Lushington D. Brady: Our Energy Supplies Are Stuffed

The ability of apparently rational, intelligent adults to systematically blind themselves to the glaring obvious should never be underestimated. Especially when it comes to religion — and the most fact-immune religion currently plaguing the Earth is the Cult of Climate. Climate Cultists are almost uniformly and resolutely immune to facts which contradict their dogmas.

Few more so than the blind belief that “renewables” — wind and solar power — are anything but staggeringly expensive and shockingly useless for grid-scale power.

Electricity prices will take years to return to pre-pandemic levels and Labor’s pledge to triple the amount of renewable energy in the grid by 2030 is at risk as the ­nation is failing to build enough green power, top business leaders have warned.

That should be “never return” and “was always a ludicrous pipe dream”. But, these evidence-immune “business leaders” have a very strong vested interest in keeping themselves blinded to the brute facts of “Net Zero”.

As Anthony Albanese promises both a net-zero economy by 2050 and a reduction in power bills by the next election, leading energy companies say the country is not ready for renewable energy droughts and Energy Minister Chris Bowen concedes he is “not satisfied” with the pace of progress on clean energy projects.

They can’t bring themselves to come right out and admit that the obsession with “Net Zero” is a crippling, costly failure.

Alinta chief executive Jeff Dimery, head of the country’s fourth largest energy retailer, said he could not see a way of building enough renewable energy sources to compensate for the loss of coal, which still generates about two-thirds of Australia’s electricity.

Which logically entails that the only solution is to rebuild Australia’s coal-fired electricity. But that’s the vilest of heresies for the Climate Cult. So, of course, they resort to ever-more threadbare circumlocutions.

“The whole transition is not lining up. We are so far off track.

“This is not a complaint, it’s fact. We’re not looking to ­apportion blame. Really it’s the opposite. We have to come together on the solutions quickly.”

Yet, they all admit that “renewables” are not the solution.

Paul Broad, who ran Snowy Hydro until resigning shortly after Labor won office last year, said the challenge of the huge pumped hydro expansion under construction could not be overstated, adding that was just a tiny fraction of new green-energy ­supplies needed.

“We need a Snowy every year, but it’s extremely difficult,” Mr Broad said.

Yet, Snowy was one of the most massive infrastructure projects in Australian history, which took a quarter of a century to build. The idea that we even possibly could build the equivalent of such a mammoth feat every year should be more than enough to highlight the essential nuttiness of the Climate Cult.

But it’s one thing to pretend that the law of gravity doesn’t apply to you, quite another to ignore the ground speeding towards you after you jump off a cliff. The reality of “Net Zero” is already biting Australians hard, and it’s only going to get worse.

The warning comes as the cost of producing electricity in NSW hit the fifth highest level for May on record, despite a fall in the cost of coal and gas globally […]

Australia already faces a new cost-of-­living shock, with electricity prices set to soar by up to 29 per cent in a fresh hit for small business. A steep bill hike will land from July 1, despite the government’s efforts to calm markets through a series of emergency ­interventions.

Throwing taxpayers’ money back at them is only going to work as a band-aid for so long.

Renewable energy droughts – when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing – will mean Australia will need a significant expansion in storage capacity to smooth the volatility.

“Expansion in storage capacity” is an even more insubstantial chimaera than “energy transition”.

Under mounting environmental and social pressure, Australia is shifting away from its dependency on coal, a transition that will determine whether it can meet its carbon emissions reduction targets but will also reshape the country’s $2 trillion economy.

The Australian

By “reshape”, of course, they really mean “fatally cripple”.

But the demented zealots of the Climate Cult will continue to deny the critical failure of their “renewable” fairy stories even as bills soar and grids collapse. Cults are like that.

Lushington describes himself as Punk rock philosopher. Liberalist contrarian. Grumpy old bastard. This article was first published HERE