message from adam bandt, page-107

lautrec,

be careful with your assertions.

The fact is that, despite massive improvements in green energy, renewable energy is (currently) woefully inadequate to power the world.

The energy/economics equations just don't add up.

The cost to build, design, install, maintain, re-build (where necessary) etc renewable energy per kilowatt hour is MASSIVELY under the lower limit needed to make a profit.

Sure - you can do it for fun... but the fun runs out when you realise you just dropped $1 trillion and have nothing to show for it 30 years later

renewable only works now because fossil fuel energy is SO STAGGERINGLY CHEAP that we can artificially inflate the price of it (a little bit) to subsidise the price of renewable energy ( A LOT!)

how can you inflate the price of A by a little bit and subsidise the price of B by a lot you ask?

well because we have HEAPS of cheap fossil fuel energy which is all inflated a little bit just to lower the price of a VERY small fraction of renewable energy by a LOT!

Listen - I'm all for green energy!

but beating your chest and stomping your feet won't get around the fact that it just doesn't cut the mustard at the moment. There's no getting around it...

we simply don't have the technology to provide baseload power with renewables at an economically viable price!

That sentence right there is the crux of it. I can't break it down more than that.

If you want to SOLVE the problem properly (not just solve it in a hand-wavey manner) then we need to pressure the government to increase renewable energy R&D MASSIVELY for the next 15 - 20 years.

Then, maybe, we have a shot at it...

right now - we're cashing in on the energy deposits that mother nature made (diligently) over the last few hundred million years...