Texas is synonymous with energy resources: oil, of course, but also natural gas, coal and uranium. Texas is the energy king the United States. Yet, just a few years ago, the state was gripped by a deadly energy crisis. As many as 700 people were killed when winter storms swept the state – and the lights and heating just went black.
Australia is possibly even more energy-rich than Texas. The nation of just 27 million people (fewer even than Texas) has the world’s third-largest known reserves of coal, highest-known reserves of uranium and is 13th in known-gas reserves.
And here we are, also facing a decade and more of blackouts.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO ) said delays in major generation and transmission projects could still imperil reliability across the Eastern States as a raft of coal- and gas-fired power stations closed.
The agency said the risks of supply not meeting demand could emerge as soon as this summer in South Australia, before spreading to New South Wales and Victoria in following years.
How is this even possible in a country awash with energy resources? The clue is in the list of states cited as at-risk. Those are the three states which rely most heavily on ‘renewables’: wind and solar. They also happen to be the states with the highest electricity prices.
It’s almost as if wind and solar go hand-in-hand with soaring prices and collapsing reliability.
Because that’s exactly what they do.
And no amount of soft-soaping by yet another left-captured quango like AEMO can disguise that brute fact.
In its latest forecast for electricity supplies, AEMO said the outlook had “improved” compared with recent years thanks to the progress made on 5.7 gigawatts of new generation and storage developments.
Among them was 3.9 gigawatts — and 13.5 gigawatt hours — of batteries, 1.2 gigawatts of large-scale solar and about 400 megawatts of wind power.
Sounds impressive… until you consider that Australia’s current electricity consumption is around 31 gigawatts – every hour.
That’s just electricity. At present. If, as is the Climate Cult’s ultimate aim, Australia’s entire energy usage is electrified that would soar to nearly 200 gigawatt hours, every hour.
This is why, as I recently wrote, it’s so vital to run the pea-and-shells huckstering from the Climate Cult through the acid-test of back-of-the-envelope calculations. Hard numbers cut right through the horseshit.
No matter how hard AEMO tries to convince us that everything is fine...
In its latest update, The Australian Energy Market Operator wants everyone to know the outlook has improved and things will be just fine. Except, that is, for anyone living in Victoria, NSW or South Australia, which could run short of power this summer. And only if everything goes to plan, with promised projects delivered on time and in full, and putting to one side the question of cost.
Yes, just ignore that, even by the Climate Cult’s own admission, the cost amounts to trillions, year on, without end.
Even so, even AEMO can’t disguise the fact that one of the most energy-rich nations in the world is dancing on the edge of the sort of failures that completely blacked out South Australia for days in 2016.
It says: “If only those projects already committed or anticipated proceed, and if risks of commissioning delays eventuate as they have in recent years, reliability gaps are forecast in Victoria, NSW and South Australia.”
By “reliability gaps”, they mean blackouts. The sort of blackouts, in the middle of summer heatwaves and winter storms, which killed hundreds in Texas, and thousands in Britain every year.
Apart from all that, though, everything’s going just fine.
