industry sector. Its only been disguised so far by government subsidies. But as more and more of the electricity supply is generated by these absurdly expensive systems, the damage spreads, until it finally affects the viability of the suppliers, too.
They are not the first to feel the hit from soaring energy costs. But they are among the earlier ones, and if you are assessing the longer term future of wind and solar, this is a key indicator. How this particular world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.
No surprises really here though, Michel.
Not thinking anything through properly is the dominant characteristic of leftism.
It’s a fundamental, well-observed element of their DNA.
Here it’s not money, it’s “you eventually run out of other sources’ energy”
I really doubt that occasional energy from windmills is suitable for industrial production in any case.
So they are going to make products with the most expensive electricity there is, which they will only have due to subsidies, then they will subsidize the products made so that they can export them as net zero?
The subsidies to make the products competitive in a global market would be so high that they’d get hit with trade sanctions from other countries for unfair competition.
I used to describe net zero policies as “when you’ve shot off both feet, aim for the knees”. So now they are going ahead and pulling the trigger on their knees. The subsidy farmers in the meantime will be buying a second yacht.
Government intervention is required to designate profit recipients.
[Australia has a] “huge potential for low-cost renewable energy “
This statement is total Bovex.
We are incapable of building even a single solar panel or wind turbine by ourselves.
And exporting any fake erratic energy produced by Chinese panel and turbines, to anywhere that needs it, is total idiocy.
Indonesia is the closest main user, and they have the capability of plenty of their own coal fired electricity
Australia seems to be full of silly nonsense about renewables. Every once in a while, reality catches up with them. Such as Sun Cable.
Sun Cable collapse leaves Singapore’s solar link to Australia in the balance | South China Morning Post
The idea is utterly preposterous on its face. The notion of running a 2500 km submarine cable from Australia to Singapore to transport solar generated electricity is simply absurd technically, financially, politically. But this is the stupidity you get from some billlionaire grifters working a scam. As could be expected, when you go to their website, they pretend that nothing has happened.
SunCable | Embrace the Sun. Power the Future.
Pah! A 2500km cable is nothing.
Here in the UK ‘X Links’ is proposing a 4000km subsea cable connected to a 1500 square mile solar, wind and battery facility in Morocco. They really seem to believe it is realistic 🙂
I have no idea how renewables are financed in Australia but I can’t imagine it is much different than the US.
“On the bright side, Australia boasts huge potential for low-cost renewable energy and a knack for resource industries.”
Let us take them at their word. Renewables are cheap and abundant therefore all subsidies, grants, tax preferences, environmental forgiveness and mandates must be eliminated. They clearly don’t need help from unwashed such as us. By the way we could use a rate cut especially since renewables are so cheap.
Renewables are financed through schemes such as my electricity rates going up another 10% from 01Aug. Apparently daytime power is so cheap that the suppliers have to raise prices to cover the other times – grifters have to grift, I guess.
My feed-in will drop to 2c/kWh and I get nothing for the 43 tonnes of CO2e I have not caused to be generated over the past 4 years of using rooftop solar.
I’m sure this is a mistake, John.
If you bring this to the attention of Energy Minister Chris Bowen, he will no doubt move immediately to ensure that your renewable solar power contribution to the grid is adjusted so that renewable continue to be “the cheapest form of electricity ever and forever”.
(Pinocchios all the way down . . . )
It is hard to understand what has affected the mentality of authors Jotzo and Zou to drive them to publish such childish drivel.
In the olden days in Australia, sure there were dissenting papers, but they were serious pieces of proper research, not very frequent and more likely to have surnames like Smith and Brown. Ideology content used to be tiny, now it is a main theme. Sad. Geoff S
Totally agree as an Aussie and with an email that arrive this morning telling my “cheapest power source are renewables” electricity bill is increasing by 10.11 % per annum. The Federal minister responsible, Chris Bowen is an idiot, and I don’t honestly know whether he believes the rubbish he spouts or whether he is deliberately trying to bring down our grid, so we all have to go back to living in caves. His “renewable superpower” mantra meanwhile is busy destroying some of our best farmland which has the unimportant task apparently of feeding us and many other parts of the world. I despair for the future of our children despite them voting this idiot and his mates into power because he promises lots of handouts all on borrowed money. The education system in Australia has almost completely finished its task of turning future citizens into equally idiotic fools. Meanwhile Mother Earth will continue to do its own thing and China will continue to buy our best assets.
Quilter, consider an alternative hypothesis. Chris Bowen way indeed not be an idiot but working to a different agenda. Consider that all of the measures to reduce CO2 emissions and increase renewables all serve the purpose of increasing dependency for everything on government policy, allocation and subsidy. This increases government power over individuals and groups. This increases government size in the economy compared to individuals or large and small business. In doing all of these things, indlvidual choice is reduced in favour of things the government thinks you should have.
All of this reduces the importance of family, religion and personal decision-making for everyone. We’ve. seen this before. It’s called Communism. Germany’s National Socialism followed the same model of controlling everyone and everything all the time.
None of this means Bowen is a fool. It merely suggests that he’s not being enirely open about his actual agenda for you and everyone else in Australia. It means that he’s NOT an idiot, merely a clever shyster. Remember. all politicians are in the business about lying to everyone about everything.
Madness. Coal, oil, gas are just stored sunlight anyway, if originally produced by photosynthesis.
When some curious inventor can come up with a cost effective way of storing photons for later use on a commercial scale – whoopee!
Or possibly practical fusion power – who knows?
In the meantime, I’m happy to pay as little as possible for the privilege of flipping a switch and having instant electricity at my beck and call.
I remember laughing at a Star Trek movie where they boarded the air craft carrier Enterprise, managed to get next to the nuclear reactor and with a device maybe twice the size of a cell phone “captured” high energy photons needed to reconstitute the dilithium crystals.
I burst out in laughter when I got to the phrase “renewable energy superpower”.
The phrase is an oxymoron regarding wind & solar. Neither of these are “super” and the power you get is quite expensive if the accounting is honest.
After checking that the article was not from The Babylon Bee [a satire website] the
next question is why Australia thinks it can profit in a sector that China owns? China
dominates the supply chain for solar, wind [& batteries]: minerals processing, equipment,
rare earths, magnets, and the like.
In fact, China is laughing all the way to the bank selling the Western world trillions of intermittant
energy products that also cripple the West’s economies and miltiary.
Wind & solar & batteries are an economic & geo-political Trojan Horse for the West.
Relax perfessors as Ms Wang has the fickles future all mapped out-
I’ve seen the energy future and it’s in China, and Australia must ditch its distrust and collaborate | RenewEconomy
although some may be wondering just where exactly all ANU research dollars are coming from-
How China is DUPING the West by EXPLOITING the energy transition | MGUY Australia
and why-
ANU-CSC Scholarship | The Australian National University
As Australia is by far the leading exponent of coal mining for export projects – 46 projects being almost 50% of all such projects worldwide according to the IEA – I doubt it’s exports of unreliables could match it’s emissions from the former for many many years to come.