Andrew Bolt: Chris Bowen is a global warming zealot
How many experts is Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen ignoring as he straps us in for his green train to disaster?
Andrew Bolt
Don't miss out on the headlines from Andrew Bolt. Followed categories will be added to My News.
One reason I dream of retiring is so I won’t have to pay professional attention to the evidence this Albanese government is driving our country off a cliff.
I can save myself the depressing duty of noting signs like the news last week of the resignation of Paul Broad.
Guaranteed, you almost certainly haven’t heard of this guy.
Broad headed Snowy Hydro, which produces hydro-electricity and is in charge of a planned new gas plant at Kurri Kurri, in the Hunter Valley.
And one reason he’s going, he says, is that Chris Bowen, our shiny-eyed Energy and Climate Change Minister, won’t listen to Broad’s warning of a fundamental engineering problem with his plans for Kurri Kurri.
They won’t work.
Bowen is a global warming zealot who wants to get rid of even more of our coal-fired power stations so that wind, solar and other renewables make up 82 per cent of our electricity in just eight years. Crazy stuff.
Of course, we’ll then need lots more backup for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, to make sure our lights stay on.
Coal plants can’t do it. You can’t just switch them on and off.
So Labor reluctantly agreed to the Morrison government’s Kurri Kurri plant, but with a catch – it had to run partially on green hydrogen from the start, and totally by 2030.
But green hydrogen is made by running huge amounts of electricity through water, and no one has made that work economically at scale.
Nor can you move it through normal pipes; the molecules are so small that it leaks out.
In fact, BlueScope just cancelled a test smelter in Port Kembla, saying steel made with green hydrogen was still decades away.
Broad tried to tell this to Bowen. As he later said: “While hydrogen is a wonderful opportunity, it is many, many years away from being commercial.”
Get real: “To think you can have hydrogen running into Kurri Kurri when there is no hydrogen being produced in Newcastle just doesn’t make any sense.”
So Bowen wants a power plant to use hydrogen that isn’t there in machinery that can’t yet handle it. And forget the cost.
In a sane world, Bowen would drop his plan. Instead, it’s the expert that’s dropped.
Makes me wonder. How many other experts is Bowen ignoring as he straps us in for his green train to disaster?
How many others know it’s dangerous to warn him?
Join the conversation
Bolt: Benjamin Netanyahu is the Churchill of our times
Be grateful that in a West where many weaklings now rule we have a Churchill in Jerusalem who has led Israel to stunning battlefield successes.
Read more
Bolt: Albanese doesn’t have much further to fall
Voters are no longer going to buy the idea that Anthony Albanese knows their struggles as he relaxes in his new home with its magnificent ocean views. For the first time his own ministers are telling journalists he has no judgment.
Read more