Job promise of renewables dream failing to materialise

Matt Canavan’s commentary piece (“Nickel isn’t worth a brass razoo without fossil fuel”, 17-18/2) alerts us to the fracturing of Labor’s emissions and jobs compact. The promised 604,000 jobs by 2030 was unbelievable spin; of these only 64,000 were direct jobs. The modelling didn’t include job losses among “carbon workers” or the impact of a carbon price on trade-exposed industries. Most of the jobs were to be in regional Australia, only winners included.

Far from creating jobs, we’re facing the loss of our nickel industry. With 1000 mining jobs gone, another 3000 workers are at risk with the announcement that BHP may mothball its entire Nickel West operations. With no nickel industry our battery ambitions remain a forlorn hope.

The aluminium industry is vulnerable, too, with the loss of 800 jobs at Alcoa’s Kwinana refinery south of Perth. What’s the future for smelters and steelmaking – and their large workforces – which are heavily reliant on affordable and reliable baseload power?

It’s fanciful to imagine being a global renewables superpower when we’re locked into overseas supply chains for imported solar panels, wind towers and electrical equipment, like the 17.5km of Chinese high-voltage conductors. China wants our tariffs on their wind towers, railway wheels and kitchen sinks lifted while reconsidering theirs on our wine.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen rejects that acting on climate change could cause job losses, saying “that’s always been a lie, and it’s a bigger lie today”. Minister, these developments are surely at odds with your promised jobs bonanza under Labor’s energy plans.

Jennie George, Mollymook, NSW

Nick Cater succinctly highlights, intentionally or otherwise, the dilemma facing us all: where do we get the best bang for our climate survival bucks (“Unaffordable green dream blacked out by reality”, 19/2)? There’s no doubt our overheated atmosphere has supercharged the climate regime under which our economy and our lifestyle will need to function for generations to come. The rolling climate catastrophes that have been in the headlines since the Black Summer inferno are likely only the prelude to what we’re facing down the track. It’s going to be all hands to the pumps; in every sense. While Cater, as a senior fellow at the Menzies Research Centre, perceives numerous problems, his comments would have been more helpful if they’d included an item or two as to how we’re going to deal with our dire situation.

John Mosig, Kew, Vic

Nick Cater reminds us that a Tesla charged from the grid is powered mainly by black coal. Perhaps we should remind him that the same Tesla is doing vastly less damage to the environment than its internal combustion engine counterpart. A Tesla reaches its carbon break-even point in just 20 months. After that its emissions (from production and road use) are effectively zero. And if it is powered by rooftop solar, as many are, it will reach break-even in just 12 months. An ICE vehicle will go on polluting all of its life. By all means attack EVs on account of their cost, but not on environmental grounds. Here, they indisputably lead the race.

Ken Enderby, Concord, NSW

Nick Cater tells many home truths, but none better than his closing thought to all the Tesla drivers that 80 per cent of their battery-charging electricity last weekend came from black coal. When you add the fact extracting the key minerals – nickel, lithium – to make the batteries is often environmentally very damaging, the warm inner glow of EV ownership must fade a little. Then add the facts some of the 1.5C warming this past 150 years was no doubt natural variation and we are still cooler than in Roman times despite our much higher CO2 levels, and you realise we don’t have a climate emergency anyway. If you bought your EV to help save the planet you were mistaken.

Doug Hurst, Chapman, ACT

Nick Cater provides a very good summary of the pitfalls of renewable energy, but another pitfall awaits if we should ever achieve the target of 82 per cent or higher renewables generation. Wind and solar generation are at the mercy of the weather and cannot be controlled and the rest of the grid has to be capable of adjusting output to balance fluctuating renewables generation. This is only possible while total renewables generation is less than demand, but eventually there will be times when renewables generation is greater than demand, creating the headache of managing the excess. The renewables program is being driven by politicians with little technical knowledge of what they are doing. We can only hope wise heads will prevail before we create a completely unstable grid.

R. Watson, Sunnybank Hills, Qld