and some very real, and practical implications of the mad left passion for scrapping existing fossil fuel power, for a fanciful target of 82% renewables by 2030.
Extract from today's Aust:
"Still, the government’s announcement that it was ditching Sweden’s long-legislated plans for 100 per cent renewable energy by 2040 because the country needed “a stable energy system” is a significant blow to the hitherto unchallenged march to renewables, at least among Western nations.
“We need more electricity production, we need clean electricity and we need a stable energy system,” she said, adding: “In substantial industrialised economies … only a gas to nuclear pathway is viable to remain industrialised and competitive.”
Previously, Sweden has been at the very forefront of “stronger action on climate” with more than 40 per cent of its power generated by hydro and nearly 20 per cent by wind. Plus, in addition to the 100 per cent renewables by 2040 commitment, Sweden had a commitment to countrywide “net zero” by 2045. Sweden’s move is the biggest step so far towards climate realism, but it’s also just the latest move away from the “transition at any cost via renewables” mindset that has dominated Western governments’ thinking for the past two decades.
Getting to the government’s now-mandatory legal target of 82 per cent renewable power generation by 2030, he declared, would require the installation of 22,000 solar panels every day, and the erection of 40 large wind turbines every month for the next seven years. Plus, 28,000km of new transmission lines would have to be constructed for the resultant decentralised grid – even though, given the intermittency of wind and solar, these would be active only 30 per cent of the time on average.
To Bowen – who conveniently neglected the consequential need for “firming” – this was a necessary but welcome task, requiring a mobilisation of resources unprecedented outside wartime.
But to more and more of the people charged with keeping the lights on, and needing reliable power to keep jobs and production going, it’s mission impossible.
In the real world it’s simply not happening, given the practical difficulties in getting permissions to build; and it can’t actually happen given the astronomical cost (the government estimated transmission capital costs alone at $80bn pre-election) plus chronic shortages of material and skilled workers.
The much-maligned fossil fuels, oil, gas and coal, together accounted for almost 82 per cent of total global energy consumption, barely down on the previous year, despite near ubiquitous virtue-signalling and green chest-thumping. Even in the global electricity sector, last year wind and solar were less than 12 per cent, while coal and gas usage was at record highs. Yet somehow we think we can close all our coal-fired power stations within a decade and get 70 per cent of our electricity from wind and solar, within just seven years. There’s only one word for this: mad!..."
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