22.6 Is This the Energy Crisis We Had to Have?
22.5 A Warning to all Politicians Obsessed with Net Zero
March 2022
Most people in the general public are not obsessed with net zero at all costs. That is clear from a poll conducted by the Institute of Public Affairs.
Activists and media pundits who loudly and visibly demand for more action are out of step.
61% of Australians agree the federal government should be more focused on defending Australia’s security than pursuing a net zero emissions target
72% of Australians want affordable energy bills and reliability to be at the core of Australia’s energy policy – not net zero
92% of Australians are unwilling to pay above $100 per year for net zero policies
See the results
22.4 The Geopolitics of Energy
March 2022
Mark Mills at the Manhattan Institute has been sending warning signals for years that the push for intermittent energy in the west could have serious geopolitical consequences. Here he explains how the conflict in the Ukraine has brought the drastic consequences upon us ahead of schedule.
Naivete about energy realities robbed the U.S. and its allies of important “soft power” options and helped finance Russia’s aggression. In the near term, our choices are limited, but continuing down the same energy path is a formula for yet more problems in the future.
https://www.city-journal.org/ukraine-war-and-the-new-shale-revolution
He notes that the EU and the US over the past two decades spent more than $5 trillion and made countless
22.8 The Snowy2.0 Pumped Hydro Scheme
August 2022
The green energy transition towards net zero depends on massive amounts of storage to cover the gaps in the generation of wind and solar power, especially on windless nights.
The underlying concept behind the Snowy 2.0 Pumped Hydro Energy Storage (PHES) Scheme is to generate electricity by releasing water from the upper Tantangara reservoir to drive the turbines and to capture the released water in the lower Talbingo reservoir. During periods of excess electrical energy in the National Electricity Market (NEM), the water is pumped from Talbingo back to Tantangara, thus completing a cycle.
The Tantangara reservoir has an active storage of 240 GL which, theoretically when full, is sufficient to generate 350 GWh of electrical
22.3 The Cost Of Firming Intermittent Wind & Solar Power
Despite all the claims that wind and solar power are cheaper than coal, the bottom line after proper accounting shows that the real cost of “firming” intermittent wind and solar power will exceed $400 per MWh.
Background
We are told that coal power is on the way out because it can’t compete with wind and solar in the bidding process to supply energy to the grid.
Kerry Schott, recently the Chair of the Energy Security Board, summed up the situation in the Fin Review 23 Feb. 22.
The challenge to the commercial viability for the coal-fired assets is not going away…The renewables increase is mainly intended to replace retiring coal generation and there is no sign of any slowdown in this capacity replacement.
However in the real world