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Tag: energy

To Energy, or not to Energy

Let me make this simple:

If, instead of supporting responsible local energy development, you choose to support undemocratic oil-producing regimes which export terrorism, have low environmental standards, kill gays and oppress women, then I choose not to support you.

 

Energy Exploration and Development in Australia

Australia’s economic stability depends on reliable supplies of cheap energy, mostly in the form of coal and oil. Members of remote communities would be the first to suffer if fuel became difficult to obtain, or if prices surged. For example, in my community of Kangaroo Island, everything depends on oil. Without oil there would be no ferry or planes to the island. There would be no fishing, no farming, no way for tourists to travel to or around the island, or on boat trips or safaris, no food or furniture transported to the island, no building, no maintenance of infrastructure. In other words, no way to live.

It is in the best interests of all Australians to support and encourage responsible local energy development. Even more so for those who live in remote locations, or in communities dependent on tourism, fishing or farming.
This short survey will help you to review your knowledge of energy development, and your interest in balancing energy needs and concern for the environment.

Question 1
By far the greatest proportion of oil spilled into the ocean, about 45%, is from natural seepage. The highest proportion of human caused oil spills, about 25% of the total, occurs as an accumulation of day to day losses, the oil change tipped into a drain, for example, and minor operational spills like Sea Shepherd’s 500 litre diesel spill near the Great Barrier Reef in 2012. Another 20% comes from major transportation spills. Only about 5% of the total occurs during exploration and development. One key way of reducing ocean oil spills is to reduce the total volume of oil transported over long distances. Would you rather:
a. Continue the present risk of spills from large volumes of oil transported over long distances?
b. Reduce the risk of spills by encouraging responsible local energy development?

Question 2
Most of our current oil supply comes from Middle Eastern states. Most of these states are dictatorships, or ruled by a small elite. Some of them, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, use oil revenues to support terrorist groups. Would you rather:
a. Continue the present system of supporting states which fund terrorism and support undemocratic regimes?
b. Build Australian employment and expertise by encouraging local energy development, and have energy producers pay royalties which help fund local hospitals, roads, schools and pensions?

One of twenty-three oil rigs operating in the Bass Strait.

One of twenty-three oil rigs operating in the Bass Strait.

Question 3
Australia has very high environmental and safety standards for any energy development. Coal mining in China, for example, results in over 1,000 deaths per year from accidents, and a similar number from mining related pulmonary diseases. Pollution from poorly regulated mines and wells in countries governed by dictators or highly centralised non-democratic governments continues to be a major problem. Would you rather:
a. Continue present support for energy sources with a high risk of accident and pollution due to poorly regulated exploitation and transport operations?
b. Reduce the risk of environmental damage, disease and accident by encouraging responsible local energy development?

Question 4
Scientists have expressed concern that constant high levels of artificial ocean noise – noise pollution – may interfere with the migratory patterns of marine species including turtles, whales and salmon. The noise of waves slapping against the sides of an empty tanker is at a similar volume to that of acoustic imaging, which allows energy developers to identify likely sites for further exploration, reducing the need for and impact of exploratory drilling. But acoustic imaging is carefully monitored and takes place in any one location for only a few days. The sound of freighters and tankers plying the oceans is constant. Would you rather:
a. Continue the present system of high levels of ocean noise pollution and risk to migratory marine species?
b. Reduce ocean noise by encouraging responsible local energy development?

Question 5
Many of the states which supply our current oil needs have very poor human rights records. In particular, immigrants, women and gays are frequently treated as chattels or with horrendous brutality. Some of these states would not survive without the income from oil supplied to Western countries. Would you rather:
a. Continue to support regimes which torture and oppress gays and minority groups?
b. Work for human rights and justice by encouraging responsible local energy development?

Renewable Energy?

So called renewable energy is not renewable.

When you take into account the cost of construction, installation, maintenance, transmission, and the need to keep real energy sources running constantly to make up for fluctuations in supply caused by the unreliability of wind and sunlight, any wind or solar installation has a net cost in energy. No real contribution at all. Zero. Except to make governments and activist groups feel good about themselves. This is why, once the subsidies stop, wind and solar installations cease to function, and rust into the ground. The little they produce is not even enough to cover the cost of maintaining them.

Wind turbines produce less than one percent of the world’s energy, solar panels even less.

The cost of energy to consumers has to increase to cover the massive expense of these vanity projects. The more “renewable” energy in the mix, the higher the retail cost of electricity.

They are expensive and produce no net gain. Time to call it quits. Just stop taking tax-payer money to prop them up, and they will go away. And then private enterprise will have an incentive to invest in infrastructure that really works, and in researching new and efficient forms of energy production and distribution.

“Renewable energy” puts a brake on development in the West, and keeps millions of people in developing nations powerless and in abject poverty. Climate justice is exactly the opposite of justice.

The Expensive Folly Of ‘Renewable’ Energy

Ray Evans & Tom Quirk have a comprehensive article on the folly and ruinous expense of so-called renewable energy in the current issue of Quadrant Magazine.

A few sample paragraphs:

The low-cost electricity we once enjoyed was obviously of great advantage to ordinary families, whose standard of living was thereby enhanced. But it was of greater importance to commercial and industrial consumers, who were able to offer goods and services at lower prices, and to employ more people. Cheap electricity is a major contributor to national prosperity and to economic diversity, and the increases in prices that have taken place, with more in the pipeline, will spread through the economy with continuing deleterious consequences. We will see the closure of industries which have relied on cheap electricity for their international competitiveness.

The mechanism through which electricity consumers pay greenmail to the owners of windmills and solar panels is the mandatory Renewable Energy Certificate, introduced by John Howard in his 2001 MRET legislation. As James Delingpole explained in the Australian on May 3, writing about the ghost town of Waterloo in South Australia (now depopulated by the impacts of the sub-audio frequency vibrations generated by the nearby wind farm), a 3-megawatt wind turbine, costing $6 million, will be lucky to generate electricity worth $150,000 in a year, but will receive $500,000 in RECs, paid for by the hapless electricity consumer.

The Commonwealth’s responsibility has been both direct—as in Howard’s MRET legislation of 2000 and Rudd’s legislation of 2010—and just as significantly indirect, as the continuing attack on coal, both under Howard12 and more recently under Rudd and Gillard, has made investment in new coal-fired power stations far too hazardous for private investors to contemplate. The MRET scheme, on its own, has led to so-called investments, mostly in South Australia but also in New South Wales, of at least $3 billion in wind farms. These wind farms are economically worthless13, in that their output is unpredictable and cannot be sold without government coercion. So the NEMMCO system operators who allocate output, on the basis of competitive bidding, to the generators for the next day, have to arrange for at least 90 per cent back-up for whatever wind-farm output is proposed by the owners. Because of the MRET legislation this output gazumps all other generators, as the coal and gas-fired generators have to purchase the RECs required by the Act.

Solar panels are much worse than wind-farms. They are at least four to five times as costly as coal-fired power. They only operate when the sun shines. They are a mechanism for transferring large sums of money from poor families to rich families, who not only receive hugely inflated sums for electricity they feed into the grid, but who advertise their green piety with large solar installations on their roofs. These solar installations are rarely seen on modest homes; they are the green equivalent of the Mercedes in the driveway.

Now the Gillard government’s tax on energy production has come into effect, the impact of this madness will be multiplied. Every aspect of the Australian economy will be less competitive; primary industry, manufacturing, retailing and service industries.

This graphic from Andrew Bolt’s blog shows a doubling in the wholesale price of electricity in the two days since the carbon tax began:

Carbon Tax – Change in Wholesale Electricity Price

Does anyone really think a couple of hundred dollars in bribes is going to compensate for this? If you wanted to undermine an entire economy, you could hardly come up with a better plan.

This is economic terrorism, and Labor and the Greens are the suicide bombers.

© 2024 Qohel