Renewable energy
Apologies for the capital letters there, but I’m shouting. The Victorian Auditor-General has savaged his State’s pathetic attempts to “tackle climate change” by setting unachievable renewable energy targets:
THE state that sold itself as the heartland of sustainability has been exposed as falling hopelessly behind its own renewable energy targets for most of the past decade.
Victoria’s renewable energy record was savaged yesterday by the state’s auditor-general, who also highlighted how the former Labor government had failed to perform basic checks on key projects.
Auditor-General Des Pearson found renewable energy generation as a percentage of power consumption had increased from 3.6 per cent to just 3.9 per cent over seven years. This compared with a target rate, set in 2002, of 10 per cent by 2010.
Mr Pearson found Labor had failed to properly assess or substantiate the cost and benefits of the key incentive mechanism for attracting private investment in solar energy generation. Nor was enough work done on the validity of the solar energy targets.
And why is that? Because when anyone says the magic word “green”, nobody bothers to undertake the proper cost/benefit analyses, because they believe that the moral superiority which comes from their misguided desire to “save the planet” renders such mundane considerations unnecessary. Well let me tell you something. It doesn’t.
Mr Pearson condemned as ineffective Labor’s setting of renewable energy targets, claiming that in 2002 no effort was taken to determine whether renewable energy and wind energy targets were achievable.
“In the absence of these key planning inputs, there was no evidence to show that planning was effective or the targets soundly based,” he said.
State Energy and Resources Minister Michael O’Brien will review all the systems put in place by the previous government.
“Labor lied to Victorian families over the cost of its poorly planned energy policies,” Mr O’Brien said. “The Auditor-General found Labor’s solar sham would have cost Victorian families nearly 500 per cent more than Labor claimed and every dollar of this cost blowout would have increased electricity bills for struggling Victorian households.” (source)
Yet this is where billions of tax dollars are disappearing every year, pointless gestures to appease the urban Green/Left which achieve absolutely nothing for the environment or the climate.
Australian Climate Madness 
When will we wake up, Julia was right last week in critisizing the greens, they shoud stick with basket weaving they certainely cant count, however the only thing she failed to do to admit she cant count either, If all the state and fedreral governments around the world closed their global warming/climate change departments the billions could be used in finding ways of burning coal cleaner. I am not concerned about CO2 but I now the industrial smog, China, India @ Indonesia produce is full of nasties (thats because I have a degree in Common Sence) Japan is replacing there lost nuclear with yes Coal and ignoring Kyoto, Germany in light of what happened in Japan has closed 5 reactors replacing them with yes Coal, why would these pro green countries not replace with green energy, because they can count, they have done a cost benifit analysis using Common Sence, and not biased climate change departments staffed with lunatics, the single thing that made Australia great that John Howard had was Common Sence. Julia we have 2 ears and 1 mouth for a reason.
There is no such thing on earth at the moment as renewable sustainable green energy. It’s a myth. Until humans can find the ‘holly grail’ of an endless energy supply, we will be destined to burn coal.
Wind turbines, solar cells, wave power etc etc are all inefficient and inadequate in supplying power needs. What the greenies won’t tell you is that we still need coal fired, hydro-electric or nuclear power generators to take up the slack when either the wind stops blowing or the clouds obscure the sun.
Instead of throwing good money after bad in trying to achieve the impossible with wind or solar, we should accept the fact that this idea, with our current technologies, is only the stuff of fairy tales.
Taxing carbon dioxide emissions is about as helpful as an ashtray on a motorbike!
Any investment decision, any energy source has to return more than it costs. For energy, it’s a simple case of energy returned on energy invested. For some solar and wind locations, this equation will never, ever work out.
Any time you start diverting resources away from the productive economy into unproductive and costly mistakes, everyone suffers sooner or later.
It’s much easier if you can imagine two villages on two islands. In one village people have worked out the best way to hunt is with a bow and arrow. Their hunting party sits in a tree and shoots the first animal that walks past. In the village half the hunters use an bow and arrow, and the other half try to outrun their prey and tackle them and hit them with a club. The excuse they make is that using bows and arrows is environmentally destructive. Which village is going to be hungrier in the long run? Even if they wake up to the problem and stop chasing animals with clubs, it’s going to take time to re-train those hunters into having good bow-and-arrow skills.
Every investment a society makes should have a positive return. It’s inevitable that some things will fail, so the returns have to be sufficient to allow for the occasional loser. If you start intentionally choosing losers for some other criteria (moral high ground, theoretical future effects) then eventually you’ll have a basket of losers, and no resources or skills to deal with future difficult changes.
France has had a solar furnace for over 40 years if they were so successful wouldn’t you think they would be all over the earth by now.
But like having a carbon tax, having the renewable energy targets give us a warm, fuzzy feeling.. that’s what is important, right?
Spot on.
Mind you – the same warm fuzzy feeling could be achieved a lot more quickly and for a lot less money by just peeing in your pants. Same effect, as well.
When you think about it coal and oil are renewable energy if you wait long enough. Please leave Mother Nature alone,the climate has been evolving and changing for 4.5 billion years and on that timescale we are irrelevant.