Squandering voter’s money: gullible MP and her rent-seeking ‘friends’.

Two necessary ingredients of the great wind power fraud are a gullible public and a troupe of pliant politicians. A decade from now – as these things either self-destruct, collapse or quietly rust into oblivion – the MPs that enabled the greatest economic and environmental fraud in history, will not be thanked. Nor will history remember them kindly.

Globally, trillions of dollars have been squandered on subsidies to intermittent and unreliable wind power. Those places where wind and/or solar dominate have watched power prices skyrocket and have grids teetering on the brink of total collapse (think South Australia, for a start).

On one side of the ‘bargain’, it took real audacity to convince the populace and their elected representatives that wind power amounts to a meaningful power generation source. The flip side of the same coin involved a form of wilful…

Barnaby Joyce: a National out to deliver cheap and reliable power to all.

Panic-stricken Liberal and National MPs have killed-off the proposed National Energy Guarantee at birth.

Federal Energy Minister, Josh Frydenberg presented a version of the NEG which simply expands the Federal government’s Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target and pushes its operation over the horizon.

The model being touted was written by eco-zealots at the direction of renewable energy rent-seekers, desperate to avoid any stricture on their never-ending subsidies and mode of operation.

In their Coalition party-room meeting, Frydenberg and PM, Malcolm Turnbull sought to shut down debate over the NEG, bullying backbenchers and berating critics, alike.

The minor Coalition party, the Nationals weren’t having any of it.

A number of Nationals are members of the Monash Forum, a group dedicated to restoring reliable and affordable power, to all Australians.

The Nationals have smelt a rat – and with good…

No, Ontario has a plan for you: it’s called ‘political history’.

One modern myth is that political annihilation awaits any government devoted to reliable and affordable power.

The meme has it that 100% of voters are 100% in favour of 100% renewable energy.

They just might be. But, when faced with load-shedding, statewide blackouts and rocketing power prices, their purported fervour for nature’s wonder fuels tends to wane.

South Australian voters relegated its wind and solar obsessed Labor government to the political dustbin, in March this year. Then Premier, Jay Weatherill went to the election promising to deliver on a ludicrous 75% RET.

Now, Ontario’s similarly embattled households and businesses have done the same.

The Progressive Conservatives have snatched power from an arrogant and out-of-touch Liberal government, headed up by the malevolent Kathleen Wynne.

The parallels with South Australia’s Labor government in its dying days are uncanny.

Renewable energy rent-seekers hijacked the proposed National Energy Guarantee in order to ensure their subsidy-soaked futures.

The reliability obligation – which would have guaranteed electricity to all power consumers during any worst-case scenario (eg, the height of summer when air-conditioners are running flat out and breathless weather means wind turbines are flat out producing anything at all) – has been gutted.

Under Josh Frydenberg’s version of the NEG – retailers are only required to lock in power supplies based on long-term averages; and major industrial users will simply be chopped from the grid under what’s euphemistically termed ‘demand resources’ or ‘demand management’. The latter approach of depriving power to business is synonymous with Third World countries and communist dictatorships.

In less than 15 years an energy superpower has been relegated to the ranks of the despotic and impoverished regimes that Australians once derided. Rocketing power prices coupled with large-scale power…

Already suffering the world’s highest power prices, Australian power consumers have watched prices jump by anything up to 28% in 12 months.

The greatest increases occurred, funnily enough, in the all-renewable obsessed Australia Capital Territory, home to the Australian Federal Parliament in Canberra.

The ACT entered power purchase agreements to buy wind power generated (occasionally) in South Australia and Victoria and crows about its very own large-scale solar power plant.

But for every glorious ‘look at me’, virtue signalling moment, there comes a reckoning delivered by economic reality.

While those interested in Australia’s runaway power pricing and supply calamity are heavily focused on what Josh Frydenberg has done to the proposed National Energy Guarantee (STT among them), the other entrenched source of economic punishment shouldn’t be overlooked.

Australia already has in place a system perfectly designed to destroy grid reliability and send power prices through the roof: it’s called the…

A few of SA’s ‘demand resources’ preparing for duty.

An obsession with the ‘unreliables’ – wind and solar – has destroyed Australia’s once reliable and affordable power supply. Consistent with that theme, Australia’s Energy Minister has just given the two fingered salute to Australian business.

Josh Frydenberg is pushing a National Energy Guarantee which (as pointed out in last night’s post) could have at least restored reliability to a grid on the brink of collapse. However, the NEG has been rewritten by eco-zealots and renewable energy rent-seekers, to their advantage.

In the document Frydenberg is using to promote it – Draft National Energy Guarantee – you’ll find plenty of babble about carbon dioxide emissions, but almost nothing about reliability or price.

One of the NEG’s key elements (as promoted by Frydenberg) is what’s called ‘demand resources’ aka ‘demand management’. These aren’t ‘resources’ in the sense of having some commodity…

What passes for political leadership in this country is engaged in a wind and solar-fuelled economic suicide mission. Subsidies to grid wrecking wind and solar (when soft loans, green schemes and taxpayer handouts are added) are pushing $5 billion a year, punishing households and businesses alike.

As wind and solar power capacity increases, power prices are rocketing out of control and major energy users are being chopped from the grid whenever the sun sets – killing solar – and sudden bursts of calm weather cause precipitous wind power output collapses.

And yet, Australia’s Energy Minister, Josh Frydenberg continues to act as if nothing’s wrong. Gormless doesn’t cover it.

Exasperation and desperation are giving way to anger and fury. As Alan Moran details below.

Energy policy, price escalation and the destruction of industry competitiveness
Catallaxy Files
Alan Moran
8 June 2018

For some in Australia, the renewable rich UK electricity market…

Endangered species: thousands of well-paid jobs threatened by eco-zealots.

Australia’s enviable prosperity isn’t due to sunshine and breezes, it’s down to iron ore, coal and a bevy of other minerals including copper and uranium.

Australia also has an abundance of bauxite which, when a reliable and affordable power sources is added, turns ‘NT road-gravel’ into aluminium – a high-value metal used in all manner of applications, from mobile phones, window frames and hipster bicycles.

Australia’s remaining aluminium smelters and thousands of jobs are now under mortal threat. Thanks to an obsession with heavily subsidised, intermittent and unreliable wind and solar.

The same goes for a range of energy hungry businesses and the jobs and wealth they currently create.

The fastest way to destroy any businesses’ bottom line is to keep cranking up energy costs. Which is exactly what’s happening in Australia.

Already suffering the highest power prices in the world…

Energy poverty was once synonymous with dirt-poor Third World countries. Now, thanks to an obsession with subsidised wind and solar, it’s part and parcel of life at the bottom in the First World, too.

As winter starts to bite across Australia, the working poor, unemployed and pensioners face an anxious battle between being frozen to death now or being ultimately crushed by crippling power bills, later. The ‘choice’ is literally down to heat or eat.

The majority of homes in Australia are equipped with reverse cycle air-conditioning and their owners use the heating cycle to keep warm in winter.

The poorest households tend to rely upon extremely inefficient electric radiators or blow heaters (and, short of that, scruffy blankets and kerosene heaters).

With power prices rocketing out of control, middle-class suburbs are now drenched in a pall of woodsmoke, as householders keep warm using scavenged timber.

It’s like stepping…