In Douglas Adams’ The Meaning of Liff, the word aboyne means ‘to beat an expert at a game of skill by playing so appallingly that none of his clever tactics or strategies are of any use to him’. We have to wonder whether Boofhead Bowen is playing aboyne on a gigantic scale with Australia’s energy sector.
Or whether he really is as colossally thick as he acts.
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is accused of misrepresenting a group that has mapped Australia’s accelerating renewables rollout and of misleading the public about its landmark data.
In a social media post, Mr Bowen accused conservation group Rainforest Reserves Australia of vastly over-estimating the footprint area of renewables projects proposed for Australia and of being “anti-renewable, pro-nuclear activists”.
In fact, as I’ve shown before, the ‘net zero’ spruikers either vastly underestimate, or more often try to keep secret, the sheer scale of the land that will have to be covered with solar panels and wind farms in order to meet Australia’s energy requirements without coal or nuclear. The low energy density of wind and sun means that extremely large collection devices are needed – enormous wind turbines with large blades and vast areas of solar panels.
For example, the 1,400 Megawatts (MW) Sophia Offshore Wind Farm under construction in the North Sea will cover an area of nearly 600 square kilometres (it would just about fit into Middlesex). But the UK government intends to quadruple offshore wind, which would require around 30 more 600 square kilometre installations. This would require 50 per cent more than the UK’s total annual production of steel. That’s not even taking into account the vast nets of undersea cables which will be needed to get the electricity to where it’s needed.
But even covering twice the area of greater Sydney in gigantic turbines will only (putatively, assuming the turbines work at peak capacity 24/7, which we know they never will) supply less than half of Britain’s annual electricity demand.
In Australia, governments are blocking offshore wind, meaning every panel and every turbine will have to be built over precious and scarce arable land and remaining bushland. Millions and millions of square kilometres of it.
Either Bowen is too stupid to figure this out, or he’s lying through his teeth.
RRA vice-president Steven Nowakowski said he and his group stood by the data, which had expanded to include a further 120 renewable projects that had emerged since its report was featured in the Australian.
“Our data represents the most comprehensive compilation of existing and proposed projects, for a whole country, ever put together,” Mr Nowakowski said. “It has taken us over four years to research and find the existing projects as well as those being proposed. If Chris Bowen has better data perhaps he would like to share it with us. From our experience, governments are certainly not making it easy for the general public to see what is coming.”
Because they know that, if the public ever actually grasped the scale of what’s being foisted on us, they’d be aghast.
So the government peddles wild mistruths.
In the video posted to social media, Mr Bowen claims the area to be covered by renewables is 12 per cent that revealed in the RRA data and featured in graphics in The Australian relating their overall footprint to metropolitan Sydney and Brisbane. He said the 12 per cent figure was based on calculations by the NSW Agriculture Commissioner of “how much land renewables will take, based on the plans of the Australian Energy Market Operator”.
Mr Bowen declined to justify his claim, or to explain how he derived the 12 per cent figure, when repeatedly asked to do so over the course of two days.
Again, does he just not know? Or is he hiding the truth?
Either way, he shouldn’t be in the job.
