Piers Akerman: Green energy push will only see Aussies suffer

The push for emissions reduction will not make a jot of difference to the Earth’s climate. Instead, Aussies will be forced to choose between eating and heating their homes, writes Piers Akerman.

The Labor-Greens emissions reduction legislation will force Australians to choose between eating and heating even as it devastates the nation’s economy and the climate wars roll on.

Thanks to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, with help from the Greens’ Adam Bandt and the compliant teals, Australia will become a nation of virtue-signallers par excellence, as the expensive, job-destroying gesture will not make a jot of difference to the Earth’s climate.

Not only that, the 43 per cent reduction by 2030 is just the floor, not a target, and the proposed bill enables the global warmists to ratchet up that number whenever these economic saboteurs wish, further pushing up the price of energy and making absolute nonsense of Labor’s election promise of an annual $275 price cut in household electricity costs.

In the new post-truth Labor-Greens-teal parliament, objective facts are trumped by appeals to emotion.

In fact, the highly emotive claims that Australia’s anthropogenic greenhouse emissions have already done irreparable damage to such iconic natural features as the Great Barrier Reef have already been shown to be sheer humbug.

The northern and central Great Barrier Reef have recorded their highest amount of coral cover since the Australian Institute of Marine Science began monitoring 36 years ago. Picture: AIMS,

Far from dying as the climate catastrophist Bandt told the National Press Club, the Reef is in excellent condition, better than it has been for decades, with coral cover at record levels despite another bleaching episode earlier this year.

As Queensland scientist Peter Ridd noted, the brilliant result is proof that many science institutions have been misleading the public about the state of the Reef.

The cost of the wishy-hopey legislation is going to run into the tens of billions and only ideologically blinkered pygmies could believe that rewiring the nation to hook every solar reflector and wind turbine to the grid could possibly reduce the price of electricity to the consumer, let alone provide reliable, dispatchable power.

Yet this great furphy underlies the phony argument that Labor and the Greens have put to their supporters.

The reality, as evidenced by the diesel generators hitched up to every wind farm, solar plant and giant battery across the nation, is that the intermittent nature of wind and solar means that fossil fuel-powered plants are essential to the current stability of the electricity grid.

The other major falsehood being promulgated by Albanese and his heavily conflicted dual Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen is that nuclear power is not a reasonable alternate source of power to be added to the mix.

The Isar Nuclear Power Plant in southern Germany. Picture: Christof Stache

Albanese told parliament last Monday “we will deliver more renewables into the system, which is the cheapest form of new energy”.

Bowen later proclaimed “that clean energy is cheap energy” but green, renewable energy is not the cheapest source available.

The Sydney-based nuclear energy consultancy SMR Nuclear Technology (SMRNT) has a better understanding of the real differences in costs, sustainability and material resources between small modular reactors (SMRs) and solar, wind and fossil fuels for electricity generation.

The consultancy’s technical director Tony Irwin, with 30 years of experience in the nuclear energy field, says Australians need to weigh up the costs of the different technologies over their lifetimes.

He emphasised that the cost of transmitting bulk electricity would be dramatically increased by the number of small solar and wind generators that needed to be connected to the grid.

Releasing a set of infographics to help the community better understand the likely future costs of modernising Australia’s power, he said a “huge advantage with nuclear generators in pursuing Australia’s 2050 net zero goals, especially with the modern modular reactors, is that they can be connected to the existing power grid and avoid much of the cost of new transmission infrastructure, generating national savings of billions of dollars”.

Picture: Supplied.

Picture: Supplied

Many people think of nuclear in terms of historic disasters but modern reactors do not rely on electrical supplies or pumps for safety.

They have “passive” safety systems that use gravity, conduction and convection without the need for AC/DC power, pumps, operator action or additional water. All these “passive” systems are within the building containment, safe from external events.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton has committed the Coalition to a formal internal investigation of the potential for advanced and next-generation nuclear technologies to contribute to Australia’s energy security and reduce power prices.

“Australia is already a nuclear nation,” he said. “The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) has
operated a nuclear research reactor at Lucas Heights for over 60 years.

“A national conversation about potential of nuclear energy is the logical next step.”

Many of Australia’s international partners, including France, Japan, South Korea, Sweden and the US with aggressive emissions reduction targets, have adopted nuclear energy technologies as part of their solutions.

Albanese responded to the suggestion of a review of nuclear energy with a quip about Homer Simpson and repeated his unreliable mantra “renewables are the cheapest”.

In refusing to see the obvious, he is the one looking like a cartoon character and that would be Mr Magoo, the short-sighted figure of ridicule whose problems are compounded by his refusal to accept his problem.