Power to the People: Australian Voters Demand Reliable & Affordable Electricity & Coal Just Keeps on Delivering

The 2019 Federal Election was billed as a referendum on ‘Climate Change’. The Green/Labor Alliance promised an all wind and sun powered future, starting with a 50% RET and a crippling carbon dioxide gas tax, dressed up as a 45% CO2 emissions reduction target.

Every political pundit from Perth to Penrith picked Labor to win by a landslide.

And the top-billed reason that Labor was supposed to fare so well at the polls, was that Australians are, apparently, spending their every waking hour fretting about carbon dioxide gas and believing that windmills and solar panels will save the day. Well, apparently not – Bill Shorten duly lost the ‘unlosable’ election.

Coal miners in NSW and Queensland took a different view to the inner city elites pressing for urgent ‘climate action’, for pretty obvious reasons. But the proletariat had also worked out that obsessing with heavily subsidised and chaotically intermittent wind and solar sends power prices through the roof. The tragic and inevitable result in South Australia is there for all to see: a 50% RET and the world’s highest power prices!

Anyway, the ‘shock’ result has sent RE rent seekers into a tailspin.

After convincing themselves not to commit hari-kari, their next move was to bring in Pope Pompous III aka Al Gore (flying first-class, of course) to lecture the Australian voters who had so resoundingly rejected the nonsense of attempting to run on sunshine and breezes.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Australia’s coal-fired power plant just keep on delivering.

By the way, if you’re reading this post in Australia, you’re doing so thanks to coal. On any given day, anything between 75-85% of the electricity buzzing around Australia’s Eastern Grid is coming from coal-fired plant. When the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in, the balance comes from gas, hydro and diesel, in that order.

Now that Australia’s ‘truculent turds’ have firmly rejected the climate alarmist’s agenda, there are plenty of characters ready to build new coal-fired power plants to provide them with the reliable and affordable electricity they so obviously crave.

One of them is Trevor St Baker. Here he is being interviewed by 2GB’s Alan Jones.

Alan Jones slams QLD government for paying to bring Al Gore to Australia
2GB
Alan Jones and Trevor St Baker
4 June 2019

Alan Jones has blasted the Queensland government for helping to fund a conference where Al Gore will lecture Australians about climate change.

Taxpayers will fork out more than $320,000 for the Climate Week conference, where form US vice president Al Gore will “communicate the urgency of the climate crisis”.

“It is not believable,” says Alan, “that the Queensland government can be so awash with money as to bring this hypocrite Al Gore to Australia for a conference.

“When so many important instruments of government are underfunded, when farmers can’t feed their cattle in Queensland, and $320,000 goes to waste on this shonk.”

Australian businessman and former head of Western Mining, Trevor St Baker, says the government should have funded an opposing lecture at the conference to challenge Al Gore.

“The reality is that there’s nothing political about energy.

“People talk about renewables and they talk about greenhouse abatement, but the rest of the world is not using sun and wind to do that. It has baseload hydro, it has nuclear.

“We don’t have either of these things. We have expensive gas.”
2GB

 

Here’s the audio of the full interview, transcript follows:

 

Transcript

Alan Jones: It is not believable, as I said yesterday, that the Queensland government can be so awash with money as to bring this hypocrite Al Gore to Australia for a conference tomorrow to Friday where he’s going to “train” Australia’s “climate volunteers” and “communicate the urgency of the climate crisis”. Now of course the Labor government in Queensland thought Mr. Short was going to be Prime Minister, with his 50% renewable energy target and his 50% of all new cars being electric.

Total budget for Gore, $320,000. When so many important instruments of government are under funded, when farmers can’t feed their cattle in Queensland, and $320,000 goes to waste on this shonk. He ran for the presidency against George Bush, Gore couldn’t win a majority of votes in his own state because they were awake up to him. It’s a pity the Queensland government isn’t. Some of are thankfully.

Two years ago Lord Ridley, Matt Ridley, a member of the British House of Lords, writing for the Spectator magazine asked a simple question. To the nearest whole number, what percentage of the world’s energy consumption was supplied by wind power in 2014? The last year for which there are reliable figures to the nearest whole number. Was it 20%, 10%, 5%? None of the above. It was simply naught percent. He said, that is to say, to the nearest whole number there is still no wind power on earth.

He made the point that wind provides .46% of global energy consumption. This was 2014, the last year for which there were reliable figures. Solar and tide .035 of a percent. Yet world energy demand has been growing at about 2% a year for nearly 40 years. Lord Ridley wrote, “If wind turbines were to supply all of that growth, but no more, how many wind turbines would we need to build each year?” He said, “The answer is nearly 350,000 each year.”

Since the two megawatt turbine can produce about .005 terawatt hours per annum. 350,000 wind turbines, and that’s just for wind meeting the growth in energy demand every year. He said, 350,000 wind turbines is about 1.5X as many as have been built in the world since governments started pouring consumer funds into this so called industry in the early 2000s. Said Lord Ridley, at a density of very roughly 50 acres per megawatt, typical for wind farms, that many turbines would require a land area greater than the British Isles, including Ireland, every year.

He said, if we kept this up for 50 years, we would have covered every square mile of land area the size of Russia with wind farms. And he said, this would be just to fulfil the new demand for energy, not to displace the vast existing supply of energy from fossil fuels, which currently supply 80% of global energy needs. Now this stuff’s laughable. We’re talking about everywhere, subsidies for household battery installation. Subsidies for wind turbines. Subsidies for solar panels. We have in Australia 22 operating coal-fired generating plants in this country, of at least 30 megawatt capacity. No plans to construct anymore.

Compare that with China, we have 22 operating coal-fired power plants. China, our biggest trading partner, it has more than 1,000 coal-fire powered generating plants, and a further 130 under construction. And these plants emit 4.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide if you’re worried about that, which I’m not. The 130 due to come online in China will produce more carbon dioxide than the total Australian production.

India have 292 operating coal-fired power plants, we got 22. India have a further 41 under construction, they only emit more than 1,000 million tonnes of carbon dioxide if that’s worrying us. Between 2016 and last year coal-fired generation in the Asia-Pacific region increased by 330 terawatt hours, contributing 66% to increased electricity supply. That’s equivalent to 33 Hazelwoods. Which the Turnball government shut.

Since Hazelwood shut down electricity prices have doubled in Victoria and New South Wales, and increased by more than 70% in South Australia, Tasmania and Queensland. And we’re a country rich in energy. And with renewable energy certificates at $80 per megawatt hour, rough figure, one wind turbine is paid $700,000 a year subsidy by those who are connected to the grid, that’s you. Before a single watt of electricity is sold, $700,000. Families, pensioners, supermarkets, engineering workshops, small businesses, big businesses are paying.

And at this rate we’re losing business, we’re losing jobs. And we’re losing money. The new definition of madness, I have to say. Hugh Morgan, one of the distinguished Australian businessmen, former boss of Western Mining between 1990 and 2003 said about this whole business, about Paris and renewables. This global alarm movement has got, so far, because of the backing of western millennials who’ve been indoctrinated during their education. Enjoying living standards unprecedented in world history, they’ve embraced alarmism as a new secular religion.

Well enter Trevor St. Baker, he actually knows something about all of this, but that means of course government won’t listen to him. That’s the problem. He’s proposing two new HELE plants. High efficient, low emission coal-fired power plants. Remember early in this year the federal government released a shortlist of 12 submission suggesting ways to increase national base load power, and the shortlist included only one coal-fired power project. And that was just an upgrade of a power station at Lake Macquarie.

I don’t know how people like Trevor St. Baker put up with this rubbish and nonsense, but he’s on the line. Trevor, good morning.

Trevor St Baker: Good morning, Alan.

Alan Jones: Well how do you cope?

Trevor St Baker: Well we just try and speak our piece from time to time, but the reality is that there’s nothing political about energy. Energy, all the people in the electricity industry have been working all their lives to provide economic electricity to businesses to create jobs at the same time as providing reasonably priced electricity for homes. And to be arguing about whether or not we should have 28% or 45% renewables misses the point that both the major parties know we need coal. And Labor knows we need 50% coal. The Coalition in aiming for just the Paris target for renewables, knows we need about 2/3 coal.

Alan Jones: But they don’t have the guts to say it. You see, I mean you’ve made the point correctly that the public are not being informed about the realities of a heavier reliance on wind and solar.

Trevor St Baker: But the trouble is people are in Coward’s Castle.

Alan Jones: Correct.

Trevor St Baker: Really. Why would a bank speak frankly and objectively about this subject when most of their … about lending to coal-fired power stations, for example? When their main business is home lines. Do they want to be written up as a coal barren? As I am usually, to introduce what I’m saying. But I mean, the reality is that the closure of the Northern and the closure of Hazelwood power stations is clearly understood by all Australians as having caused our high prices.

Alan Jones: Correct.

Trevor St Baker: High prices for electricity. And the reality is, in Victoria Hazelwood was 1,600 megawatts of base load power. They shut it down at three months notice, and the reality is for 16 hours a day, five days a week on business days, it’s being replaced by more than 1,000 megawatts of scarce hydro generation. We only have hydro generation in Australia for peaking plants. But it’s being used for that being charged at competing with gas to make up for what we lost with Hazelwood. So the urgency of replacing Hazelwood is it is urgent that that be replaced by low-cost base load power as best it can be achieved in an open competitive market to have any hope of getting electricity prices down.

Alan Jones: Absolutely. I’m talking to Trevor St. Baker. This bloke has a track record in the energy sector. That means he’s disqualified from being listened to. You are simply saying, and I read what you’ve said, if we keep going down the path we’re on, renewable path, “businesses and jobs in Australia will go offshore. If we try to introduce wind and solar, Australia-wide faster than in other interconnected electricity supply systems in the world.” You’ve said, nowhere else in the world do electricity market operators allow variable wind and solar to reduce dispatchable generation, that’s basically coal-fired power, to below that required for peak electricity demand.

mean as I speak to you now, it’s cold. People have got heaters on, they’ve got toasters on, they’re boiling coffee. And over 90% of our energy is coal-fired power that we’re using right now. What is the alternative?

Trevor St Baker: The alternative is to only just do what the world seems to want to reduce its carbon emissions. Whether it’s right or wrong, whether the science is settled or not, that’s not quite the point. We shouldn’t be doing more than the rest of the world. And the reality is, we are already doing more than the rest of the world in respect of sun and wind. People talk about renewables and they talk about greenhouse abatement, but the rest of the world is not using sun and wind to do that. It has base load hydro, it has nuclear.

Alan Jones: Yeah.

Trevor St Baker: We don’t have either of these things. We have expensive gas. And our sun and wind is already aiming to be more than 20% sun and wind energy supply annually.

Alan Jones: It can’t be done.

Trevor St Baker: And that is more than the rest of the world.

Alan Jones: It can’t be done. It’s not there, it can’t be done Trevor, you know that. I mean, how do you get … You’re talking about two, two high efficiency low emission coal-fired power plants, that’s what you’re talking about. How can you get the market to invest in these projects, coal-fired projects, when the government of Australia is distorting the market with tax payer’s money, propping up renewable energy to the tune of billions of dollars a year? How can you get it?

Trevor St Baker: Well even differently to that, the renewable energy certificates are a subsidy which is cross subsidised by those who can’t afford rooftop solar. By businesses who buy more energy so that lately there’s been $4 billion a year cross subsidies for renewable energy certificates.

Alan Jones: That’s right.

Trevor St Baker: Which are not paid by the people who put solar on their roof. It’s a subsidy to mainly foreign, and sun and wind large scale developers, and that is charged to people’s bills beyond the market for electricity

Alan Jones: Well who is listening-

Trevor St Baker: (They say) electricity from solar power is cheap.

Alan Jones: There’s no doubt. Look-

Trevor St Baker: It’s cheap in the wholesale market, they get charged in their bill for the subsidy because they have solar on the roof, well they don’t get that charge.

Alan Jones: Billions.

Trevor St Baker: Why wouldn’t everyone put solar on their roof?

Alan Jones: Absolutely. But look, just two questions. A, who’s listening to you? First thing. B, we’re frightening school children about the end of the world because of coal-fired power. This is a major major issue. In five years time these people will be voting.

Trevor St Baker: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well as far as former Vice President Gore coming, it nearly warranted to have an opposition lecture room to explain to people what they’re willing to know … The public want to know, and Alan, one of the major problems here is the electricity market operator has not done its job in managing the safe uptake of sun and wind.

Alan Jones: Right. Well I’ll tell you what, we’ll book the theatre out and you and I can talk. I’ll tell you what, we’ll get more than Al Gore to listen.

Trevor St Baker: I think we could.

Alan Jones: We’ve got to keep at it Trevor. Keep at it. Good to talk to you.

Trevor St Baker: Thank you, man. Bye bye.

Alan Jones: I mean what about it? That bloke knows the whole scene backwards. See there’s only one reason we don’t listen to him in government, it’s not ideologically acceptable. Well the job is, and the challenge, educate the public to understand that it must be acceptable.

2GB