Nothing free about wind, solar
AUSTRALIA’S Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel told an inconvenient truth about renewable energy last week.
While renewable sources of energy are great and cut emissions, they can’t do the job our current power system does.
Dr Finkel made it clear by saying “solar and wind produce the cleanest energy you can imagine. Zero emissions … but they are badly behaved. They’re not always there when you want them. So you have to firm them up somehow. You can firm them up with batteries at cost, you can firm them up with pumped hydro, you can firm them up with hydrogen storage. But today you can very very easily firm them up at unlimited capacity with natural gas.”
This is the entire point. I have never argued against climate change science. What I do pull people up on are their pet silver bullet solutions.
I’m fine with as much wind and solar as you can come up with, but Dr Finkel told the truth; there aren’t enough batteries to store the energy we will need to use 24-hours a day.
But sure, we are building them.
The biggest is in South Australia at a cost of $90 million. There’s an even bigger battery coming to Queensland, which will cost $120 million. But when it comes to storage, they only hold 100 megawatts of power, a fraction of the energy that’s being produced on just one day.
For instance, in Queensland last Thursday they made 6,104 megawatts of power for the national market. You would need 61 more of the world’s biggest batteries to store it all. That would cost six billion dollars. Now if people want to pay for that then fine, but the Green left activists never tell you that.
Not to mention the cost of building wind farms to match the state’s energy production needs. A new wind farm at Wide Bay will produce 1,200 megawatts at a staggering $2 billion.
You would need five of them to match the energy Queensland alone made on Thursday, that’s another $8 billion.
There’s only two ways to pay for it, taxpayers or customers and by the Chief Scientist’s admission, you would need billions more for gas to prop it all up when the wind doesn’t produce what’s needed.
Now, I’m picking one technology and none of these are arguments not to do more. But all I want is for people to be honest about the cost. None of these renewable sources are free to build, back-up and support.
It’s not good enough for politicians to say 50/50 renewables and then walk away. Give us the numbers and show us the real cost. Then if people want it, they will vote for it.
Aussies love new technology and when given the chance we will always do the best we can for the environment. But we also want to live in the 21st century where there’s no doubt that a switch will work every-time you flick it on or off.
Give us real numbers that informs real debate.