• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

The End of Australia’s Renewables Romance

by Sallust
26 August 2024 1:03 PM

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.

Tags: AustraliaClimate AlarmismGreen AgendaNet ZeroNuclear powerRenewable energySolar PanelsWind Power

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

Two Thirds of Vice-Chancellors at Cash-Strapped U.K. Universities Were Given Pay Rises Last Year

Next Post

Labour Government Source Calls Free Speech Act “Hate Speech Charter”

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

6 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
GroundhogDayAgain
GroundhogDayAgain
8 months ago

It won’t deter the Millipede. He’s about to splurge billions of our money on an unsustainable, sustainable fever-dream.

I can think of a million better ways to waste this money. I hope the chickens come home to roost soon.

19
0
Solentviews
Solentviews
8 months ago
Reply to  GroundhogDayAgain

If Starmer allows Millibrain to stay in post for more than a year, it might be the most significant mistake made on behalf of this country in 100 years. (Having said that, the Covid overreaction was well up there. This could possibly be worse).

Last edited 8 months ago by Solentviews
10
0
MajorMajor
MajorMajor
8 months ago
Reply to  GroundhogDayAgain

Of course it won’t deter millibrain.
The obvious failure of communism didn’t deter its advocates either.
Just like the communist who were always a few hundred thousand executions away from the prefect society, we will always be a few hundred solar and wind farms away from sustainable green energy.

5
0
RW
RW
8 months ago

The AI scam has been going on since the mid-1960. The reason it’s still “in its infancy” 60 years later is because it’s just that — a way to scam credulous people out of their money in exchange for nothing.

6
0
VAX FREE IanC
VAX FREE IanC
8 months ago

So, when will the moronic Planet Earth Protectorate and Green crusading Buffoon’s start wondering what’s going to happen to all the continent covering, boiling planet saving, Armageddon preventing black tech wonders, when they go past their ‘use by date’?
It ain’t easy to deconstruct this stuff!

Millipede-obsolete-solar-panels
0
0
The Real Engineer
The Real Engineer
8 months ago

Great, works fine in Australian summer during the bright part of the day. Who supplies Singapore during the night? Oh that is “somebody elses problem”!

0
0

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

In Episode 35 of the Sceptic: Andrew Doyle on Labour’s Grooming Gang Shame, Andrew Orlowski on the India-UK Trade Deal and Canada’s Ignored Covid Vaccine Injuries

by Richard Eldred
9 May 2025
4

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

Hugely Influential Covid Vaccine Study Claiming the Jabs Saved Millions of Lives Torn to Shreds in Medical Journal

10 May 2025
by Dr Raphael Lataster

NHS Nurse “Forced Out for Mocking Trans Flag” to Sue Hospital

10 May 2025
by Will Jones

Major British Chemical Plant Faces Closure as Energy Prices Soar

10 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

11 May 2025
by Will Jones

Teenage Girl Banned by the Football Association For Asking Transgender Opponent “Are You a Man?” Wins Appeal With Help of Free Speech Union

10 May 2025
by Toby Young

Hugely Influential Covid Vaccine Study Claiming the Jabs Saved Millions of Lives Torn to Shreds in Medical Journal

28

News Round-Up

23

Major British Chemical Plant Faces Closure as Energy Prices Soar

16

News Round-Up

55

Teenage Girl Banned by the Football Association For Asking Transgender Opponent “Are You a Man?” Wins Appeal With Help of Free Speech Union

22

Declined: Chapter 18: The Unthinkable

11 May 2025
by Molly Kingsley

The Backlash to the War Against Boys

11 May 2025
by Noah Carl

Hugely Influential Covid Vaccine Study Claiming the Jabs Saved Millions of Lives Torn to Shreds in Medical Journal

10 May 2025
by Dr Raphael Lataster

Reflections on Empire, Papacy and States

10 May 2025
by James Alexander

Ed Miliband’s Housing Energy Plan Will Decimate the Rental Market and Send Rents Spiralling

10 May 2025
by Ben Pile

POSTS BY DATE

August 2024
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  
« Jul   Sep »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment
Perfecty
Do you wish to receive notifications of new articles?
Notifications preferences