Alan Finkel is right when he says we are at a turning point in history. There are two paths for Australia to choose between. One leads to a country where manufacturing thrives and everyone, including the poor, enjoys better living standards on the back of affordable and reliable power. On the other, power prices continue to rise, and the stability of our grid is at risk.
With the highest amount of wind, solar and battery power feeding into the grid in history, Australia’s wholesale power prices have never been higher. All Australians are going to feel the brunt of these price increases. This is a primary cause of our current inflation and it will only get worse, as I have been warning for two years.
Despite net-zero rhetoric, there is an unavoidable truth. Wind and solar cannot solve high power prices and inflation.
Committing to net-zero means that Government has signed a blank cheque to the wind, solar and battery industry whose only solution is more of the same power shortages and high prices.
For example, the closure of the Liddell coal fired power station will be a loss of 2000MW of dispatchable power.
With unreliable renewables operating on average at 23% of their rated capacity because wind and solar take days off, Australia will need hundreds of square kilometres of solar panels to replace Liddell.[1]
Those hundreds of square kilometres of panels, even running at full capacity, won’t guarantee power is being made when needed. Solar power peaks at midday, far away from the peak demand in the early morning and evening. Wind droughts lasting months have wreaked havoc in Europe.[2] Batteries cannot and won’t fix the gap.
The largest battery in Australia can supply 300MW for an hour and a half, a pittance compared to the 2000MW Liddell could produce.[3] That’s even before we consider that because of transmission and power conversion, battery storage might waste around 20% of the power we use to charge them.[4]
What does all this mean? Wind and solar subsidies force other, more reliable sources of power out of the market. Coal generators are forced into early retirement. Nuclear can’t even be investigated.
Wind and solar are inefficient and intermittent. There is less supply of electricity and it is more unreliable. That makes power more expensive and risky for businesses, employers and wage-earners.
Wind, solar and battery advocates claim that a ‘plan to transition the grid’ can solve all this. What is rarely said is that the plan to ditch coal could cost $320 billion, a cost that one way or another Australians will have to pay from their hip pocket.[5]
Australia is facing down the barrel of a cost of living and inflation crisis. We must abandon the ill-advised forced uptake of wind and solar that is going to keep making power bills more expensive.
Instead, we must stop demonizing coal and build coal fired power stations to cover our transition. Power companies must know that the government won’t force coal to go broke so they can freely invest to maintain their existing assets and build more.
Wherever possible we must build dams with hydro power and retro fit hydro. Snowy Hydro 2.0 has laid bare the false promises of pumped hydro.[6]
And finally, we must investigate nuclear power. Australia has had a nuclear reactor running in Lucas Heights, Sydney since 1958.[7] Australia’s ban on nuclear power is no longer fit for purpose. Everything must be on the table to be investigated if it means bringing Australia’s power bills down.
Although electricity from nuclear is typically more expensive than coal and hydro, in places such as South Australia with its massive uranium reserves and low thermal value coal, nuclear needs to be considered.
It may be years before some of these solutions take effect, but it will be even longer if we do not start them now. Decades of politicians making decisions for the next election instead of the next generation has left Australia with this cost of living and inflation crisis. We must act today with a vision for the future, rooted in reality and with the sole focus of making Australian living cheaper and easier while being environmentally responsible.
[1] For example, 1800Mw Liddell output at 90%, 10-30% capacity factor of solar, estimated 2-3ha (0.02-.03sqkm) per MW of solar power
[2] https://theconversation.com/what-europes-exceptionally-low-winds-mean-for-the-future-energy-grid-170135
[3] https://www.energy-storage.news/victorian-big-battery-australias-biggest-battery-storage-system-at-450mwh-is-online/#:~:text=The%20Victorian%20Big%20Battery%2C%20a,for%20the%20state%20of%20Victoria.
[4] https://opennem.org.au/energy/nem/?range=1y&interval=1w Battery (Charging) vs. Battery (Discharging)
[5] https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/why-it-will-cost-320b-to-ditch-coal-in-three-maps-and-a-chart-20220608-p5as3t
[6] https://www.smh.com.au/national/five-years-on-snowy-2-0-emerges-as-a-10-billion-white-elephant-20220310-p5a3ge.html
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Flux_Australian_Reactor
Prof Ian Plimer in his book “Not for Greens” has calculated the energy used to manufacture the concrete, steel, copper etc used in a Wind Turbine. He concludes that the Wind Turbine needs to operate for TWENTY YEARS before it has completed paying back the energy used to build it. Only after 20 years does a Wind Turbine achieve a benefit in energy terms, by which stage some have broken down and need repairs which requires more energy.
And a report commissioned by the Swedish Energy Agency indicated that electric battery manufacturing for electric cars emits anything from 61 to 146 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of battery hardware produced. Even if you just took an average of the above figure, that means my Kia Picanto petrol car (128 grams of CO2 per km driven) could be driven for 62,000 km for its tailpipe emissions to equal the CO2 emissions created in order to produce the main battery for a 77 kwH electric car!
It is also important to note that under Labor’s renewables plan, electric cars and domestic home solar batteries are required to play key role. A decent home solar battery system and electric car will easily set a household back well in excess of $100,000 as of today. Under Bowen’s vision, electric cars will effectively become defacto battery storage for the domestic home so as to fortify the grid or otherwise in circumstances when the grid is unable to satisfy power demands. Of course this in itself is completely unworkable given that electric vehicles with sufficient range so as to be of practical use in Australia are luxury priced. Apart from the question of how these vehicles are supposed to always be charged “at the ready” in case of overnight power outages (especially at the height of Summer and Winter) there remains the obvious question of how these cars can then be used in their primary role as transportation the very next morning if their batteries have been largely depleted.
The ignorant will opine that solar panels on the roof will charge up that electric car without realising that you literally could not fit enough solar panels on the roof top of the average home to charge an electric car. You wouldn’t even be able to charge that car up using solar if you filled every usable square inch of space on the average property with solar panels. And because most charging will occur overnight in the dark, battery storage will be required. Yet even the battery storage required to fully charge an electric car would set one back around $60,000 – just for the batteries alone. Yet people are still deluded into thinking this green future will save them money. Instead it will leave them destitute.
As for electric car pricing, even a bread and butter “whitegoods” Kia electric car will set you back more than a brand new petrol Ford V8 Mustang. The asking price only went up this month, not down – but up by around $4,000! These cars will remain rich person’s toys and as a self funded retiree I would not consider purchasing an electric car unless I had financial (direct income producing) assets exceeding $3 million. Less than 10% of retirees have such substantial assets to call upon so electric cars will remain the domain of the retired rich or those of working age on extremely high incomes. The rest of us will massively overcrowd an already drastically unfit for purpose public transport system.
In the regions the situation will be far worse again. In such circumstances, car-less people will endure a quality of life not seen since the worst days of the Great Depression. It could literally be a death sentence for many. People living in the regions generally speaking as a cohort are less affluent than their inner city counterparts and they travel vastly greater distances. Ironically then, if there was ever a “forced” market for premium electric cars with bigger batteries, it would be in the regions where buyers could least afford them.