Thank you numiaire for having a stab at this giant question....

Thank you numiaire for having a stab at this giant question. While this CTP thread may to be the best forum for this, your thoughtful position deserves a decent response.

Understand, I am no crazy Greenie who thinks the future is a world where we sit cross legged in circles singing Kum Ba Yah. Spare me!

We are at the start of an energy revolution and drawing a reasonable road map is hard.

All coal generation will be closed in the next five years, driven out by cheap intermittent renewables - this will be due to economic displacement, not carbon taxes or street protests.

In gas, IFN last year bought Visy's 125Mw Smithfield OCGT gas plant in Sydney for less than half construction cost. IFN expects to turn it on between 2-8% of the time. Adding Smithfield to IFN's kit made sense as it 'firms' around 1000Mw of renewables. Nobody will build new gas plant under those conditions.

Before the nuclear lobby joins this debate promoting clean stable reactors, their technology fails entirely on cost ahead of considering the risks.

Many fret about reliability. Wind and solar will be firmed by batteries. Before the critics start scoffing at this, consider the network effects of many batteries, charging from variable output and prices ahead of predicted demand. They already range from the Hornsdale big battery to household units installed merely to hold own-consumption. Whoever works out how to coordinate these by shifting power around the network off peak stands to make a lot of money. Another mid-sized layer of batteries to stabilise areas looks likely.

The East Australian power grid from Adelaide to Hobart to Cairns is the longest in the world - from sub-arctic to sub-tropical. The sheer distance this asset spans is of profound significance. More wind and solar will be added where cheap land intersects the grid and conditions make sense.

Back to gas, the demand for it will fall off a cliff and never recover. We need it for high temperatures, notably mineral processing and for plastics, also in a painful change era. The Gladstone chillers? Lemons.

Ash