We live in a time when more than ever before we are finger wagged to bow before ‘experts’, yet the ‘expert’ class repeatedly prove themselves to be worse than useless. Covid was the perfect example: the ‘expert’ class got nearly everything, from lockdowns and mask mandates, to fatality rates and vaccine efficacy, almost universally, spectacularly, wrong.
Meanwhile, we mere independent journalists, armed with nothing more than an internet connection and access to the same data as the ‘experts’, were more right than wrong, time and again. I make no claim to any great wisdom let alone expertise, yet I was able to notice, even by April 2020, what the ‘expert’ class refused to ever admit: lockdowns not only didn’t work, they made things exponentially worse.
Similarly, I’m no expert on energy infrastructure, but I can read and do some basic calculations. Armed with that alone, I’ve for years been writing what, apparently, the ‘experts’ at the Australian Energy Market Operator have just cottoned on to:
The cost of ‘Net Zero’ is staggering, and will be borne by every consumer in their electricity bill.
The cost of overhead transmission line projects has ballooned by up to 55 per cent, with substations rising as much as 35 per cent compared with equivalent estimates provided for AEMO’s 2024 electricity plan.
The steep hike “would impact bills for electricity consumers”, prompting the market operator to review uncommitted transmission projects as part of its planning to ensure a lid is kept on overall system costs. The new estimates are contained within scenarios from a draft electricity options report for consultation which will help form the basis of the 2026 integrated system plan, regarded as the definitive blueprint for Australia’s power grid.
Only if you’re a completely gullible idiot who believes anything a Labor government-commissioned report says.
Or Chris Bowen, which is to say, an utterly clueless cretin living in a green fairyland.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen said Labor’s Rewiring the Nation program was providing over $20bn in concessional finance, equity and underwriting to necessary network upgrades.
“This support will reduce the costs of these projects for consumers,” a spokeswoman for Mr Bowen said on Sunday. “The Australian government also has critical work under way to address supply chain pressures on materials, equipment and workforce.”
How thick is this bloke? That $20bn of government money comes straight out of the pockets of consumers. Only a Labor politician could be so stump-dumb, brain-dead and cognitively challenged, as to seriously argue that government spending comes out of thin air.
Australia must develop about 10,000km of high voltage transmission lines by 2050 to deliver a smooth transition from coal to renewables, with half of the project pipeline to be delivered in the next decade.
Let’s do the maths, kids. Yes, Chris, you can take your shoes off for the difficult sums.
First, off, Labor are talking about adding a full quarter of Australia’s existing transmission lines. The cost of those lines varies, but an average cost is estimated at $2.4m per km, but those are 2021 figures. As AEMO is admitting, those costs have shot up. Given a 55 per cent increase, that brings the cost of 10,000 km of new transmission lines to at least $37 billion.
That’s just the transmission lines and new substations. It doesn’t even begin to factor in the cost – ongoing, roughly every two decades – of the solar panels and wind turbines. All that pushes costs into the stratosphere of trillions of dollars. Which fools like Bowen daydream will happen in just 25 years.
Somebody’s going to have to pay for all that. And that somebody is you.
“AEMO recognises that increases in costs for electricity transmission network development would impact bills for electricity consumers,” the operator said. “The 2026 ISP will revisit transmission network projects previously identified as needing to proceed … seeking to ensure that overall costs for consumers are optimised.”
Then there’s the staggering environmental cost.
Victoria alone plans to build renewable energy zones covering seven per cent of the state’s land area, with 5.2 million solar panels, nearly 1000 onshore wind turbines and four new transmission projects, as it chases a target for clean energy to provide 95 per cent of its electricity by 2035.
If the Victorian government announced that they were bulldozing nearly one-tenth of the state for roads, the shrieking from the green left would be heard clear across the Tasman.
One area where AEMO may be able to cut back on costs is by leaning more heavily on household sources such as rooftop solar, electric vehicle to grid supplies and batteries which received a recent subsidy boost.
Which will only further destabilise grids and lead to more and more blackouts, of entire states, if not most of the heavily populated eastern seaboard of Australia. After South Australia’s statewide blackout in 2016, and the multi-country blacking-out of the entire Iberian peninsula just a month ago, you’d think even a thick-headed ‘expert’ might start to wonder if all this is such a great idea.
Not when their six-figure salaries depend on being wrong all the time.
