Peter Gleeson: Why 2050 renewables target just won’t happen
Why is everybody getting so hot under the collar over energy and climate change policy and this fantasy 2050 renewables target, asks Peter Gleeson.
Peter Gleeson
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Why is everybody getting so hot under the collar over energy and climate change policy and this fantasy 2050 renewables target? The reason Scott Morrison won the last election was because voters didn’t buy Labor’s crazy climate change and renewables policies.
They knew they would kill jobs, especially in Central Queensland and the Hunter, which rely upon coal mining. Now, there’s talk that Prime Minister Scott Morrison is going to aim for a zero emissions target by 2050. Just as ScoMo tries to cosy up to the climate change warriors, Labor is trying to back away from its Left-wing zealotry by jettisoning the hard-Left Mark Butler as its spokesman. Most voters don’t know what the world will serve up to them next week, so they’ve got no conception about a 2050 renewable target. That’s at least nine elections away, so unless Scott Morrison becomes the longest serving Prime Minister in the history of world politics, he won’t have to worry about such a target.
And let’s be very clear about the way 21st century politics works. Politicians who have kept their populations safe during the coronavirus pandemic are being rewarded. Think the NT’s Mike Gunner and Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk. WA’s Mark McGowan will win in a landslide and that’s why Scott Morrison is the best of good things to win the next election. Throw in a lame duck Labor leader like Anthony Albanese and it’s all over red rover.
At the last Queensland election, the Labor Government went to the polls as the country’s worst economic manager, beset by integrity scandals and with an appalling record on child safety and juvenile crime. They were returned with an increased majority.
The reason was that most people were safely cocooned from the financial distress of the pandemic because of JobKeeper and JobSeeker. They believed premier Annastacia Palaszczuk had done a good job protecting them from the virus and copping $750 a week for binge viewing The Last Dance was a nice way to live.
And in times of uncertainty and global meltdown, sticking with the status quo was always the safest bet. Climate change and renewable targets was issue #376 on their priority list.
According to the Friends of science website, weaning the world off fossil fuels by 2050 would require a mighty impressive effort. According to the website, fossil fuel consumption has risen from zero in 1880 to a projected 244 petawatts per year by 2050. A petawatt is one million gigawatts, and a gigawatt is 10 billion watts of power. That’s a lot of energy, with 80 per cent of it coming from fossil fuels.
If we are to phase out fossil fuels by 2050, we will need to install, test, commission and add to the grid about 2.1 gigawatts of renewable energy a day for the next 30 years. We could go nuclear, meaning we’d need to build, install, test and commission a nuclear power plant every single day between now and 2050. Or we could use wind power, meaning we’d have to build, install, commission and bring online just under 3000 medium sized wind turbines every day until 2050. There’s solar but to meet the 244 petawatts of energy per year needed by the planet we’d need to build 250sq km of solar panels every day from now until 2050.
This does not take into account peak load capacity requirements, meaning you’d need to add another 15 per cent on to the renewables targets, so that blackouts didn’t occur.
Climate change and energy policy and meeting Paris targets might make us feel better, but it’s a bit like the Y2k bug – we’re getting all hot and bothered over something that will never happen.
