Nick Cater has written another excoriating piece in the Australian. This time his target is the hopelessly unrealistic plans to turn Australia into a land of solar panels and wind turbines that can not only power Australia but also export power to Singapore. Worse, no one has yet factored in the colossal power demands of AI. His warnings cast an ominous shadow:
Renewable energy superpower status is supposedly in Australia’s grasp now the Government has given Mike Cannon-Brookes the green light to export solar power to Singapore.
Tanya Plibersek announced environmental approval for the tech billionaire’s eccentric proposal last week, taking a swipe at Peter Dutton’s “expensive nuclear fantasy that may never happen”.
By contrast, the Environment Minister would have us believe Cannon-Brookes’s plan to siliconise the NT Outback is a done deal. All that’s left to do is raise $35 billion in capital, install 120 square kilometres of solar panels, build a modest 788km transmission line to Darwin and lay a 4200km high-voltage cable on the seabed, and we’re good to go.
The Sun Cable AAPowerLink project feels like it was stolen from a Heath Robinson cartoon: a convoluted, unnecessarily elaborate and impractical contraption designed to accomplish a mundane task. It may mark the beginning of the end of the renewable romance, the point at which the transition to wind, solar and hydropower collapses under the weight of its own absurdity.
There is increasing evidence the U.S. has reached the point of peak renewables, as the pool of private investors shrinks and winning community approval becomes harder. Research by the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory showed roughly one-third of utility-scale wind and solar applications submitted over the past five years were cancelled, while about half of wind and solar projects experienced significant delays.
The U.S. Department of Energy says the national electricity network needs to grow by 57% by 2035, the equivalent of approximately 21,000 km a year. Last year’s total was around 200 km, down from just over 1,000 in 2022.
Meanwhile, the challenges of grid synchronisation and storage remain unresolved, and the technical problems for offshore wind turbines, in particular, are mounting. Last week, turbine manufacturer GE Vernova announced an investigation into a blade failure in the 3.6GW Dogger Bank project in the North Sea off the coast of the U.K.. It is the third blade failure this year.
In July, a newly installed blade crumbled at the Vineyard Wind offshore plant, creating debris that washed up on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. At 107 metres long and weighing 55 tonnes, they are the most enormous blades deployed commercially. The failure of three in quick succession suggests the quest to increase output by installing ever-larger blades has reached its natural limits.
And here’s the rub. It seems no-one peddling the Green Dream factored in the massive power needs of AI:
The principal driving force is not electric vehicles but the rapid growth of artificial intelligence. AI requires at least 10 times the power of conventional computing programs.
In the U.S., data centres account for about 2.5% of power and demand could rise to 7.5% by 2030, according to Boston Consulting Group. In Ireland, data processing and storage use 12% of electricity produced, forcing the authorities to limit the number of connections to the grid.
Silicon Valley has long abandoned the notion it can be powered by silicon photovoltaic panels while burying stray emissions in the Amazon forests.
In April, the tech giant Amazon paid the best part of $1bn ($US650m) for a sizeable block of land next to Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna nuclear power station. It will be the site for a data centre powered by up to 480MW of carbon-free electricity delivered reliably around the clock.
Shares in U.S. nuclear power companies such as Consolidated Energy, Talem and Vistra have soared by between 80% and 180% in the past year. So-called green energy stocks, on the other hand, are static or falling, while coal is making an unexpected comeback.
The effect of AI on electricity demand was largely unanticipated at the beginning of the decade. AI chips will undoubtedly become more efficient, but there is no telling how much further the demand for AI will grow since the technology is in its infancy. Nor can we begin to guess what other power-hungry forms of technology might be developed by 2050.
What we do know, however, is that if Australia’s demand for electricity exceeds 313 TWH a year in a 2050, we’re in trouble. That’s the target the Australian Energy Market Operator has set in its updated blueprint for the great energy transition.
… that’s going to take a lot of solar panels and wind turbines. The Energy Minister says we need 22,000 new solar panels a day and a new 7MW wind turbine every 18 hours just to meet our 2030 target of a mere 202 TWH. For the record, the speed of the rollout in the first two years of Labour Government is less than a tenth of that.
If they had, they would have to acknowledge that there are limits to the renewable energy frontier determined by energy density, the demand for land and the requirement for firming. The silicification of northern Australia cannot continue forever, nor can we expect to rely on China for most of the hardware and pretend there are no geopolitical consequences.
As for our nuclear-phobic Prime Minister’s dream of turning Australia into the Saudi Arabia of green hydrogen, while simultaneously sitting at the cutting edge of quantum computing, forget it. In 2006, as the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Anthony Albanese gave a speech at the Swansea RSL on avoiding dangerous climate change.
“Why on Earth would we want to take the big health and economic risk of nuclear energy when we have a ready-made power source hovering peacefully in the sky every day?” he asked.
If Albanese doesn’t know the answer to that question 18 years later, he probably never will.
If you can get past the paywall, worth reading in full.
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Leitch needs launching from the battlements of Edinburgh Castle. Preferably with useless Yousaf tied to him at the ankles.
A highly appropriate denouement for the pantomime that is the SNP.
Thank you.
Leich is a dentist! “Professor” my ar*e!
“Jamie Dawson KC, Counsel to the inquiry, challenged Prof. Leitch that he was advising Mr Yousaf how to avoid the SNP Government’s own rules using a “workaround”.
He asked: “If the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care didn’t understand the rules, what chance did anybody else have?””
As usual, missing point (probably deliberately). The question from the “secretary” wasn’t an attempt to find out what he should be doing to stay safe, it was just an attempt to establish how he could get away with normal human behaviour and still claim he was within the law. Not the same thing at all, and the KC bloody well knows this.
All theatre, just like “covid”.
What happened to “there was no pandemic”?
If the governments own senior medical adviser says it was legitimate to not wear a mask due to a “social occasion”, the KC should have been asking what sort of virus would understand that.
The very existence of these nonsensical rules shows in itself there was nothing as deadly as the government claimed. If there was something genuinely that deadly, people wouldn’t have been concerned with socialising.
The Scottish inquiry is probably more to do with getting the SNP ousted from government.
If the inquiry gets the SNP ousted from government then some good will of come from it.
…have come from it.
I’m usually holding a drink whenever I’m in the pub. It’s good to know that this means I’m safe from COVID. Does this count as beneficial health effect?
As long as “food and drink was being served” you would have been exempt as would have everyone else in a pub, restaurant, cafe.
That isn’t in any legislation and venues seemed to be enforcing a stricter policy but that was the official response from the Scottish Government to a maskless First Minister violating a pensioners territorial bubble shown here:
https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/scottish-news/20074393.lulu-nicola-sturgeon-spotted-book-launch-glasgow/
“violating a pensioners territorial bubble shown here:”
Brilliant.
I also never found out if a Scotch Egg will keep you safe from Covid!
A pickled onion possibly but not sure about the Ova Scotia!
The recurring theme in “Scotch Egg: The Musical” is essentially the future BBC reporter’s search for an answer to that, based on reviewing documentation, media clips and an interview with “Boris Johnson” (and all the other survivors), reminiscing about what fun they had running The Lockdown some twenty years previously. The budget for the musical was far smaller than these inquiries, much faster-paced and more entertaining! Here is part of the musical item “The laws are set in stone”.
(2 min 56 s)
Football is safe//The virus just knows//
But it’s deadly as hell in the aisles of Waitrose//
When you walk to your table you risk dropping dead//
but sit down ……and it sails overhead//
‘Cuz the laws are set in stone//
Keep the people sheeple//Make them stay at home.
Terrific
It depended on whether or not the scotch egg self identified as a substantial meal. If it did then pubs could serve one, stay open and you’d be safe from covid.
I remember a big discussion wether or not a scotch egg was substantial meal or only someone’s trans-substantial meal and wether or not this mattered. The outcome was that trans-substantial meals are obviously substantial meals.
Must say it’s depressing being reminded of all this and having memories of all the nonsense – pubs with some sort of plastic alleyway you could only follow one way to get a drink and each table with plastic sheets between it and the rest and surly landlords getting to tell you what to do and to put your mask on even when going to the loo. Restaurants, as mentioned, where you were safe if you sat down but unsafe in a queue like a psychopathic game of musical chairs. These shysters have a lot to answer for. I hope they get put on trial one day and get put away for a long, long time, far from doing any harm to anyone ever again.
And being turned away from a half empty Pub, great for business. I went out in summer 2020, dragged out by colleagues. It was an unpleasant experience. Taking people’s Mobile numbers to buy a drink, that is a red flag and breached data protection.
It was a wonderful time to play with names and numbers…
The one occasion during the ‘pandemic’ when most Brits did the right thing and showed some guts: half the men’s names on those lists were James Bond.
I actually credit that resistance with finishing off this particular farce pretty quickly, in contrast to other countries.
Oh yes. I had a fabulous mobile number which consisted of sixes and the title of a book written by George somebody or other. It provided a chuckle.
Back in 2021 I visited England when all this crap was still going on. I went to a pub. I walked in the ‘out door’ and walked to the bar. Told I shouldn’t have done that – tough. Anyway i was asked for my phone number which I duly gave – it was an overseas number and needless to say I altered one digit. The staff just smiled and served me my drink. I had already told them I only had cash but they wanted a debit card. Somehow they were not impressed when I habded over my bangkok bank card.
The upshot was I had a lovely face mask free natter with the landlady and paid cash. I left by the indoor. A smirk of satisfaction on my face.
The depressing bit was that this was so obviously nonsensical but nobody of the supposedly civil, ie non-government enforcers, ever had a “Hold-a-sec, this is ridiculous and I’m not going to do it!” moment.
I discarded my face mask I had worn due to the “It’s just a mask!” rethoric despite it was oftentimes driving me near nuts with panic attacks about running out of air in supermarket queues I bravely overcame every time and because it usually doesn’t pay to draw attention to yourself (autists learn this thoroughly because this attention is usually violent and they’re always blamed for it) the day after the Michie interview where she admitted that masking was just something she had seen on holiday in Japan and badly wanted to introduce in England forever, but not specifically because of COVID. I was – as usual – standing masked in a supermarket queue, feeling the flashes of minor pain indicating lack of oxygen all over my body and worrying how I’ll get through this. Then, I remembered the interview and suddenly, the sky cleared up. I thought “Am I crazy? Why am I hurting myself just because this stupid old witch wants that?”, pulled the darned thing away and left determined to never wear it again.
Fast-forward to November 2021, when the fastest impregnating jellymop of the West made them mandatory again. At first, I was just angry and desparate. And then, I decided that I wouldn’t wear it again unless under the influence of direct force. I’m a small guy (5’6″, 10 stone, 12lb) and hence, forcing me to wear it wouldn’t have been difficult for most people. Next day in the supermarket, door guard was a nervous and aggressive rather small guy (still taller than me) very much in love with masks (he kept his for a long time after the mandate had been abolished). He tried to intercept me to mask me but I just sidestepped him, angrily half-shouted “No, no, no, no!” and made it absolutely clear that without getting violent, he wouldn’t score. He chased me a few steps and then gave up. Next day, there was a tall guy who just looked at me and said “You’ve told me you’re exempt, right?” I hadn’t and didn’t react to that and that was the end of it.
I’m pretty certain that many people wouldn’t be able to get through this and they shouldn’t have to try.
Nice long story. Here’s mine: I never wore a mask.
In the pub, it was mask on when standing, off when sitting.
In the chambers of the Houses of Commons and Lords, it was mask off when standing and on when sitting.
TheScience™
If you were perching in the pub on a barstool (i.e. head at standing elevation but bearing most of your weight with your butt cheeks), you imploded into a singularity and sucked the pub with everyone in it into a black hole – regardless of whether you had a mask on or off. God knows what happened in the House of Commons bar. Perhaps it just teleported to Mars. Here’s hoping eh.
My grandchildren will think I am insane. I hope I get at least one. Things are promising so far, my little 11 year old lad can’t stop talking about the little French girls in his little French school
You get my vote, Marcus, for making me burst out laughing!
‘I never wore a mask.’
Sir Christopher Chope.
The only MP who saw through this charade and this illegal attack on bodily sovereignty.
“I never wore a mask.”
Neither did I so Chope was in good company.
Nor I, cheers!
Well, there was that one time when the pilot spoke so loudly down the tannoy that all the speakers crackled like empty crisp packets and distorted the words “I WILL NOT LEAVE THE RUNWAY UNTIL EVERYONE HAS A MASK OVER THEIR MOUTHS AND NOSES”
I started to look around for the oxygen mask and attempted to find the lifejacket from under my seat but the very very very vicious Portuguese air hostess left me in no doubt about the seriousness of the situation.
She had to lend me hers.
“Prof. Leitch became a household name in Scotland during the {“pandemic”} There fixed that!
When anybody mentions The Pandemic, I quietly correct them: “The Pandemic? Oh, you mean The Lockdown.” However, the opportunity doesn’t arise much, since “Karen” (the fastest aisle vigilante in the West and the most rainbowed and loudest saucepan-banger in our street) is surprisingly quiet when we talk about What We Did In 2020.
You are on a roll.
Oh I do that religiously. Cheers!
Didn’t work for me. Threatened with arrest for drinking from a water bottle after cycling 30 miles to Birmingham International Station.
Almost nobody apart from 2 transport police in the carriage.
Still angry 3 years later,although I sipped it continuously to Euston.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
So all we have thought and often said, these people were superior to us.
Better pigs. They stink.
Ironically his Face is one that benefits wearing a mask !
Deleting messages will have happened across the political class. I do not believe the security services cannot get them back and they should do so becuae lyingto the courts and to the public is a serious issue.
Poe’s Law strikes again. The hypocrisy is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
It’s almost as if they knew their own rules were nonsense, and perhaps even that masks don’t work.
A typical elongated Telegraph article which repeats the message several times but with turning the words around.
Who’s the brainless twerp who has been downticking? Go and read the Guardian!