In a world where basic competence mattered, Chris Bowen would be lucky to be trusted with getting the worksite’s lunch orders right. Alas, our’s is not such a world. So, instead of being sent to the store-room for some striped paint, “Boofhead” Bowen is Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Which only makes a kind of twisted sense in a government where Jim “Zippy” Chalmers, a Communications graduate, is Treasurer and Anthony Albanese is PM.
Under such a clown-car cabinet’s cack-handed “leadership”, Australia’s energy market is going exactly as you’d expect: right into the blackout.
Australia faces an “urgent” need to invest in back-up power to avoid energy shortfalls later this decade, with the market operator warning Snowy Hydro’s delay in delivering the Kurri Kurri gas plant raises reliability risks in the grid.
That’s an understatement, of course. But then, AEMO is yet another quango that’s been subsumed by the zealots of the Climate Cult. Naturally, they’re unable to come straight out and admit the harsh truth: “renewables” have rooted the power grid.
Australia faces an “urgent” need to invest in back-up power to avoid energy shortfalls later this decade, with the market operator warning Snowy Hydro’s delay in delivering the Kurri Kurri gas plant raises reliability risks in the grid.
Why do we urgently need back-up power? Because wind and solar are unreliable and meagre sources of energy.
The Albanese government has set a goal of tripling renewables capacity to 82 per cent by 2030 but authorities are worried a lack of power supply is being built to back-up solar and wind, hiking the risks of electricity shortages as coal plants shut their doors after a half century of operations.
What the whole debacle is showing is how badly we really need coal, if we’re to keep the lights and heaters on.
AGL’s Liddell Power Station in NSW will leave the grid in April, with Origin Energy’s Eraring to exit as soon as August 2025, CS Energy’s Callide B station in Queensland by 2028 – along with EnergyAustralia’s Yallourn facility – and Vales Point B in NSW scheduled to close by 2029.
Delays in bringing on new capacity have stoked expectations that Eraring will now remain open for several more years to protect Australia’s electricity system.
The Australian
So, how does Boofhead react to such a ringing klaxon of impending disaster?
Energy minister Chris Bowen said each update from the AEMO indicates “very real and substantial progress”, despite its latest report cautioning about energy shortfalls and blackouts.
The Australian
Yes, this is the calibre of the clowns running the circus in Canberra.
Speaking of clowns…
With the Greens now demanding an immediate end to all gas projects, any semblance of a workable safeguard mechanism in this country has been hijacked by extremists whose actions will lead to a significant rise in global CO2 emissions.
Banning new natural gas projects is their reckless plan to bring back high-emitting coal worldwide.
Wait, don’t the Greens hate coal? Of course they do: they hate anything that works. But, cretinous cultists that they are, they hate gas even more. So much so that they’re perfectly willing to drive China and India into the arms of coal, in order to ride their silly little green hobby horse at home.
Dan Walton, the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, who has the serious task of protecting workers and creating sustainable jobs in the Australian workforce, succinctly made this point after the Greens’ latest anti-climate proclamation.
“Pound for pound, the Greens have done more to worsen climate change than any other entity in the country,” Walton said.
The Australian
China and India aren’t going to stop electrifying their grids just because a scowling Scandinavian poison dwarf stamps her feet. They’re under no green delusions about the reliability of wind and solar. So, if they can’t get gas because the Greens have shut down exploration in Australia, coal it is.
China’s — already the world’s single biggest emitter — coal-fired power out put has risen by 9%. India’s by 16%. Pakistan is quadrupling its coal-fired capacity.
As for “green” Germany, in a supreme irony, the gas-starved nation is ramping up coal-fired power. Symbolically, a German wind farm is being dismantled in order to expand a coal mine.
Whatever else you may say about China, they’re not stupid. That’s why they’re not being suckered in by the Greens and the Climate Cult.