Whichever way you slice cut and dice renewables they
1. currently form a miniscule portion of supplied energy in Australia
2. have lumpy and somewhat unreliable temporal supply charactristic
3. are beget with scalability issues
To Point 3 above:
a. are there any new hydro schemes of significance in planning stage and/or that greens would support?
b. Why are so many wind farm applications held up in legal challenges?
c. What is the range of competitiveness of existing wind farms on a $/kWhr basis?
d. W/o subsidies, what is the range of competitiveness of solar installations amortised over say 10 yrs and how may panels be safely recycled?
I could go on but you get my drift.
I am not against renewables ... never have been and never will ... however I absolutley dispute that renewables for now or at least 2-3 decades can ever be scaled to produce the magnitude of powergen currently produced by fossil fuels, nor the temporal production characteristic to make renewables completely useful or stand alone.
That being the case, a pragmatic, environmentlly responsible position would be to progressively replace aging coal fired powergen assets with new, significantly cleaner and lower GHG emitting gas powergen assets.
Further, if environmental concern is a global rather than local issue, it would be pragmatic and environmentally responsible for countries endowed with gas to export to countries currently relying too heavily on coal powergen.
I suggested gas powergen in peaking mode to show a juxtaposition in conventional thinking and that it could be possible for greens to support a form of fossil fuelled powergen.
Obviously though, gas powergen can equally provide a significant slice of baseload powergen.
Now something provocative, for greens to actively fight against gas powergen means unequivocally that those same greens are responsible for continued high reliance on coal powergen and so they must take ownership of otherwise reducible GHG emissions for decades to come ... that is something that should bear heavily on green consciences.
Lastly, to have an agenda to wipe out fossil fuels, greens must have solutions to:
1. replace nitrogen based fertilisers 2. provide lubricants 3. provide heavy transport solutions 4. provide an alterntive fuel for commercial aviation
Without Points 1 and 3 in particular, agricultural production globally will be decimated and there would be starvation and deaths on a distressing scale ... is global population reduction a hidden greens agenda perhaps?
