Billions are being wasted on the government’s expanded Capacity Investment Scheme

The federal government is going all-in on energy insanity, and it’s us, the taxpayers, who are going to pay.

The federal government is throwing more money behind renewables through its so-called Capacity Investment Scheme.

Chris Bowen, the minister for destroying our electricity system, has now made it official.

He - with the apparent endorsement of both the, mostly, literally, absent prime minister, and the figuratively gone missing-in-inaction treasurer – is going all-in on energy insanity.

He’s embarked on splashing around - quite literally, sending blowing into the wind - tens of billions of dollars of our money. Of your money.

So yes, it meets at least the definition of insanity.

That’s, doing the same thing – force-feeding investment in the fake energy generation of so-called renewables, combined with run-out-of-juice in an hour or two horrendously expensive batteries – and expecting a different result. That’s to say, reliable electricity.

So yes, he’s doing it again, and hoping that we don’t end up with blackouts and brown-outs.

But in the process, actually making them even more certain.

Bad and crazy enough? Then factor in that Thursday’s announcement from Bowen didn’t just

double, but went five-fold, down.

In July, just five months ago, the Albanese-Chalmers-plus Kooks Government’s so-called Capacity Investment Scheme was going to “unlock” – that’s to really say, pork-barrel with taxpayer billions – some $10bn of investment and “add 6GW” to support (please don’t laugh too hard) “grid reliability and security”.

Now, the government is ramping up the spend – the throw-money on the pork-barrel - to something well north of $15bn. It won’t tell us how much: so much for the PM’s promised transparency.

Its target is now not 6GW of additional, laughably described, generation; but 32GW.

That’s supposedly to come from a mix of 9GW of “dispatchable capacity” and 23GW of “variable capacity”. Variable means 23GW “variable” down to zero.

We are going to be spending somewhere north of $50bn - of which at least $15bn will be taxpayer money – to actually add zip, zero, not even a single 1GW of real power generation to the grid.

You can write off that 23GW, in total, upfront, for starters.

That’s supposed to be mostly wind, followed by solar, and then whatever other crazy-green fantasy can – come in (taxpayer) sucker - suck money out of Bowen’s energy destruction department.

As we know from experience both here and overseas, no, wind can not blow everywhere at the same time; and the sun does, most days, turn off at night.

So, there will be times that the 23GW of so-called capacity will end up generating zip, zero, nada electricity. Or very close to.

Then there’s that 9GW of so-called dispatchable power. Yes, it might include, actual, reliable gas generation, but a lot of it will be batteries.

Ask yourself: what do you plug a big battery into when it goes flat?

Those wind and solar monstrosities, spouting all over the landscape.

So, we will have all these batteries to provide the emergency power, for an hour or two, when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine - relying on the wind blowing and the sun shining to re-charge.

Furthermore, the very act of force-feeding all this functionally useless generation will accelerate the closure of the real, reliable power stations.

It really is men-in-white coats time. For our own salvation.

Originally published as Billions are being wasted on the government’s expanded Capacity Investment Scheme