Renewable Energy is Not Working | Alexander Downer

Alexander Downer talks about the success of industry and society in relation to the availability and affordability of energy.
Alexander Downer is an Australian former politician and diplomat who was the leader of the Liberal Party from 1994 to 1995, Australia's longest-serving Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2007, and served as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 2014 to 2018.
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/ alexanderdowner

[@robertmize327]

It's another sting operation on the taxpayers.

[@dogsy273]

Yep, no question about that.. Ripoff CUtax

[@bones8961]

The lucky nation that luck run out, we can tell our grandchildren of a time where Australia had one of the highest standards of living in the world because we had cheap, reliable energy. Tear in our eye, wondering how did it come to this ? Because on the current trajectory - that's where we are slowly headed. All poor as church mice became we were conned 😢😢

[@mcvideo5909]

All good points, but typical ex-politicians referring to ‘government’ paying, whereas the tax payer pays directly or indirectly through opportunity cost. Also, how is an investment “economically crippling”? These are not ‘investments’; except if you are an ex-politician.

[@billsellwood3280]

"Renewable energy" has certainly given China a lot of money.

[@olddog-fv2ox]

And then they buy our coal and burn it for the cheapest electricity in the world, at the same time we sanctimoniously pretend our virtue on fossil fuel emmissions Dumb and dumber

[@SafeTrucking]

The biggest problem with renewables is that years of policy have turned access to cheap energy into something for the already wealthy, while the rest get stuck with their bills. Just LNP/Labor BAU.

[@damianandrews501]

They are called 'renewable' because you need to renew the infrastructure every 25 years (10 for batteries). Wind turbines will break after the stress of operation. Solar panel output reduces to about 60%. Australia's heat reduces battery life so 10 years is optimistic. None of it can be upgraded. It all must be replaced. It's a constant build, pull down, replace (Logan's Run Renew process) that does massive damage to the environment and is destroying the future for our children. In contrast, W Station was built in 1973 with a 25 year life span. It was relatively cheap to upgrade and has been operational for 51 years. Its environmental damage is much less than the equivalent renewable option. Plus if money was invested in following nature's carbon cycle, global warming wouldn't exist using coal. By commonsense and politics tend to be mutually exclusive.

[@burmy1552]

Wrong. Solar panels degrade at less than .5% per year. After 25 years you'd see a 12-13% drop in output.

[@chriswilliams8607]

Wonderful that thermal powerplants and nuclear does not need maintenance and lives forever.... you people are mentally disturbed on a level that is astonishing.

[@jamesaustralian9829]

​@@chriswilliams8607 they indeed need maintenance, and in the case of Chernobyl, when a test is undertaken without proper measures and processes, things go very very wrong.

[@markboscawen8330]

Taking into account the huge mountain of toxic fly ash, deadly particulate pollution & CO2 emitted over its lifetime it is an misguided claim to say W station, a brown coal fired power station, has less environmental impact than RE. Now needing to spend $500 million on upgrades, $400 million on replacing damaged equipment & more than $65 million on emergency maintenance, let alone normal maintenance costs, just shows even coal fired generation plant also breaks under the stress of operation & need renewing. A huge amount of solar panels can be refreshed for a $Billion.

[@markspalding6092]

Exactly! You won’t hear any of these facts over at the ABC! Conveniently ignored!

[@iareid8255]

Power Engineers have always known that third and fourth rate renewable generators (Wind and solar) can never replace conventional because they are not an equivalent. Intermittency is severe and cannot be overcome and the technical deficiences inherent in renewables must be met by conventional generation running in parallel. This is an expensive and wasteful system, all for an unproven hypothesis that CO2 is driving climate. Even if it is, renewables are a bad decison as there is only one technology widely available to countries which is nuclear.

[@Alex_Plante]

Wind energy makes sense where there is a good resource (wind speed maps are available online - the best areas tend to be northern plains and coastal areas), but where you can also twin wind energy with hydro-electric plant with the kind of reservoirs where you can vary the water level. With this twinning, the wind farm essentially becomes an equivalent to an additional river flowing into the reservoir, which is essentially a large energy storage system. The wind-farm / hydro electricity complex also needs to be not too far from large population centers. This is why wind energy makes most sense in places such as Scandinavia and Eastern Canada. The UK has a tremendous wind energy potential, particularly off-shore and in the Scottish Highlands, but it would have to be twinned with pumped storage projects in Scotland and Wales.

[@evil17]

@@Alex_PlanteAustralia doesn’t want or need renewables, they are very expensive & not very efficient, have no base load 24/7 without expansive & expensive pumped hydro & even then not very power dense for the dollar/time input and ongoing maintenance costs. Wind & solar need to be replaced every 10-20 years if they aren’t wiped out with a cyclone, hail or bushfire event first, it also requires a lot of extra HV grid infrastructure & land (or sea) use, often good farming land or protected area’s and species habitat is where it is located. Australian Labor Govt want to spend another trillion dollars in the next 5 years on more renewables, we could have a lot of new age reactors with that and nuclear is an obvious direction for any developing nation to move toward if we dont use gas, coal or oil to energise Australia with all our abundant resources we just give much of it away without payment anyhow.

[@iareid8255]

Alex, storage is vastly over rated and also misunderstood. Wind on average has an availability of about 30 to 35% and this means there is nothing to re charge the storage unles you build at least 3 times the capacity to meet demand. Even then the low wind times extend for long periods of times and storage cannot meet thise periods. Pumped storage is used for providing a sharp burst of short duration power (They can start and come to full load very quickly) when there are sudden deficits in supply to a grid. You would probably be surprised at the small proportion of wind power (In time), even offshore Scotland, that is in the high output bracket and the very long periods when it is just medium or low. That apart all their technical deficiences make them a poor and expensive choice.

[@Alex_Plante]

@@iareid8255 I'm most familiar with the situation in Quebec and Labrador where we have large hydro-electric reservoirs. Unlike most areas, our peak demand is in the winter, because of heating and relatively little demand for air conditioning. So we store water from spring melt and summer rains to use during the winter. That means that our reservoirs fill up from about April to September, then are run down until April. We also have wind farms, so when the wind blows, the water that would have gone down the chute to the turbines is shut off, to be used at a later time when there is no wind. This means we can add generating capacity to the hydro plant, without having to enlarge the reservoir or divert another river into it. Yes, it means that generating capacity is doubled, which in a sense is a waste, but on the other had, when electricity is generated using steam, most of the energy is wasted as heat, so it's not clear to me that doubling the capacity of two "cold" generators is more wasteful than using a single "hot" generator. The usefulness of wind energy has to be studied at a grid level, and at that level, what enters into the picture is correlations in time between production and demand (In Quebec the wind blows more in the winter, and demand for heat increases because of the wind chill effect), and lack of correlation in geographical area when you have wind farms connected to the grid over a large geographical area. Of course, you need the high-capacity transport line to handle it.

[@iareid8255]

Alex, I had to Google Quebec and i see that it's hydro generation is vast, nearly eqaul to demand. I understand the sense in saving reservoir levels which in a way indicates that you need more hydro. That, of course may not be possible from public acceptance and also suitable terrain, preferably in the right location. I would suggest if that is not possible that combined cycle gas generation is a better solution than wind. Wind requires extensive infrastructure to connect the individual turbines and then connect to the grid. They are expensive to build, contrary to popular opinion, have a short lifespan and with a deteriorating output with time due to blade degradation. Doubling the capacity is doubly expensive. CCGT can also be located close to demand so reducing line losses. You are fortunate to have significant hydro capacity as it is an excellent way to supply power (wind is not for many reasons, practical and technical). Once the high capital outlay is done, it requires minimal maintenance and no fuel cost.

[@bradcavanagh3092]

Nuclear is about to make a big comeback with the huge demand increase from electric transport and AI. Oracle disclosed the other day it's got multiple gigawatt-class data centres under construction for AI and it's a bit player in that industry.

[@tsailor100]

The Brits are building Hinkley Point power station for the last 10 years, spent big billions and still don't know whether the population will be able to afford the energy thus generated. Me, I have solar on my roof and haven't paid any electricity bills for the last 6 years..

[@bradcavanagh3092]

@@tsailor100 China has already built two of the same reactors (EPR) and has had them running for a few years now, all in a fraction of the time and for a fraction of the cost of what the poms are doing. Nuclear plants put out their full rated capacity 24/7, 365 days a year. If you go and do the sums on solar and storage to back it so you can deliver equivalent generation you'll see it just can't stack up economically in comparison.

[@cameronjohnston5748]

At the end of the day, it only means more TAX and government overreach. Just sick to death about it.

[@rogerdee.926]

These systems 'failed' in Europe but 'Renewable Corporations' in terms of net profit succeeded hugely and now they're out here endorsed by the Government pulling the same caper. I was talking with a guy whose father had managed a Coal Fired Power Station about this subject and he just smiled and laughed a bit '... its all about the money.'

[@johnsoeder756]

Nuclear is the way to go for inexpensive energy

[@tsailor100]

Inexpensibe? 4X the price of renewabes. Don't be an idiot.

[@chriswilliams8607]

You are a joke, nuclear is most expensive energy out there, one kilowatthour of nuclear power costs 5 to 10 times more than power from renewables, and even power from renewables stored in battery storage is a fraction of the cost of nuclear.

[@jamesaustralian9829]

​@@tsailor100 1.2 trillion to power Aus with solar and wind. 150bn to build reactors....

[@Yourbrightspot]

​​​@@jamesaustralian9829and u pay the cost of radioactive material and cooling equipment continuously. The investment of the solar is one off and the cost is cheaper to maintain than nuke reactors. Your numbers are fake. You need to evaluate the cost by Apple to apple. Then we are removing Albo not because of power. We are removing him for the half million migrant. Passing our money to Zelensky etc.........

[@charleswilliams8847]

Not economical. Not reliable. Not scalable. Not sustainable.

[@chriswilliams8607]

4 times wrong in such a short statement, thats astonishing, obviously you have no clue and fall for this kind of "experts" who still do not understand current technology, and the fact, that fossile fuels are going empty within 50 to 100 years, only insane people would like to keep going the way we are right now.

[@johndinsdale1707]

Aussie could have cheap energy if it didn't 'cut off it nose to spite its face' by removing coal?

[@bbouchan1]

How long does it take one wind turbine to replace the energy that it took to make it?

[@thomaszvolensky2171]

In some cases, never.

[@JohnnyFaber]

Infinity. They break down and require replacement LONG before the break even. It's a giant scam.

[@josephcarabetta1494]

I remember in 1993 when John Hewson went to an election with the GST mandate. He was crucified by the media for not knowing the pric of a birthday cake with GST. I hope Peter Dutton learns all there is to know about his mandate on Nuclear power, should he run into the likes of Willesie

[@laurencefielder]

No one tells us what ir costs to replace the renewables as they are decommissioned and have to be recycled???

[@lloydsingline340]

I had a flat battery this morning and my car wouldn't start .There must be a problem re renewable energy,with storage and flat battery disposal.

[@thomaszvolensky2171]

Energy is not renewable.

[@anthonymorris5084]

Agreed. Pure language manipulation to fool people in order to pursue an agenda.

[@dabrack9350]

Every renewable energy project of scale must have the construction subsidized and have a market mandated by quotas. Even then most fail. Every fifth grader understands that won't work.

[@NikonD5200Channel]

Every nuclear contract in the UK has been heavily subsidised by the UK Government and has mandated quotas. Still huge delays and overspend.

[@dabrack9350]

@@NikonD5200Channel I strongly advocate for nuclear to supply the base load everywhere, but if it cannot fund itself once the permits are complete it should not be built. It is rarely the least costly option but is not out of range and is far more reliable.

[@dabrack9350]

@@NikonD5200Channel As I said, no projects are viable and can stand independently. They are being forced on us; we have to build them, we have to fund them during operation, and we will have to pay for the decommissioning while the "owners" retire on the profits.

[@ianmaher4348]

The first energy sources in England were the water wheel and windmill! Coal came later!

[@YvonneCrean]

And one of the lovely water wheel featured in Midsomer murders years ago. It was huge... UK has wonderful history 🇦🇺💕

[@BabakNassiri]

Productivity has not gone down in last few decades. It is going upper pretty much every year. But what else is going up? Greed of the wealthy managers. What is skyrocketing is both the profits and salaries of CEOs and Board members.

[@auditor181]

Everything starts with cost of Property , market dictate the cost of houses , then expensive Property then everything will more expensive , because Property first priority to Pay debt for people and they will use any ways to achieve that goal , right or wrong , legal or not legal ... Try to look deeper that Problem! ...

[@bungalallyO]

Cost of labor.

[@auditor181]

@@bungalallyO how I said before Market (greed) dictate the cost!

[@lachlandoughty545]

What a Lord Nelson view of energy subsidies

[@Wandjina104]

Not one fact, just an opinion. Did Alexander mention Australia? Renewable energy is working very well and is the cheapest option. All the big providers are swinging to renewables because they the best business option. By far. As for expenditure does Alexander know that the Australian government subsidises petroleum and coal based energy to the tune of $10 billion per year?

[@KenMonk-kz5iu]

No point knocking it. Deal with it. We can do it. Think outside the square for a change.🇦🇺

[@thelonewolf666]

since renewables by power bill has gone up 40%

[@Alex_Plante]

Quick Googling shows that rooftop solar seems to be a success in Australia. Not only is there a statistical correlation between sunniness and electrical demand for air conditioning, but rooftop solar reduces the need for air conditioning by absorbing sunlight that would have other wise heated the house. Furthermore, solar production is at its peak when demand for electricity is at its peak, for air conditioning. In my opinion, an appropriate electrical generation mix for Australia would be nuclear for base load, rooftop solar, and natural gas and pumped storage hydro-electricity to deal with peak demand and intermittency. Up to 10% of natural gas could be produced from methanisation of garbage and sewage plant sludge.

[@olddog-fv2ox]

Meanwhile we sell all our coking coal to china so they can generate the cheapest electricity in the world. Dumb and Dumber

[@burmy1552]

Yes, well said. I agree with all your points.

[@susanwhite5839]

Not bothering with these blokes

[@milosradovanovic5280]

Energy transition has to be done in more carful way, slowly, taking into account each aspects of individual and collective life on earth, definitely 👍🇺🇸❤️🤗🌎🐖💯🇦🇺 4:00

[@milosradovanovic5280]

I do totally agree with Mr Downer ,definitely 👍🇺🇸❤️🤗🌎🐖💯🇦🇺 2:12

[@paulwilson7622]

As of 2023, China had 3,706 coal fired power stations, & building about 2 each month! No doubt gas fired, nuclear power too!

[@Paul-hw8bk]

Any other options?

[@batmanlives6456]

That’s stating the bloody obvious… Look at your power bill !!!

[@grahammewburn]

If you do research, you will learn going renewable is possible. Ask Google Statistics on renewable v non-renewable. It's an open question and will give you factual data. Non-renewable sources of energy production are drawing to a close.

[@kaymoto4023]

Fossil fuels! 🎉🎉🎉

[@jamesaustralian9829]

Put 10kw solar systems on evwry residential roof, that lowers peoples bills, and lowers the grid demand. Win win

[@fairman1455]

Just have a look at Norway all electric virtually free

[@brucecumming7852]

This bloke is a magnet for all the crusty old conservatives (usually well off!) and does not seem connected to todays realities . . Probably because of his huge government pension. .

[@panayotisdamianakis3658]

Typo in your thumbnail title. You should fix it.

[@plantfeeder6677]

Nooooo...who coulda' guessed😮😑

[@rodneyblackwell7477]

The Victorian government secretary for Men bbehaving badly will soon sort out these recalcitrants

[@menangal]

this is one of the reasons why china is the number one in the world in ev, solar and battery products.

[@vincentburrowes9243]

Nuclear Waste Facility Folks - is there any truth in the rumour? that Australia's new Nuclear Waste Facility will be located at: Unit 3 - 199 Gympie Road Strathpine Queensland 4500 Please advise well in advance - so I can purchase the correct PPE!

[@PeterMcInnes-ti8ou]

No mate will be under big building in Canberra. No need for lights glow in the dark, maybe get brighter pollies as a result

[@michaelagius9477]

My comment taken down. Seems facts don't rate on your forum john.

[@harryoriander2255]

As if downer is an expert ?

[@fairman1455]

The sun is free, The wind is free, The tide is free, some of what he says is not true. big coal and big oil will love him

[@Alex_Plante]

Oil and gas in the ground are free, you just have to pay money to explore for it, develop the wells, transport it, refine it and distribute the refined product....

[@anthonymorris5084]

Nothing is free.

[@fairman1455]

@@anthonymorris5084 But that lucky old sun has nothing to do but roll around heaven all day.(Frankie Lane)

[@olddog-fv2ox]

Except the panels cost the taxpayer a fortune and have to be relace every twenty five years as ultra violet light degrades them

[@anthonymorris5084]

@@fairman1455 Frankie Lane was rich and didn't care about money.

[@cyberslim7955]

1:50 Gosh, what a load of BS. How exactly is it "economically crippling". Your argument goes like this: We have perfect reception for radio. All this new TV movie stuff is economically crippling.🤣🤣🤣

[@DanielMasmanian]

Not sure about this.

[@nevillemills9517]

WHY?? Would you listen to this fool and think that he could ever have any credibility is beyond me. Just ask Mr Papadopolis. That will tell you everything you need to know.

[@vincentburrowes9243]

Peter Dutton - the creator of Australia's own Chernobyl and Fukushima Power Stations complete with three eyed fishponds to cool them down!

[@Philip-hv2kc]

No , Chernobyl prior to the disaster was repetitively pointed to as an accident waiting to happen by the western experts . The west's nuclear power stations have passive deadman safeguards . Fukushima can't happen again . Believe it or not , people continue to live normal lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today .

[@tombradshaw5164]

Renewable energy as a source of baseload power! YOU MUST BE KIDDING! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@S3NTRY]

Anyone with a single functioning neuron could see renewables aren't going to cut it for much at all.

[@alancotterell9207]

My electricity bill has been halved by solar panels. That is not all bad.

[@st-ex8506]

Quite at the contrary! Within a generation time, renewables (+ possibly nuclear in some countries) will make for nearly 100% of ALL energy consumed. Ok... fair enough... I hear you in advance... there may well be a few applications very tough to decarbonize... so, let's say 95%! The proof that renewables are by now the cheapest form of energy (INCLUDING storage) has been brought, and millions of people throughout the world, including me, are working towards that goal... and capital is pouring this way by the hundreds of billions of dollars... no more towards coal and oil! You may have more than a single functioning neuron, but you are very ill-informed and very little of a visionary!

[@S3NTRY]

@@alancotterell9207 were they free? That's a pretty good deal. Not to mention the conflation of national projects to a single household. Another genius.

[@russianbot4418]

@@alancotterell9207 How much of their purchase price was financed by someone else's money?

[@polarbear7255]

@@alancotterell9207 you just paid for your electricity up front, thats all.

[@rogeralsop3479]

The BBC will hate this post.

[@rjones6219]

No doubt, they'll put their Verify team on it, and label it as extreme right misinformation

[@josephcarabetta1494]

Not to mention our ABC

[@RalphEllis]

Why would anyone be against more plant-food in the atmosphere (CO2) - which is responsible for a 20% increase in food production?? Why would anyone think that CO2 is causing a climate catastrophe, when: a. Strong US tornadoes have been reducing for 70 years. (See NOAA NCDC data - di and image search.) b. Tropical cyclones have been reducing fir 120 years. (See Nature paper by Chand et al.) (See satellite data by Dr Ryan Maue.) Face facts - climate ‘scientists’ and their pet media have been lying to you for 30 years. This is another readon why all universities should be closed down - they are the enemies of the people. Ralph

[@olddog-fv2ox]

Read, Bonhoeffers, paper on the "theory of stupidity". Fascists jailed him and killed him for his trouble, but it gave some clarity to the madness of fascism in Germany that led to WW2

[@johnbuckner2828]

I worry. They are going to make the cure worse than the disease. And then they’ll blame somebody else.

[@JohnWilliams-iw6oq]

They'll blame the experts, the scientists and the media but they will never look in a mirror.

[@yolandascholten2012]

Meanwhile we have to keep forking out and it’s getting harder all the time.

[@russianbot4418]

@@yolandascholten2012 It's almost like decades of refusing to fight back no matter the losses was a bad long-term survival strategy or something.

[@bones8961]

So right ✅️ much worse, baked beans by candle 🕯, hand washing clothes in the tub, sitting in my petrol car with the heater on to warm up, that's if I still have a job to afford petrol ⛽️ no job, can't pay the mortgage - on it goes.

[@chrisst1953]

They (governments) already have made the cure worse than the disease. Unfortunately we will all pay dearly for the consequences.

[@josephcarabetta1494]

I would like to know what part of Mr Downer argument Chris Bowen does not understand and how much has he spent so far on his renewable carpet ride

[@batmanlives6456]

Bowen’s mental capacity is that of a very young child … 2 years old

[@Philip-hv2kc]

Anyway we all essentially will be able to vote on it . We would all like to vote against the excessive ½ million immigrants coming into the country annually that labour has approved.

[@evil17]

Nuclear for Australia is the best way forward if not going the coal/gas route. Labor want to spend another trillion dollars on renewables in the next 5 years, put that towards nuclear. Energy statistically costs more in all countries using renewables and they have constant ongoing maintenance and replacement costs even if not being destroyed by cyclone, storm, hail, lightning, meteorite strike or bushfires, birdshot, dust & ash. Renewables will also require another 28,000 kms of additional HV grid infrastructure, & ocean based wind farms are probably the worst investment ever with many more issues to deal with than any other means of power generation. We need to get rid of Labor & renewables they will both send us broke soon.

[@PennySmart]

The Industrial revolution started in Manchester, in the North of England. Somerset is a rural county in the South West of England, most famous for Cheddar Cheese and the city of Bath...😅

[@ericrawson2909]

I thought it started in Coalbrookdale, where the worlds first iron bridge is located.

[@rodneyblackwell7477]

I thought Sheffield would have been more accurate than Sommerset

[@NeutronStar-r7r]

1 kg of coal runs a washing machine from 6 hours. Available 24/7 1 kg of oil runs a washing machine for 9 hours. Available 24/7 1 kg of renewables runs a washing machine for less than 1 hour. Available only when the wind is blowing and the sun is shinning. Nominally 30% of the time in Australia. 1 kg of Uranium runs a washing machine for 2000 years. Available 24/7. WARNING - The washing machine may not last 2000 years. I wonder which energy source makes sense.

[@burmy1552]

What is 1kg of renewables? This should be interesting. How much do wind and solar weigh?

[@NikonD5200Channel]

@@burmy1552 how much does sunlight weigh?

[@NeutronStar-r7r]

@@burmy1552 A typical 1 gig reactor requires 200,000 5 MW wind turbines to replace it. At 500 tonnes per wind turbine multiplied by 200,000 units. Total weight 100 000 000 tonnes. Let’s take a typical east coast low where there is no wind for a week. That’s 100 000 000 tonnes of dead weight producing no electrons at all. Solar fails 100% at night. That’s a total failure of the entire renewables grid at night for a week. It does not even matter what the reactor weighs because it just works 24/7 for at least 80 years no matter what the weather is doing. With the average life of a panel and wind turbine being 20 years, less for an off shore turbine the entire renewables generating capacity has to be replaced 4 times over to go the distance against a tiny reactor taking up several hectares while the 200,000 wind turbines ruin several hundred square kilometres of farm land and bush habitat. Let’s also add in the weight of the 28,000 km of super heavy weight transmission lines required to connect the dispersed renewables. You can imagine the weight and the money required for that. The seven reactors Dutton has just announced require almost zero transmission lines as they are being built next to the retiring coal plants. Not only is the reactor a feather weight it takes up almost no land and generates 24/7 power when the average is 40% availability or 2 days in every 5 for wind. The renewables grid will cost trillions and seven reactors will cost a fraction of that, about 200 billion. and it works unlike renewables. Germany has already proved that. In reality weight is not the issue. One works 24/7 and the other does not.

[@dohminkonoha3200]

Plants are ideal renewable. They don’t require taxpayers money to grow.

[@grobbosixtyone]

I’m sure our governments would introduce a plant tax

[@markboscawen8330]

Mr Downer is overlooking 3 things: 1) Australia’s aging CF-generators are quickly reaching end-of-life & need replacing - what ever technology is chosen to replace them, nuclear or RE, is going to require substantial investment. 2) Firmed RE is the cheapest way to generate electricity - solar power is being given away for free in the middle of the day.* You can’t get cheaper than that. 3) Australia has the rare trifecta of = strongest sunlight in the world, regular west to east windy weather fronts & huge tracts of land ideal for large scale RE generation systems. All of which means the Australian economy can have the unique global competitive advantage of very cheap power. Using nuclear just puts us on the same cost base as many other countries & so gives no advantage to businesses. * many electricity retailers are now offering free electricity to charge EVs between noon and 2pm on weekends. As more RE enters the system it will become more common for electricity to be offered at low/no cost during periods of ideal generation conditions.

[@chriswilliams8607]

Another clueless guy talking about stuff he don't understand, obvously renewable energy is working extremely well, extremely cheap, and is improving by the day. How broken must people be to still not understand that we cannot sustain the insanity of burning limited fossile ressources to power cars and drive powerplants, how obvious must it get before the last naive clueless mind get's it? Energy storage is key, and as batteries and other storage technologies has evolved to an astonishing level of perfection within a few years there is not the slightest question what we need to do: *) build more renewalbe energy sources like wind and solar *) build huge power storage facilities *) support and subsidies small batterie storage in households and small communities *) change to dynamic power pricing for drawing energy from the grid or feeding energy into the grid for private customers and industry *) build power2liquid facilities to store energy for times where excess power is needed and build small fast responding powerplants, while sacking huge coal or nuclear as we have more of small powerplants *) migrate to EVs and heatpumps If you still do not understand that.... than you have no clue what you are talking about and should educate yourself.

[@michaelagius9477]

Ask coal fired power station owners why they are closing them down. You will get the same answer I got. We can't compete with renewable.

[@Chris-ei5fz]

What triggered the Industrial Revolution was a new and abundant energy source and today that energy source is renewables no fuel Alexander it’s not hard to work out.

[@jameskluin3573]

Australia has the highest solar home take-up in the world. So they are not working?????

[@tsailor100]

He never was the sharpest tool in the toolbox and certainly isn't it now.

[@tompommerel2136]

Rightly or not, I have always found this man a wind bag!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@grahammewburn]

7 countries are completely renewable. Companies producing electricity choose renewable energy as it is the cheapest way to make electricity.

[@burmy1552]

Yes. Even though the consistency and storage are issues, solar and onshore wind are some of the cheapest power sources per kwh. Not only that but they help reduce need for peaker plants in times of high demand. We still need other power sources but we shouldn't ignore the math. Our energy needs are expanding exponentially with AI and robotics. We should expand renewables along with nuclear to meet these needs. Nuclear technology has gotten far safer in recent years.

[@DavidBegovich]

Total nonsense. There are no countries running totally on renewables.

[@peterschaefer2946]

no big deal australia its finnished

[@johnsanders3859]

The world needs to get more solar and wind going, they are prepped to pay billions for nuclear, give people more free solar. In America there are miles and miles of wind farms all over the west supplying whole communities