Neither renewables nor nuclear can save our grid

Perhaps the biggest contributor has been the unrelenting scare campaign about impending calamity. The predicted disasters never seem to eventuate, but people seem to swallow the scare, nevertheless. Global warming itself is well documented but has been far lower than climate catastrophists have predicted and is difficult to pin entirely on a trace element gas like COâ‚‚.

In Australia many people had been convinced by "experts" that our dams would never fill, crops would fail due to declining rainfall, weather events would become increasingly severe, our Barrier Reef coral was doomed, low-lying tropical islands would disappear under the sea etc. While we now know better, the "renewables" bandwagon continues.

The same "experts" had also told us that "renewable" energy would reduce our power bills, and that big batteries, pumped water storage, and green hydrogen would provide industrial scale energy storage. None of this has eventuated. At the same time the real risks of wind droughts lasting many days, and the issue that solar power can never work after dark get underplayed. There is also the issue that solar and wind infrastructure have limited lives and eventually need to be replaced at considerable monetary and environmental cost.

I think people want to believe that their good environmental intentions will make a big difference, even though the evidence generally indicates otherwise. Chief Scientist Finkel stated that cutting Australia's emissions to zero would have virtually no climate benefits. He later took the further position that "if all countries that have comparable carbon emissions took the stance that they shouldn't take action (because their contribution to this global problem is insignificant) then nobody would act, and the problem would continue to grow in scale".

I think Finkel was denying reality with this argument. The fact is that the world is not reducing emissions and climate change looks like taking its course regardless.

I would further argue that not using cheap coal electricity ourselves, and instead transferring Australia's heavy industry to countries like China and India, produces more net COâ‚‚. This is because we can place coal fired electricity generators right on our coalfields without the added cost in emissions of continually transporting coal halfway around the world.

All the talk of net zero also ignores that Australia has a huge comparative advantage in coal and gas energy (much like Saudi-Arabia with oil). It is easy for countries with little or no coal resources to volunteer to give up fossil fuels, but it is proving very costly by comparison for Australia.

Ten large coal power stations have closed in Australia since 2012. These included Hazelwood, which was producing as much as a quarter of Victoria's electricity at very low cost using brown coal. Due to its age, Hazelwood was, however, becoming expensive to maintain. One analyst suggested that the closure had doubled forward contract base-load wholesale prices in Victoria in six months, equivalent to an extra $1.8 billion a year cost burden to Victorian electricity consumers.

The latest datafor 2021-22 has Australian annual electricity generation at 272 TWH. Coal on average provided 47 percent of this or about 15 gigawatts each hour. Its past share had been as high as 80 per cent. In Queensland and NSW, coal is responsible for $4.5 billion each in annual royalties, and is the backbone of state budgets.

According to AEMO, 90 per cent of the current coal fleet will close before 2035 and the remaining rump by 2038. That will be a huge shock to the system, particularly as electricity consumption is forecast to nearly double by 2050. Additionally, we have been warned of gas shortages along the eastern seaboard. As gas supplies run low, the cost of gas-powered electricity (if we ever produce much) will soar.

So, what should Australia sensibly be doing? Might I suggest it is what most of our political and activist class regard as unthinkable.

Australia's highest energy priority should be to save our electricity system rather than making futile and unnecessary attempts to "save the planet" or please other countries. What the country should have been doing (from more than a decade ago) is replacing our less efficient older coal-powered electricity generators with modern high efficiency low emissions (HELE) equivalents.