Australia

Aussies Prepare to Rid Themselves of the Carbon Tax Scourge!!

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Carbon tax revisited in final Senate week

By AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS

PUBLISHED: 06:20 GMT, 22 June 2014 

It may by the current Senate’s final hurrah, as its sits for one last week before the new senators take their place.

But even before it begins what amounts to a farewell lap, attention is focused squarely on the Senate that will replace it.

The Abbott government will on Monday reintroduce its carbon tax repeal laws into the parliament, in readiness for the new, more conservative upper house that take effect on July 7.

The legislation has already been knocked back once by Labor and Greens in the Senate, but the host of conservative crossbenchers are expected to pass the legislation.

“This week the government will bring the carbon tax repeal bills back to Parliament to get rid of this dodgy tax once and for all,” Environment Minister Greg Hunt says.

While signature policies such as the carbon tax are expected to be waved through by the likes of the Palmer United Party, others such as the GP co-payment face continued resistance.

Assistant infrastructure minister Jamie Briggs is confident the new senators can be talked into supporting the co-payment and reform of universities fees – two changes opposed by the PUP.

“I’m not at all sure that the positions some of the new senators have outlined will necessarily be their position in a month’s time,” Mr Briggs told Sky News on Sunday.

“When they’re in Canberra and they’ve had the discussions with the relevant ministers … I’m very confident people will understand this is the right direction.”

Environmentalists also had their minds turned to July 7, with the Climate Institute bringing two life-size dinosaur replicas to Parliament House in a last-ditch attempt to save the carbon tax.

“There are dinosaurs in politics and business who want to hold back progress,” chief executive John Connor told reporters.

“This is an appeal to all parliamentarians, particularly the new senators, not to be rushed into a vote literally when they haven’t even got their feet under their desks in parliament.”

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the carbon tax was bad for jobs, hurt families and didn’t help the environment.

Scrapping the tax would save the typical household $550 a year, with electricity prices to be about nine per cent lower, he said.

“It’s time to end this bad tax and to terminate Labor’s failed carbon tax experiment,” Mr Abbott said in a statement on Sunday.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/aap/article-2664876/Carbon-tax-revisited-final-Senate-week.html#ixzz35QnEX78J

John Madigan, an Australian Hero! (If Only We Had a Man Like Him!!!)

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A First Rate Senator (John Madigan) Skewers

a Third Rate Human Being (Simon Chapman)

June 19, 2014 by 

Victorian Senator, John Madigan delivered an utterly brilliant speech in the Commonwealth Senate this week. See the video below; Hansard (transcript) follows.

As to the Senator, John Madigan provides a salient example of what can happen when decency, integrity and courage all combine in defence of the weak and vulnerable among us; and in pursuit of the truth. The man is made of fearless stuff; and, in our view, stands as one of the Parliamentary Greats: William Wilberforce and his 26 year campaign to end slavery readily springs to mind. The passion with which he delivers this speech is, self evidently, the product of the man’s compassion and empathy; as he says: “every life matters and every life is important”. Hear, hear!

As to the speech, it can be covered in two words: “truly wonderful”.

***

COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA
SENATE
Hansard
TUESDAY, 17 JUNE 2014
BY AUTHORITY OF THE SENATE
PROOF

Senator MADIGAN (Victoria) (23:20): I rise to speak tonight on the privilege of this parliament to operate without fear or favour. Members and senators have the right to undertake their duties freely to represent their constituents — it is the reason we are here. Any attempt to gag a senator or member of parliament, any attempt to exert influence by means of threat or intimidation is a breach of parliamentary privilege. This could incur the most serious penalties. Tonight I will speak of such an attempt by a high-profile Australian academic. This academic has a track record of making fun of people in regional and rural communities who are sick. He trades in scuttlebutt. He makes consistent attacks on anyone who makes a complaint against his network of corporate buddies. This academic has become the poster boy for an industry which has a reputation for dishonesty and for bullying.

I have a policy of playing the issue, not the man. Policies should always go before personalities. It is a personal credo, one I have practised all my life and specifically in my professional duties since my election in 2010. But since I have been investigating matters related to wind turbines for almost 10 years now I have recorded a consistent track record of vilification, denigration and attack by those on the other side of this debate. This is an industry that sucks hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies from the public purse. This industrial power generation sector is an industry that masquerades under a false veneer of ‘saving the environment’.

The wind industry is about one thing in this country: it exists to make people rich at the expense of many rural and regional Australians, their lives and their communities. My investigation shows it does not decrease carbon dioxide, it does not reduce power costs, it does not improve the environment. And this academic in question stands shoulder to shoulder with the wind industry companies and their colourful — and I use that term deliberately — executives. He promotes their products. He attacks their critics. He attends their conferences. He rubs shoulders with their henchmen. He is, in the words of the former member for Hume, Alby Schultz — who was a great campaigner on this issue, I might add — devoid of any decency and courage.

But, first, some background. My party, the Democratic Labour Party, has a long tradition of standing up for principle in the face of enormous opposition. My party was born in conflict and forged in sacrifice. No other political party in Australia can boast that its parliamentary founders — 51 in total, including 14 ministers and a state Premier — were prepared to sacrifice promising political careers to uphold the belief dedicated to freedom from undue and corrupt influence. The DLP was the first Australian political party to promote the vote for 18-year-olds. We were the first political party to call for equal pay for equal work and equity in education funding. We were the first political party to call for an end to the White Australia policy. And when our veterans returned from Vietnam, bloody but unbowed, DLP parliamentarians marched in their ranks while the rest of Australia turned their backs.

The DLP is a party of principle. We respect the dignity and the sanctity of life. From the womb to the grave, from the primary school to the factory floor, we see every life as unique and having intrinsic value. This is the cornerstone of the DLP; this is the foundation upon which I place every vote. That is why my attention has been turned to the wind industry for almost a decade now, even before my election to the Senate. I have seen firsthand the devastation it has caused communities. I have listened firsthand to the stories of wrecked families’ lives: family farms destroyed and small outback areas torn apart. I have seen the empty homes in Victoria at Waubra, Macarthur, Cape Bridgewater and Leonards Hill. I have listened to country people tell me stories of corporate bullying and deceit, and of corporate fraud in matters of compliance. I have repeatedly called for one thing on this issue: independent Australian research into the health problems that wind farms apparently cause. That is all — independent research. It is a question of justice. It is about getting to the bottom of this issue.

So when I spoke with Alan Jones onto 2GB on 27 March, I made one simple point. I told Mr Jones we need to be careful about people who profess to be experts in this area. For the benefit of the Senate I repeat what I said in
that interview:

… when we talk about people, using the title, using a title, such as Professor, let us be clear crystal clear here Alan. Most people in the community assume that when you use the title Professor, that you are trained in the discipline of which you speak. And I ask people, look and check. What is the person making these proclamations about other people’s health? What is the discipline they are trained in of which they speak? Because most people in the public assume when you speak of an issue of health, that you are trained in the discipline of which you speak, and there are people making pronouncements and denigrating people who are not trained in human health.

I stand by this statement. It is fair and reasonable to encourage people to look behind the blatant campaigning done by people like Professor Chapman of the University of Sydney.

But it is the statement that has prompted him to threaten me, utilising a law firm that was instrumental in the set-up of Hepburn Wind. He has threatened to sue me for libel over this statement unless I pay him $40,000 plus costs. He has threatened to sue me for libel unless I organise an apology on the website of 2GB and an anti-wind farm website called Stop These Things. He has threatened me with contempt of parliament and a breach of parliamentary privilege if I raise these matters in the Senate. This reaction by Professor Chapman is something that my more experienced parliamentary colleagues have labelled a blatant try-on. It is another attempt by the wind industry to silence me, to scare me off and to intimidate me. It is a case of a Sydney university academic firing shots across the bow of the blacksmith from Ballarat.

This is something he has done before now, tweeting about my position on this issue, always in the context of my background as a blacksmith — a background, I add, that I am enormously proud of. I remain one of the wind industry’s most stubborn and outspoken critics. I will not be silenced. I will not give up on the injustice inflicted on people who claim to be impacted by living near turbines. I will not stop. My comments to Alan Jones were a series of rhetorical statements or questions about the assumptions members of the public should be entitled to make when somebody professes to be qualified to speak about an issue of public health. In other words, I was asking people to check that so-called experts on this issue are relevantly trained and qualified. It is a reasonable request. Our media and the internet are crawling with self-appointed experts. Daily we operate in a cacophony of opinion presented as fact.

Professor Chapman has been an outspoken critic of those who have dared to question the wind farm orthodoxy. But is Professor Chapman a medical doctor? Is he legally entitled to examine and treat patients? Is he qualified in acoustics or any other aspect of audiology? Is he a sleep specialist? Does he hold any qualifications in bioacoustics or physiology or neuroscience? How many wind farm victims has he interviewed directly? How many wind farm impacted homes has he visited? Professor Chapman claims to receive no payment from the wind industry. How many wind industry conferences, seminars and events has he spoken at? How many wind industry events has he attended? Writing on the Crikey website in November 2011, Professor Chapman lamented how many conferences do not pay speaker’s fees, and, when one conference organiser refused to pay his hotel bill, he withdrew. This is the same Professor Chapman who was photographed at a campaign launch in Melbourne by the Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas. Did Vestas pay your hotel bill and other costs, Professor Chapman? These are reasonable questions — they put in context his actions.

I take this opportunity to draw the attention of the Senate to the discovery of a 2004 PowerPoint presentation by Vestas employee Erik Sloth to the former Australian Wind Energy Association, now the Clean Energy Council. This demonstrated Vestas knew a decade ago that safer buffers are required to protect neighbours from noise. Vestas knew their preconstruction noise models were not accurate. I draw the attention of the Senate to a quote from the presentation that Vestas knew then that ‘noise from wind turbines sometimes annoys people even if the noise is below noise limits.’ This is confirmation that the global wind industry have known for more than a decade that their turbines impact on nearby residents. How can Professor Chapman reconcile his ridicule of the reasons numerous people have been forced to abandon their homes with the knowledge that the company initiating this campaign he attended knew a decade ago there were problems?

As a public health academic, Professor Chapman displays a lack of compassion for people who claim to be suffering debilitating effects from pervasive wind turbine noise. Professor Chapman’s undergraduate qualifications were in sociology. His PhD looked into the relationship between cigarette smoke and advertising. I question his expertise, I question his qualifications and I question his unbridled motivation to promote and support the wind industry at the cost of people’s lives, homes and communities. I question Professor Chapman’s lack of interest in speaking with wind industry victims. Professor Chapman has a record of public denigration of victims. I refer to his tweet in February this year about ‘wind farm wing nuts’.

One of the important things about this fight that is going on across rural Australia is that it is country women who are in the front line. Farmers’ wives are running hard, fighting to save their families, fighting to save their homes, fighting to save their communities. It is often these women who suffer the most denigration. It is a roll call of honour — people like Mary Morris of South Australia; Dr Andja Mitric Andjic in Victoria; Sonia Trist,Joanne Kermond and Melissa Ware at Cape Bridgewater; Colleen Watts in New South Wales; and, of course, the extraordinary Sarah Laurie in South Australia.

One more example: Annie Gardner and her husband, Gus, have lived and worked happily and healthfully for 34 years on their farming property in south-west Victoria. This came to a sudden halt in October 2012 when the first 15 turbines of the Macarthur wind farm began operation. In a recent letter to the AMA Annie said she is now able to get only two or three hours sleep each night in her own home. She writes: ‘At the time of writing this letter, I am suffering terribly from the infrasound emitted by the 140 turbines located far too close to our property. I have a bad headache. I have very strong pains shooting up through the back of my neck and into my head. I have extremely sore and blocked ears and very painful pressure in my nose. I have pressure in my jaws and my teeth. My heart is pounding. I can feel the vibration going through my body through the chair like an electric charge. The infrasound in our bedroom was appalling. I could feel the vibration through the mattress and the pillow like an electric charge through my body. My head felt as if a brick was on it, and the pressure and pain in my nose was extreme.’

Annie Gardner would be what Professor Chapman would call a ‘wind farm wing nut’. Writing on a green movement website earlier this year, Professor Chapman said protesting against wind farms is a fringe activity as if to suggest that the hundreds of people who attended and spoke at anti-wind farm forums I have held across my home state of Victoria and interstate are simply collateral damage. I cannot live with such a utilitarian view. As I said, even putting aside the highly questionable environmental, social and economic benefits of wind farms, every life matters and every life is important. I have sat in people’s homes and kitchens. I know firsthand the suffering they experience from these industrial developments. Professor Chapman’s attempts to gag me are the same as his attempts to silence those who object to the great wind farm scam. It is part of a greater attempt to silence open and transparent debate on this issue. It does no service to academia or to science already under much attack. It does nothing to advance discussion or progress.

Surely the big businesses behind this attempt — the entities who are funding it, like Bleyer Lawyers, who have worked for Hepburn Wind — should remember cases such as McDonald’s and Gunns. For the environmental movement to attempt this shallow legal shooting of a mere messenger is poor judgement in my view. Bullies corporate or otherwise never get far. Surely it is apparent that companies that use the courts to silence opposition lose out in the court of public opinion. To borrow words from the great human rights campaigner Malcolm X:

I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.

If Professor Chapman proceeds with this action, I look forward to having him answer in court those questions I have raised here tonight — questions about his qualifications, his expertise and his links with the wind industry financial or otherwise. I look forward to his cross-examination under oath as equally as I look forward to mine. I say this: his action, if it proceeds, is doomed in a legal setting or elsewhere for one reason; it is not based on the truth.
Senator Madigan 

One phrase sums up the Senator’s attitude and approach to the wind industry’s vast (and, as he puts it, “colourful”) cast of bullies and thugs: Sic semper tyrannis – “thus always to tyrants.” More power to John Madigan.

John Madigan

 

As an Industrial Source of Energy…..Wind Doesn’t Just Blow….It SUCKS!!

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The Wind: Only Designed for Recreational Pursuits

June 18, 2014 by 

kites

Why Not Wind?
wind-watch.org
Eric Rosenbloom

To whom it may concern:

This is a brief representation of the reasons industrial-scale wind is a destructive boondoggle that only fools – or worse – would approve.

Unlike “conventional” power sources, wind does not follow demand. As the Bonneville Power Authority in the Pacific Northwest of the USA has shown, the relationship between load and wind generation is essentially random (www.wind-watch.org/pix/493). That means that wind can never replace dispatchable sources that are needed to meet actual demand.

The contribution of wind generation is therefore an illusion, because the grid has to supply steady power in response to demand, and as the wind rises and falls, the grid maintains supply by relying on its already built-in excess capacity.

That is also why meaningful reductions in carbon emissions are not seen: because fuel continues to be burned in “spinning reserve” plants which are kept active to kick in when needed for meeting surges in demand or, now, drops in the wind. Denmark’s famously high wind penetration is possible only because it is connected to the large Nordic and the German grids – so that Denmark’s wind power actually constitutes a very small fraction of that total system capacity. To make further wind capacity possible (despite a public backlash that has essentially stopped onshore wind development since 2003), Denmark is now building a connection to the Dutch grid.

Another reason that meaningful reductions in carbon emissions are not seen is that the first source to be modulated to balance wind is usually hydro. This is seen quite clearly in Spain, another country with high wind penetration: The changes in electricity from hydro are an almost exact inverse of those from wind (https://demanda.ree.es/generacion_acumulada.html). This is also seen in the USA’s Pacific Northwest (http://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx).

Finally, on systems with sufficient natural gas–powered generators, which can ramp on and off quickly enough to balance wind’s highly variable infeed, wind forces those generators to operate far less efficiently than they would otherwise. It is like city versus highway driving. According to several analyses (e.g., www.wind-watch.org/doc/?p=1568), the carbon emissions from gas + wind are not significantly different from gas alone and in some cases may be more.

And again, whatever the effect, wind is always an add-on. The grid must be able to operate reliably without it, because very often, and often for very long stretches of time, wind is indeed in the doldrums: It is not there.

And beware the illusion of “average” output. The fact is that any wind turbine or group of turbines generates at or above its average rate (which is typically 20%–30% of the nameplate capacity, depending on the site) only about 40% of the time. Because of the physics of extracting energy from wind, the rest of the time production approaches zero. About one-third of the time, wind production is absolutely zero.

As an add-on, therefore, its costs are completely unnecessary and wasteful. And even if, by some miracle, it were a reliable, dispatchable, reasonably continuous source, its costs would still be enormous – not only economically, but also environmentally. Wind is a very diffuse resource and therefore requires a massive mechanical system to catch any useful amount. That means ever larger blades on ever taller towers in ever larger arrays. And the only places where that is feasible are the very places we need to preserve as useful agricultural land, scenic landscapes that are so important to our soul (and to tourism), and wild land where the natural world can thrive.

Besides the obvious damage to the land of heavy-duty roads for construction and continued maintenance, huge concrete platforms, new powerlines, and substations (while making no meaningful contribution to the actual operation of the grid) and the visual intrusion of 150-metre (500-ft) structures with strobe lights and rotating blades, there are serious adverse impacts from the giant airplane-like blades cutting through 6,000–8,000 square metres (1.5–2 acres) of vertical airspace both day and night: pulsating noise (including infrasound which is felt more than heard) that carries great distances and disturbs neighbors (especially at night, when there is a greater expectation of – and need for – quiet), even threatening their physical health, pressure vortices that kill bats by destroying their lungs, blade tip speeds of 300 km/h that also kill bats as well as birds, particularly raptors, many of which are already endangered, and vibration that carries through the tower into the ground with effects on soil integrity and flora and fauna that have yet to be studied.

In short, the benefits of industrial-scale wind are minuscule, while its adverse impacts and costs are great. Its only effect is to provide greenwashing (and tax avoidance) for business-as-usual energy producers and lip-service politicians, while opening up to vast industrial development land that has been otherwise fiercely protected – most disturbingly by many of the same groups now clamoring for wind.

Industrial-scale wind is all the more outrageous for the massive flow of public money into the private bank accounts of developers. It is not surprising to learn that Enron established the package of subsidies and regulatory “innovations” that made the modern wind industry possible. Or that in Italy, the Mafia was an early backer of developers. It is indeed a criminal enterprise: crony capitalism, anti-environment rapaciousness, and hucksterism at its most duplicitous.

After decades of recorded experience, there is no longer any excuse to fall for it.
Eric Rosenbloom
President, National Wind Watch, Inc. (www.wind-watch.org)

Eric Rosenbloom lives in Vermont, USA, where he works as a science editor, writer, and typographer. He has studied and written about wind energy since 2003. He was invited to join the board, and then elected President (a wholly volunteer position), of National Wind Watch in 2006, a year after it was founded by citizens from 10 states who met to share their concerns about the risks and impacts of wind energy development. National Wind Watch is a 501(c)(3) educational charity registered in Massachusetts.

yacht

Turn Off the Money Tap, the Windweasels will Scurry!

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Fears for renewables after energy target ‘described as government largesse’

 

Report: wind farms
The renewable energy review is expected to deliver a draft report next week. Photograph: Picasa

Windfarm owners say the head of Tony Abbott’s renewable energy review recently told them they were foolish to “build a whole business model on government largesse”, raising fears he will recommend a severe winding back of the renewable energy target.

Simon Holmes a Court, the founding chair of Hepburn Wind, a community windfarm, told Guardian Australia he had been astonished by the comments from businessman Dick Warburton at a meeting last week.

Meanwhile, the now-independent Climate Council has released a report arguing Australia’s coal-fired power stations are among the oldest and dirtiest in the world and difficult to retrofit with carbon capture and storage technology – leaving renewables such as wind as the least-cost “zero emissions” option.

Holmes a Court said Warburton asked “didn’t we feel foolish basing a whole business model on government largesse”. The “government largesse” being referred to was the renewable energy target (RET) that was first introduced by the Howard government, has enjoyed bipartisan support ever since and has attracted about $18bn in investment.

“If the RET was to be abolished our project will fold. Two thousand people invested in this community windfarm on the basis that this was settled bipartisan policy. We are not feeling foolish, we are feeling betrayed,” Holmes a Court said.

Warburton’s review is expected to deliver a draft report to government next week.

The Coalition went into the election promising to keep the RET, which underpins investment in energy sources such as wind and solar, but saying it would review the fact that the policy was exceeding its original goal of delivering 20% renewable energy by 2020 because of falling electricity demand.

But, after the election, the Coalition began debating whether the RET should be scrapped altogether or – a more likely outcome – “grandfathered” so only existing projects will benefit.

The terms of reference for the RET review said it would look at “the extent of the RET’s impact on electricity prices, and the range of options available to reduce any impact while managing sovereign risk”.

And even government backbenchers who question the science of climate change and oppose the RET concede its total abolition would constitute “sovereign risk” – a situation where governments change the rules after investment decisions have already been made.

George Christensen, who the climate-sceptic Heartland Institute is sponsoring to address its conference in Las Vegas next month and who chairs the Coalition backbench industry committee, said there were “conflicting views within the Coalition because we are acutely aware of its impact on power prices but on the other hand there is a strong argument we should not disadvantage people who have invested on the basis of what was bipartisan policy”.

But the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) thinktank – which has long lobbied against the RET – has used a submission to the Warburton review to argue for its abolition, dismissing concerns that abolishing the RET would constitute “sovereign risk”. Like Warburton, the IPA suggests businesses should not have based investments on government “favours”.

“Sovereign risk involves a ‘taking’ of property and should be avoided because, ethical issues aside, it creates great uncertainties for investment, especially investment with long payback times. But sovereign risk from the government withdrawing a favour is different from when it takes a property. No investor can reasonably expect a subsidy to prevail for 15 years as is notionally the case with windfarms and other exotic renewable facilities. And there would be few precedents for a government committing its successors to what would become 24 years of worthless expenditure,” the IPA says in its submission.

“If removal of such favourable and lengthy regulatory provisions was considered to constitute reimbursable sovereign risk, the motor vehicle manufacturers now abandoning production in Australia would have a case for compensation … The termination of the renewable energy requirements should be done immediately.”

According to the IPA, there are three options for modifying the RET scheme:

• Reduce it to a “real” 20% of the current electricity market. It says this would reduce the amount of renewables from 41,000 gigawatt hours (20% of what was the estimated size of the market in 2020) to a maximum of 33,000 GWh.

• Allow only the existing and committed projects to proceed as subsidised. This would mean about 15,000 GWh.

• Totally abandon the RET and force “renewables to immediately compete without subsidy, as their adherents always claimed they would eventually be able to do”.

The climate commission, which became a crowd-funded independent body after it was abolished by the Abbott government, will release a report on Tuesday arguing that “the least-expensive zero-emission option available at scale for deployment today in Australia is wind, closely followed by field-scale solar PV”.

“These costs are falling fast as take-up globally accelerates. Wind should be 20% to 30% cheaper by 2020, solar PV is expected to halve in cost,” the report says.

Assuming Australia does need to reduce emissions from its power sector, the report says moving to renewables would be cheaper than trying to “clean up” coal-fired plants.

It says that by 2030, 65% of australia’s power stations will be over 40 years old. The nation’s older power stations cannot be made more efficient without vast expense, and their age limits the potential for retrofit CCS investment, it says.

After the election, Abbott took control of the RET review of his own department and appointed Warburton – a self-professed climate sceptic – to head it.

Warburton, a veteran industrialist and the chairman of the Westfield Retail Trust, described his views on climate science in a 2011 interview on ABC in this way: “Well I am a sceptic. I’ve never moved away from that. I’ve always believed sceptical,’’ he said. “But a sceptic is a different person than a denier. I say the science is not settled. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’ve never said it’s wrong, but I don’t believe it’s settled.”

Others, including Abbott’s top business adviser, Maurice Newman, want the RET scrapped altogether.

Newman, the former chairman of the ABC and the ASX, has said persisting with government subsidies for renewable energy represented a “crime against the people” because higher energy costs hit poorer households the hardest and there was no longer any logical reason to have them.

Under legislation, the next review of the RET is supposed to be undertaken by the independent Climate Change Authority (CCA) but the government is seeking to abolish the CCA.

Lenore Taylor

Lenore Taylor is the political editor of Guardian Australia. She is a Walkley award winner and a winner of the Paul Lyneham award for excellence in press gallery journalism. She co-authored a book, Shitstorm, on the Rudd government’s response to the global economic crisis.

Wind Industry is a Job-thief, Not a Job-creator!

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Wind Industry Built on the Graves of

6,000 Australian Manufacturing Workers

June 16, 2014 by 

449332-ford-workers

As the RET Review Panel sharpens their axes, Members of the Coalition are making it known that the mandatory Renewable Energy Target simply has to go. Here’s what appeared on the front page of The Australian today.

‘Jobs risk’ in clean energy targets
The Australian
Adam Creighton
16 June 2014

THOUSANDS of jobs across Australia are at risk as Labor’s rising renewable energy target undermines economic growth and saps exports, fuelling Coalition backbench discontent with a policy Environment Minister Greg Hunt is widely seen to favour.

The RET, which has prompted electricity retailers to source a rising share of energy from high-cost wind farms, is forecast to lead to the loss of 4900 full-time jobs by 2020, and more than 6000 by 2030 as higher power prices ripple through the economy, undermining competitiveness and household budgets.

Only weeks before the government’s review of the RET is due to report on the policy’s efficiency and effectiveness, new modelling by Deloitte Access Economics, commissioned by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Business Council of Australia, shows keeping the RET entails a $34 billion hit to Australia’s economy, including a near $3bn cut in exports by 2020.

“The current scheme is likely to impose a considerable cost to the Australian economy going forward,” the report concludes, noting the RET is abating carbon at an effective cost to the economy of $125 a tonne — or about five times more than the current carbon tax, which the Coalition plans to repeal from July.

“While the RET is in place, investment is directed to less efficient and higher cost renewable technologies — at the expense of more efficient and lower cost generators,” it adds.

It points out that the share of total electricity generation stemming from renewable sources is on track to rise to 27 per cent by 2020, which is far above the 20 per cent RET originally intended.

The study will galvanise the growing number of Coalition backbench MPs who want Mr Hunt, who is seen to be in favour of the status quo, to make significant changes to the RET after the review chaired by businessman Dick Warburton reports next month.

Introduced by the Howard government in 2001, Labor expanded the RET — which now makes up about 5 per cent or $70 a year in the typical household’s electricity bill — almost five-fold in 2010 in order to boost the amount of renewable energy that must be sourced to 41 terawatt hours by 2020.

DeanSmith20120328_1167

Senator Dean Smith, chairman of the Coalition backbench energy committee, said the “great majority” of Liberals were in favour of significant change.

Craig Laundy

Craig Laundy, Liberal member for Reid in Sydney’s west, said “the Liberal backbench is acutely aware of the impact of rising power bills as a result of the RET”.

“While we have to empathise with investors in the renewable sector, the impact on day to day power bills for ordinary families is not acceptable,” Mr Laundy said.

A spokesman for Mr Hunt, who has commissioned a study into the policy in keeping with promises made in opposition, said the minister was reserving his judgment until he read the RET review panel report.

With a large manufacturing base and an electricity grid powered mainly by brown coal, Victoria stands to lose 1400 jobs by 2020 (more than any other state) compared with 250 in South Australia, where up to a quarter of energy is supplied by wind, according to the study.

“Fixing the RET is just another step towards ending the age of entitlement — wind industry entitlement,” said Angus Taylor, a NSW regional Liberal member.

The Deloitte analysis anticipates an extra $10.3bn in investment in renewable energy if policies remain unchanged and electricity prices to remain well above where they would otherwise be until 2030. “The upward pressure on retail prices flows on to affect the rest of the economy, raising the cost of many day-to-day functions that depend on electricity,” the study said.

Burchell Wilson

Burchell Wilson, chief economist at ACCI, said: “The renewables industry has been standing over the graves of Australian manufacturing concerns, crowing about the jobs the RET is creating in the wind industry.”

Matthew Warren, chief executive of the Energy Supply Association, which represents “clean” and “dirty” energy suppliers said: “The RET was designed to take up most new investment in a growing energy market, but instead the market has been shrinking aggressively, forcing renewable energy into an oversupplied market.”
The Australian

Angus “the Enforcer” Taylor is going harder than ever in his sworn quest to tear the wind industry apart piece by stinking piece. STT hears that Angus has been exhorting his colleagues to “man-up” and scrap the legislation in its entirety.

Faced with a few back-sliders – like young Gregory Hunt – Angus backed himself with Parliamentary advice that the recent wind industry tosh about scrapping the RET creating “sovereign risk” is just that (see our post here). And, ditto, concerning wind industry threats about being entitled to compensation from the Commonwealth for “losses” they will suffer when the RET is wound back or scrapped (see our post here).

Angus’s effort has met with the approval of his colleagues, who are now keener than ever to put the RET to the sword.

Expect to hear more from the Coalition and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry as the week rolls on and the Deloitte Access Economics report is published.

STT thinks it’s the beginning of the end.

Angus Taylor

Renewable Energy Targets Are Ridiculous! They Should ALL be Scrapped!

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Queensland says: Time to Scrap the Renewable Energy Target

June 15, 2014 by 

dick-warburton

The RET Review Panel’s interim report is expected within the next few weeks and we hear there is no joy in it for the wind industry and its parasites. The big end of town have made some walloping submissions – all targeting the mandatory RET as the costly and ineffective market distortion that it is. Here’s The Australian’s take on the position taken by the Business Council of Australia.

RET no longer relevant, says BCA
The Australian
Barry Fitzgerald
13 June 2014

THE nation’s peak business lobby has called for the controversial renewable energy target to be amended ahead of the scheme being brought to an end in 2030.

In a submission to the Abbott government’s expert panel reviewing the RET, the Business Council of Australia said the scheme in its current form was no longer relevant to Australia’s circumstances.

It said the RET was a poor climate change mitigation measure as it reduced greenhouse gas emissions at a high cost of abatement relative to other measures. Without changes, it said, the RET would continue the “wealth transfer from households and business electricity consumers and baseload generators to the renewable energy industry because it increases electricity prices to pay for renewable energy’’.

It said the RET should be amended and suggested “smoothly transitioning out of the RET by amending the target and ending the scheme in 2030”.

It noted when the RET was established under the Howard government, Australia’s electricity demand was expected to grow in perpetuity, and was forecast to reach 300,000 gigawatt hours by 2020. It is now forecast to reach only 230,000GWh due to a decline in demand.

“This means the legislated (20 per cent) target is now forecast to see renewable energy represent at least 27 per cent of Australia’s electricity generation,” the submission said.

“In an electricity market that is already oversupplied, there is no economic justification for electricity consumers to pay for additional generation capacity that is not required.”

The BCA also argued since the cost of “some” renewable energy has declined since the scheme was established, in some cases, it does not require a subsidy to be commercially deployed. It wants the RET amended to a “true” target of 20 per cent by 2020, and the government not to extend the target once all obligations have been met in 2030.

“Any amendments considered as part of the review of the RET should not adversely affect investments that have already been made and should be mindful of their impact on investments currently being planned or already subject to approval,” the BCA said.

The submission repeated previous BCA statements that the RET as its stands distorts electricity markets.
The Australian

The BCA seem to be taking the “Goldilocks” approach – avoiding the “too hot” and “too cold” extremes of the policy spectrum. From what STT hears, it’s not the approach the Federal Coalition are going to take – nor is it the approach of the Queensland State government (see below).

The Federal Coalition have received Parliamentary advice that the recent wind industry tosh about scrapping the RET creating “sovereign risk” is just that (see our post here). And, ditto, concerning wind industry threats about being entitled to compensation from the Commonwealth for “losses” they will suffer when the RET is wound back or scrapped (see our post here).

The advice has stiffened the resolve of a few who were momentarily spooked that scrapping the RET could cost the Commonwealth a small fortune in claims from wind power outfits. Realising the “sovereign risk/compensation” story was nothing more than the deluded and panicked pleading of an industry on the ropes, these boys are now keener than ever to put the RET to the sword.

mark mccardle

And the Queensland State government’s submission to the Panel pulls no punches and calls for the RET to be scrapped. So does Aloca (an aluminium processor) and the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network (representing miners and manufacturers).

Here’s The Australian again.

Rooftop solar should go, RET told
The Australian
Annabel Hepworth
12 June 2014

A LANDMARK review should consider closing the federal scheme promoting the installation of rooftop solar panels and wind farms to new projects, the Queensland government says.

It argues that reducing the Renewable Energy Target will help alleviate bills.

In a submission to the RET review panel chairman Dick Warburton, obtained by The Australian, Queensland Energy Minister Mark McArdle warns that the RET would add about $60 to a typical residential customer’s bill in 2014-15.

“Given the impact it is now having on household bills it is timely that the review panel has an opportunity to propose amendments to the RET ensuring it is appropriately aligned with other objectives such as addressing cost-of-living expenses,” the submission says.

Solar prices have fallen for residential systems, with the prices on the larger-sized 5kW systems dropping by more than 32 per cent between August 2012 and last April.

Even though Queensland has slashed its feed-in tariff — which pays households to generate electricity from the panels — there are still about 3000 new PV systems being installed each month.

And when further cuts kick in on June 30, a significant fall in uptake of solar panels is not expected, the submission says.

“The phasing-out of support is an appropriate approach for maturing or established technologies,” it says.

It comes as some of the nation’s biggest emitters have also called for the RET to be wound back, a move that is being resisted by the clean energy industry.

Alcoa has told the review that the costs involved in the small solar scheme are a “substantial and unwarranted impost on large electricity users” and that the “highly volatile” nature of the scheme “erodes business confidence and planning certainty”.

The Australian Industry Greenhouse Network — which represents big emitters in sectors such as mining and manufacturing — says that the scheme should be abolished as it would lead to “a reduction in the cost burden immediately without affecting existing assets or sovereign risk”.

But the Australian Solar Council argues the solar industry needs the scheme as it is in decline because of the close of state and territory feed-in tariffs, uncertainty created by the RET review and the phasing out of the solar credits multiplier.

Queensland says the RET “undermines the viability of generation assets which were built in response to market signals rather than a government mandated subsidy”.
The Australian

Queensland has seen a huge uptake of rooftop solar – but it hasn’t replicated the wind rush of Australia’s south-eastern states (NSW, Victoria, SA and Tasmania). Queensland has a cluster of 20 tiny 600kw fans (with a piddling 12 MW of installed capacity) at Windy Hill, west of Cairns – run by Thai-turbine terrorists, RATCH; and that’s it. There are a number of “pipe-dream” projects proposed, but none of them have PPA’s – so are going nowhere fast. Hence the Queensland government’s focus on the cost impact of solar panels installed as a result of the RET and feed-in tariffs.

The solar boys shouldn’t be so worried about their future when the RET goes.

With spiralling power costs – and falling panel costs – there is already a healthy market for rooftop solar PV among domestic users (albeit, perhaps, a smaller market in the short-term than if the RET rort continued unabated).

But the big future for solar is in rural and remote locations, where it is more economic for a home, farm or station to go “off-grid”.

Supplying power transmitted through networked grids costs serious money (think installation and maintenance over generations): doing so for a few remote farms or a sheep station – with transmission lines extending for dozens and sometimes hundreds of kilometres just to reach them all – is uneconomic; the returns in revenue from those few users represent a pittance by comparison with the enormous upfront costs of connection to the grid and ongoing maintenance of the connection, over time.

In one case in NSW, a transmission line was upgraded recently at a cost of just over $2million: the line in question services a total of 9 farms, which together pay less than $14,000 in annual network service fees. The revenue recovered will never repay even a fraction of the cost of the upgrade – in the result, that cost will effectively be borne by all power consumers, thus subsidising the few remote users involved. The example cited is not an isolated case.

In NSW, the State government has just announced plans to privatize parts of its electricity network. It also has serious plans to address the costs of supplying remote rural homes and towns on the rural part of the network (which it plans to retain) by way of “off-grid” solar solutions.

The plan is fairly simple. Instead of maintaining transmission lines to small, remote rural towns, remote homes, farms or sheep stations, a “stand-alone solar system” will be provided. Solar panels sufficient to provide for the town or customer’s needs will be installed; with battery storage; and a diesel generator for back up. The idea has been around for 20 years, but with increasing costs attached to maintaining remote transmission lines and falling solar PV costs the concept has come into its own (see this paper from 1995 here).

The forecast cost of providing such a stand-alone solar setup to a home, farm or station ranges from between $35,000 to $70,000 per unit – depending, obviously, on the capacity of the unit needed to supply the particular customer. The manner in which these systems can be consumer-financed is being explored at the moment (with a lease/buy-back option on the table). The units are likely to last at least 20 years and, even allowing for maintenance costs of the units, will be far more economic than maintaining thousands of kilometres of transmission line and network gear for the sake of a relative handful of remote customers.

desert-sun

Solar trumps wind in the scenario above simply because inland Australia has an abundance of sunny days – even in winter – thereby giving solar PV a reasonable degree of reliability; whereas, no-one in their right mind would rely on the vagaries wind for anything (see our posts here andhere).

Moreover, solar PV prices continue to fall and face downward pressure due to the scale of China’s investment in manufacturing capacity. The Americans and the Germans – who also piled into solar panel making – are currently crying foul over being under-cut by Chinese panel manufacturers, trying to prevent the Chinese from competing in Europe and the US.

STT understands that the smartest among the solar boys – aware of the plans above – are already sharpening their pencils ready to do some serious business. Stand-alone solar – taking users off-grid in remote locations – doesn’t require the “support” of the fat pile of power consumer subsidies currently generated by the mandatory RET and REC Tax: it just makes pure economic sense and, therefore, good business. We wish them well – for a happy, prosperous and unsubsidised future.

Narndee Station PAYNES FIND

Canada & Australia Stand up to Save their Economies from Loony Left-Wing Policies!

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Australia And Canada Form

Climate Realist Alliance 

Obama Isolated As Western Allies

Oppose Unilateral Climate Policies
The political leaders of Canada and Australia declared on Monday they won’t take any action to battle climate change that harms their national economies and threatens jobs. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that no country is going to undertake actions on climate change — “no matter what they say” — that will “deliberately destroy jobs and growth in their country.” –Mark Kennedy, Ottawa Citizen, 9 June 2014

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is seeking an alliance among “like-minded” nations to thwart efforts to introduce carbon pricing and American President Barack Obama’s move to push climate change through global forums like G20. Abbott, who is visiting Canada for talks with the country’s prime minister and his close friend Stephen Harper, said efforts are underway to form a new “center-right” alliance under the leadership of Canada, UK, Australia, India and New Zealand. Reports said the alliance is a “calculated attempt” to push back on what both Mr Abbott and Mr Harper sees as a “left-liberal agenda” to raise taxes and “unwise” plans to address the issue of global warming. –Reissa Su, International Business Times, 10 June 2014

Proud to Stand With the Aussies Against Destroying our Economy!

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Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott won't let climate policies kill jobs

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper (L) with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott during welcoming ceremonies on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 9, 2014.AFP PHOTO/ Cole BurstonCole Burston/AFP/Getty Images

Photograph by: COLE BURSTON , Ottawa Citizen

The political leaders of Canada and Australia declared on Monday they won’t take any action to battle climate change that harms their national economies and threatens jobs.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Australian counterpart, Tony Abbott, made the statements following a meeting on Parliament Hill.

Abbott, whose Liberal party came to power last fall on a conservative platform, publicly praised Harper for being an “exemplar” of “centre-right leadership” in the world.

Abbott’s government has come under criticism for its plan to cancel Australia’s carbon tax, while Harper has been criticized for failing to introduce regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Canada’s oil and gas sector.

Later this week, Abbott meets with U.S. President Barack Obama, who has vowed to make global warming a political priority and whose administration is proposing a 30-per-cent reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 2030.

At a Monday news conference, Harper and Abbott both said they welcomed Obama’s plan. Abbott said he plans to take similar action, and Harper boasted that Canada is already ahead of the U.S. in imposing controls on the “electricity sector.”

But both leaders stressed that they won’t be pushed into taking steps on climate change they deem unwise.

“It’s not that we don’t seek to deal with climate change,” said Harper. “But we seek to deal with it in a way that will protect and enhance our ability to create jobs and growth. Not destroy jobs and growth in our countries.”

Harper said that no country is going to undertake actions on climate change — “no matter what they say” — that will “deliberately destroy jobs and growth in their country.

“We are just a little more frank about that.”

Abbott said climate change is a “significant problem” but he said it is not the “most important problem the world faces.

“We should do what we reasonably can to limit emissions and avoid climate change, man-made climate change,” said Abbott.

“But we shouldn’t clobber the economy. That’s why I’ve always been against a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme — because it harms our economy without necessarily helping the environment.”

Abbott’s two-day trip to Ottawa was his first since becoming prime minister and it quickly became evident he is on the same political page as Harper.

They are both conservative politicians who espouse the need to balance the budget, cut taxes, and focus on international trade.

Just as Harper once turned to former Australian prime John Howard for political guidance, Abbott is now turning to his Canadian counterpart as a model.

He recalled how he met Harper in late 2005, just before the federal election that brought Harper to power.

“You were an opposition leader not expected to win an election. But you certainly impressed me that day. And you’ve impressed not only Canadians but a generally admiring world in the months and years since that time.”

“I’m happy to call you an exemplar of centre-right leadership — much for us to learn, much for me to learn from the work you’ve done.”

Harper paid tribute to Abbott for the work he has done as chair of the G20, which will hold a meeting in November in Australia.

“You’ve used this international platform to encourage our counterparts in the major economies and beyond to boost economic growth, to lower taxes when possible and to eliminate harmful ones, most notably the job-killing carbon tax,” said Harper.

mkennedy@ottawacitizen.com

 

 

The Beginning of the End for Gov’t handouts for Solar? Let’s hope so!

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Solar energy users angry about end of tariff

LOCAL solar users are keen to take back control of their power generation.

The disdain raised by solar users comes after the State Government last week confirmed their position in axing the eight cent feed-in tariff on solar panels from July 1.

Retail businesses will hold the responsibility for offering tariffs after the mandated eight cent tariff paid to PV Solar owners will end on June 30.

Ross Atkin, a Gladstone solar user, says everyday households are being punished for using renewable energy.

“Solar installation does not mean wealthy,” he said.

“I installed solar to save money and for a more sustainable way of living.

“It just seems there are huge generalisations being made on behalf of the government in regards to solar.”

Mr Atkins was supported by 250 other Queensland solar users who are voicing a desire to ‘go off the grid’.

Solar Citizens national director Lindsay Soutar said last Friday that the Queensland Government would have more than 600,000 angry solar voters to contend with at the next election.

Aussies Are Talking About DownWind, & Tim Hudak, and Wishing him Well!

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Sun New’s “Down Wind” sends Wind Industry Into Tail Spin

June 9, 2014 by  3 Comments

down wind

Canada’s Sun News was among the first news outfits worldwide to grasp the scale and scope of the great wind power fraud; and the associated harm inflicted on hard-working rural people. Exposing the wind industry for what it is, Sun has produced a truly ground-breaking documentary on how wind power outfits have fleeced power consumers for $billions, while happily destroying the lives hundreds of farming families across Ontario (see our post here).

The documentary, “Down Wind” went to air on 4 June and has sent the wind industry and its parasites into a panic stricken tail spin. Not used to an “untamed” media challenging their lies, treachery and deceit, the industry’s chief spin doctors have launched a bitter defence, replete with all the usual guilt-soaked waffle about giant fans “saving the planet from cataclysmic climate change”. Never mind that the wind industry has yet to produce a shred of actual data that wind power reduces CO2 emissions in the electricity generation sector – probably because the actual evidence shows just the reverse (see this European paper here; this Irish paper here; this English paper here; and this Dutch study here).

Down Wind, which runs for 96 minutes, can be purchased as a file and downloaded or as a DVD (here’s the link).

Here is a detailed synopsis of Down Wind from wolfhillblog.com.

Dirty secrets of the Ontario Liberals’ wind power scam: What you need to know from DownWind, the Sun News documentary
Wolfhillblog: Fauxgreen
8 June 2014

THE ONTARIO LIBERALS’ GREEN ENERGY ACT HAS DONE SERIOUS AND IRREVERSIBLE HARM TO PEOPLE, WILDLIFE, THE ENVIRONMENT

  • Rural people in Ontario living in the midst of 50 storey-high industrial wind turbines have been badly hurt, even seriously and irreversibly harmed, with respect to mental and physical health and safety, property values (loss of 10-48% or even 100%), livelihood, way of life, community harmony. Some families have had to leave their homes on the advice of doctors.
  • Farmers have noticed that wind turbines drive out earthworms due to electrical surge charges and vibrations. This reduces the quality of the soil. “Food production will go down.”
  • The wind turbines’ concrete bases, of which some of the material is toxic, go 50 feet down, far enough to hit aquifers.
  • Livestock productivity, such as that of dairy cattle, is adversely affected.
  • Birds are slaughtered by wind turbines.

THE LIBERALS HAVE PRESIDED OVER ABROGATION OF DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS AND BULLYING BY WIND COMPANIES

  • “The provincial government wants these things and they’re going to come no matter what we do.”
  • “(As high as) 140-50 storey buildings – you don’t even have that in Toronto. We’re talking 1,800 turbines up and down the shoreline (of Lake Huron), on some of the most productive farmland in all of Ontario. My God, what are you people thinking? Don’t tell us from your condo that the green thing is so great that we’re going to force it on you.”
  • The Liberals’ Green Energy Act supersedes/overrides 21 pieces of legislation including the Clean Water Act, acts that protect the Niagara Escarpment and Oak Ridges Moraine, the Heritage Act.
  • All Ontario government ministries have turned a deaf ear to complaints and concerns communicated to “every arm of the Ontario government when they asked for help. The wind companies do whatever they want.”
  • The Liberals’ Green Energy Act strips municipalities of their planning powers. More than 80 communities have declared themselves to be unwilling hosts.

THE SYSTEM IS RIGGED AGAINST WIND TURBINE VICTIMS

  • There have been more than 20 Environmental Review Tribunal hearings of appeals and all of them were dismissed. One was allowed but appealed in Ontario Divisional Court where the wind developer prevailed. “The process they’ve created is so imbalanced and so weighted in favour of the wind turbine companies it’s as if they wrote the legislation. It’s embarrassing.”
  • Wind turbines “are imposed on people and they are getting no choice. That begs the question of whether it’s Charter-compliant, whether it complies with constitutional principles to put these people through these things without being assured of a certain level of safety. No one should be subjected to a reasonable risk of harm.”

WIND POWER IS FAR FROM CLEAN

  • “When they talk about displacing coal-fire power plants in Ontario with wind, that’s not actually what happens. As they add wind capacity to the system, they are displacing nuclear and hydro and those are non-emitting sources. And you have to remember that whenever you see a wind turbine, there is a gas-fire power plant running in the background to balance out the load fluctuations. So it’s always a wind and gas combination. They’re replacing emissions-free hydro and nuclear with a combination of wind and gas and we’ll actually end up with higher emissions of pollution …”
  • “So you’re paying for a wind turbine to turn, and you’re paying for a gas plant to idle. You’re paying double most of the time. It’s asinine.”

THE LIBERALS HAVE USED JUNK SCIENCE TO MISLEAD THE PUBLIC

  • Air pollution levels in Ontario have declined steadily since 1974, but the Liberals claimed in 2009 when the Green Energy Act came into force that there was a rising air pollution crisis. “But they knew perfectly well that air pollution had been trending downward right across the board.”
  • Most particulate matter emissions come not from coal power generation, as the Liberals claimed, but from construction, industry, agriculture, and most of all from dust from unpaved roads.
  • “There’s no question that there’s been an effort to demonize coal.”

BILLIONS OF YOUR DOLLARS WASTED ON LIBERAL BOONDOGGLES

  • Ontario electricity costs are the highest in North America as a result of the the Liberals’ Green Energy Act.
  • “Wind turbines don’t run on wind, they run on subsidies.”
  • They replace power that costs 3-5 cents per kilowatt hour (kwh) with wind power that costs 13.5 cents per kwh to generate.
  • “Nobody was building wind turbines in Ontario until the government started throwing money at it. It’s not cost effective. Wind turbines can’t compete on a wholesale market without a lot of government support.”
  • Wind companies get 20-year contracts to sell wind power at far above market rates.
  • “The system has to buy power whenever wind companies produce it” whereas standard power producers (nuclear, hydro) have to compete on the wholesale market.
  • Ontario lost $1 billion selling excess power in 2013 to neighbouring jurisdictions – “How stupid is that?”
  • The cost of the Green Energy Act to date is $4-5 billion, or 70 times the cost of retrofits recommended in 2005, to get equivalent environmental benefits. (Some estimates say the Green Energy Act costs so far are closer to $8 billion.)
  • Before the Green Energy Act, Ontario had a few large power plants with the grid optimized to source the power. “Now we have “tiny, little unreliable” wind facilities that required a new grid, putting an “extra cost to get something we already had – it increased the costs of having what you had before.”
  • “There were far smarter ways of creating energy. If we had done nothing except put the most advanced scrubbers on our coal plants we would actually have had as clean air as we do today.”

THE LIBERALS FAILED TO PERFORM DUE DILIGENCE, OR UPHOLD ITS FIDUCIARY DUTY

  • The Liberal government has to date done no cost benefit analysis, and no health study.
  • The much-anticipated Health Canada two-year, $2 million research study of the adverse health effects of wind turbines is due in December of this year. However, it will apparently not establish causation or have conclusive results.
  • The 550-metre set-back for siting industrial wind turbines from homes, established by the Ontario government, is arbitrary and was not based on any research.

HYPOCRISY, DISHONESTY

  • In her current election campaign ads, Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne says she believes “government should be a force for good in people’s lives.” In her campaign she claims “I believe there is only one good reason to enter politics, and that is to help people,” yet the documentary showed her not to have had the basic decency to stop to listen when she was approached by industrial wind turbine victim Norma Schmidt.

FLAGRANT CONFLICT OF INTEREST – LIBERAL FRIENDS CASHING IN

  • Mike Crawley, erstwhile president of the Ontario Liberal party, a former senior aide to former premier Dalton McGuinty, was at the same time CEO of a major wind developer that was proposing four or five projects in Ontario. In 2004 he was awarded a contract worth $475 million, in addition to others.

LIBERALS GOT IN BED WITH GREEN NGOS, WIND INDUSTRY, BAY STREET LAWYERS TO WRITE THE GREEN ENERGY ACT

  • “They all sat down and worked up the language they wanted in the legislation and built a campaign around it. You got the complete package: the PR side, the legislation drafting, the program to re-educate the public service, the whole momentum going, the Toronto Star editorial page cranking out a regular drumbeat – coal bad, wind good.”

FEAR AND COWARDICE – INDUSTRY INSIDERS ARE AFRAID TO SPEAK OUT

  • People in the system have not dared to speak out.
  • “There were people in the power generation sector who understood that the government numbers were not correct and did not add up, but they were effectively muzzled. The people that work in the power sector know that this is a crazy system. These wind farms are displacing hydro-electricity, which is just a waste on every level. The hydro-electricity plants don’t generate any air pollution emissions. They give us reliable, predictable base load power and now we let (them) sit idle. So people who work in the sector, they can see what is going on and they know that this is a waste but for understandable reasons they are not about to make a big noise about it because they could lose their jobs if they do.”
  • “Our electricity system, to the people that run it, has become a joke, and they dare not raise a finger to oppose it.”
  • “The electricity industry professionals will see the wasted generation … and their response is ‘so long as we have a blank cheque to keep the lights on, it’s all good’.”

THE LIBERALS “HAVE GOT TOO MUCH INVESTED TO ADMIT THE ERROR”

In the upcoming Ontario election on June 12, any vote for the Liberals would appear to be one in favour of propping up a government that has proven itself to be working to enrich its cronies with the province’s treasure, not one that is interested in the welfare of the people it is mandated to serve, or in nurturing the economic health of the province. Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak has promised to repeal the Green Energy Act if elected.
Wolfhillblog.com

In Tim Hudak, Ontario has been given a choice; and a chance to redress the lunacy currently being delivered by the hard-green-left (see our post here). We wish them luck on 12 June – sanity can’t some soon enough.

tim-hudak