Why farmers hold the key to Australia’s energy future

The practice of Australian governments and public servants to ignore the truth if it does not fit their political ambitions or policies is starting to reach dangerous proportions.

In the latest example, a flawed CSIRO report led us to conclude that wind energy would reduce power prices, when in fact it will skyrocket them.

Accordingly, unless radically changed, the current renewable strategies being embraced in vast areas of Australia are going to cause great hardship for households and enterprises. Yet, Australia needs a low-carbon energy strategy.

I feel sorry for energy minister Chris Bowen, who understandably did not realise the CSIRO report’s conclusions were at best grossly misleading.

We now need a total re-examination of our renewable energy policy.

Fortunately, as I explain below, alternatives are available that will not lift power prices.

In another example of ignoring the truth, yesterday I set out how the full Uluru statement made a mockery of many of the stated sentiments behind the “yes” campaign.

Had the full 112-page Uluru statement, including the minutes of the 13 dialogues, been made public at a much earlier stage, the wiser heads in the ALP would never have allowed a referendum to proceed given the sentiments and motivations expressed in the document.

And of course the ‘Robodebt’ scandal of the previous government would have been nipped in the bud had proper and accurate reports been sent to cabinet.

The practice of preparing misleading reports gained great impetus when some 15 years ago defence officials produced a cost estimate for the Joint Strike Fighter but left out the cost of the engine!

A RAAF F-35A Joint Strike Fighter leaves contrails during its flying display in the Australian Defence Force showcase rehearsal at Avalon, Victoria.

Last month, with the help of experts in the wind industry, I was able to explain to readers that our current renewable policies will explode power costs and lead to blackouts.

And now the nation can be grateful for the reporting of my colleague Claire Lehmann showing that CSIRO’s GenCost report, which helped frame much of Australia’s renewable strategies by claiming that wind and solar are hypothetically the cheapest after 2030 was, using my words, “complete hogwash”.

Just as the cost of the JSF was slashed by leaving out the engine, so the CSIRO left out of its GenCost calculation the cost of transmission lines, storage and other infrastructure requirements. Everyone knows and accepts that the actual operating costs of generating power via wind is very low.

It’s the enormous cost of capital facilities and the fact that the capital investment in windmills must be replaced every 30 years that boosts the costs dramatically. And most of the investment is being made with private capital, which requires a return which must be included in any realistic assessment of costs.

Currently, in Victoria farmers are angry because high cost, tall transmission towers are cutting a swathe through their properties and farmers with a windmill on their land gain big rewards, but those next door must put up with the impacts without any recompense. The same thing is about to happen in NSW.

The farmers have discovered that a series of overseas institutions led by the Chinese are set to make a fortune from making these massive capital investments that have not been costed in the CSIRO Gencost blueprint.

The farmers are having some wins because rules are being imposed to protect the brolga waterbird, a threatened species of indigenous crane, and the southern bent-wing bat, making it possible that segments of proposed renewable power generation will not proceed.

But for farmers, my message is that the only way to win is to show the community that dependence on wind power to reduce carbon emissions can be greatly reduced by changes in farming practice. And the side benefit is better food productivity, and lower power prices. Here are some rough sums that farmers must validate — but not with CSIRO until it re-establishes credibility.

Using Victoria as an example, the area of the state is around 22.8 million hectares of which about a half is agricultural land (ie, 11.4 million hectares), managed by about 20,000 farm businesses.

If we were to assume that all farms adopted and implemented regenerative agriculture practices/systems, and that they on average were able to sequester annually five tonnes of CO2 per hectare via the root systems of plants like saltbush and via landscape revegetation, then around 60 million tonnes of atmospheric CO2 would be sequestered per annum in Victoria.

Yallourn Power brown coal station emits 13 million tonnes of CO2 per annum and Loy Yang 19 million — in the vicinity of 30 per cent of total Victorian emissions

So even if agricultural practices take out only half of the above assumed potential — or 30 million tonnes of CO2 per annum — it is enough to offset both the Yallourn and Loy Yang emissions.

It should not be hard to collaborate with South Australia, given that Victoria often transmits Latrobe Valley electricity across the border when SA renewables aren’t generating.

SA has vast areas of degraded farmlands with the potential to store in plant roots several times Victoria’s total CO2 emissions.

And of course to hit the carbon reduction jackpot, Victoria could set up a gas fired power station to replace, say, one coal fire station.

Victoria’s low cost gas is dissolved in water, which when brought to the surface underwrites the carbon storage plant growth.

But farmers around Australia will need to wake up that they have the answer and push the answer rather than the protest.