Renewables Are Civilisational Suicide

As I’ve repeatedly stressed, ‘renewables’ (meaning wind and solar) are an economic and strategic disaster. It’s not just because when the cost of energy goes up (as it invariably does, everywhere, as reliance on wind and solar increases), the cost of everything goes up. Renewables are a drag on both the economy and the nation’s defence capability.

It’s not just the colossal – and ongoing, as both wind turbines and solar panels have to be replaced every 15–25 years – cost of carpeting rural landscapes in vast fields of glass and aluminium and whirling blades of bird-death. There’s the necessity of rebuilding the entire grid, as well as the stupendous added costs of trying – invariably unsuccessfully – to make intermittent sources of generation meet the demands of a modern, industrialised society.

Beyond even the reality that a nation that so insanely cripples its own economy simply cannot afford to defend itself, is the fact that so many critical defence industries consume vast amounts of electricity and are heavily carbon-intensive. These include steel and aluminium making, both industries all-but extinguished in Australia due to ‘climate’ policies. Auto-making, another industry strangled in its sleep by myopic governments, is also a critical defence industry.

The Productivity Commission has now confirmed what anyone with eyes could see. Replacing reliable coal with weather-dependent wind and solar is actively hammering national productivity. Energy economists are already warning the commission may be understating the coming damage.

Macroeconomics chief economist Stephen Anthony said the productivity situation was “only going to get worse” because of the costs to back up the grid after replacing firm energy sources such as coal-fired generation.

“Costs will rise exponentially as weather-dependent share such as solar and wind rises from 30 per cent to 50 per cent of the grid.

“A wind and solar-based grid requires three to four times overbuild for reliability, vast tracts of land, long-distance transmission (with losses) and a parallel life-support system to achieve grid stability. This consists of batteries, gas peakers, pumped hydro, even diesel generators and now dozens of hugely expensive synchronous condensers.”

Frontier Economics boss Danny Price was even blunter about the commission’s sunny assumptions:

“The whole point of renewables is that you can slap them up quickly, while their capacity to generate electricity is determined only by wind and solar, and it’s not as if they’re going to get better over time.

“The PC didn’t talk about how increased renewable capacity also leads to more electricity getting spilt. People imagine that all that excess production is going to get mopped up by storage.

“Well, that’s probably not going to be the case, and it’s certainly not the case now.”

Labor, meanwhile, is throwing more taxpayer money at what will never work – and Australia is getting nothing in return.

Labor’s flagship Capacity Investment Scheme was supposed to supercharge the transition to 82 per cent renewables by 2030. After three years and multiple auctions, it has delivered exactly one operational project: a 46-megawatt solar farm in Victoria. Of 94 projects announced, only 35 have even reached final investment decision. Wind projects in particular are mired in cost blowouts, transport headaches and social licence revolts.

“We have one project that is operational. We have a number (that) are in construction,” Alison Wiltshire, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water acting head of the clean energy investment and facilitation division, said of the CIS.

“We’ve gone from 70-odd projects to 94 quite quickly.”

Well, 94… on paper, which is likely the only place they’ll ever be seen. All bar one are either still being negotiated or struggling through construction. Chris Bowen jets off to Bonn and COP31 to lecture the world about electrification targets while his signature scheme produces almost nothing usable.

Nationals leader Matt Canavan cuts through the waffle. When war comes, the net-zero fantasy collapses.

“When war begins, support for the net-zero fantasy collapses. There are no supporters of net zero in a foxhole,” Senator Canavan will tell the NSW Nationals Conference on Saturday. “For too long, the basic interests of Australians have been ignored and denigrated.

“We need to destroy net zero ­finance before net zero finance ­destroys us.”

Canavan is also right to call out the banks for running what he describes as a jihad against coal and gas while refusing to finance projects plainly in the national interest. Reliable baseload power is not optional for a country that will one day undoubtedly have to defend itself.