If wind power is so good why does it need any subsidies? The Snowy Hydro doesn't get any. Maybe because that's because they provide a reliable service unlike wind. As several authorities like the Productivity Commission have pointed out wind power already has the advantage of paying no carbon tax. It seems they want two bites at the cherry.

South Australia provides a good example of the problems. Wind power needs either giant batteries (currently impractical) or fossil fuelled generators to cover dips and lulls in wind output. But SA is fast running out of both gas and coal to do this. It is claimed they are already paying some of the world's highest power prices. When gas in particular becomes very expensive it won't be possible for SA to provide reliable electricity supply. A feed-in tariff won't help when there is no more gas to make wind power useful.

By the way the renewable energy target is not aspirational it is backed up by stiff penalties called 'shortfall charges', currently $65 per megawatt-hour. The article presumes that the stick will still apply as well as the carrot.

The carbon price alone should be enough. Electricity retailers can then decide how much wind power they want in the mix. Wind does save some gas but barely enough to justify the expense. I'm not sure what the percentage should be but it may be Australia already has enough wind farms.

In the same vein as Taswegian, let me add that Ben Courtice fails to address the key issue here: can wind energy subsidies be justified ahead of all the other ways governments might hand out their citizens’ money? Of course, subsidies in the form of feed-in tariffs or other financial assistance will hasten the rollout of wind farms and will keep or create associated jobs and industries. But they would have a similar effect wherever that money landed. And they only provide those benefits at the expense of jobs and industries elsewhere. Ask the head of the Productivity Commission, or any other person with the smallest background in economics. Ben avoids the problem by simply accusing opponents of wind farms, or renewable energy in general, of being anti-science. End of story.

Implicit in this lack of attention to costs is the notion that carbon emissions must be reduced by any means possible regardless of cost. No doubt some people believe that, but such beliefs are simply not rational. One would hope that a campaign official from Friends of the Earth would not admit to such folly.

FOE might wish to crystallise the cost/benefit problem by asking themselves a few simple economically intelligent questions, like: is it better to spend $1 billion on wind farms than on engineering research to raise the perceived safety of nuclear energy up to the expectations of the Australian community? Of course that aim might turn out to be a lot cheaper to achieve, seeing as there are already many countries where those expectations have been met for the majority of their populations.

Wind power, which is supposedly the most economical of the renewable energies has been shown to have been a huge waste of money.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/billions-blown-away-on-wind-power-says-british-study/story-fn59niix-1226294168155?from=hot-topics-home

Exactly, but I would add another few points.

I was surprised to hear that this turbine maker was still going. Most of that manufacturing, for better or worse, has gone off to China due to the high Aussie dollar. In any case, what has the fate of this turbine manufacturer got to do with emissions?

If and when any of the wind farms mentioned by Courtice get off the ground they could just as easily buy their turbines from overeseas as in Aus. He is confusing an argument for reducing emissions with one concerning the retention of manufacturing capacity in Aus.

The renewable energy targets are already set and are very likely unrealistic. Bringing them forward would create chaos.

I suggest that the author Ben Courtice, and anyone who is tending to believe what is in this article should read the Jennifer Marohasy item at Domain today. We must conserve coal for essential chemical processes such as a reducing agent to allow production of metals from oxide and sulphide ores long into the future.
For electric power and transport, France is the country we should be following but probably utilising molten salt thorium reactors or at least the latest safer uranium reactors. Maybe the reactors could be built on barges floating on their cooling water lakes below, but away from, the flood-ways of inland dams. Such reactors would be free of earthquake and tsunami problems and provide local decentralised employment.

Yep, it is time we confined the use of wind to parliament, it's natural habitat.

For generating power, we have lots of alternatives, but coal & nuclear are best by far.

Wind is just one form of solar power! All air movement is caused by the heat emanating from our solar furnace. Other things, which are also available is wave power. Wave power is a product of wind. Most of our southern shores are home to some of the most consistent and constant wave power, which if intelligently harnessed; can provide peak power for considerably less than current coal-fired power.
Similarly, we have some of the highest tidal surges in the world occur to our north and north west; and potentially, endlessly reliable twice daily hydro power?
Even coal-fired power can be completely cleaned up and made much more profitable, with the intelligent introduction of co-existent algae farms and endless sustainable bio-fuel production.
Algae absorb twice their body weigh in Co2; and under optimised conditions, as would exist almost naturally in any coal -fired power station's immediate vicinity, literally double that body weight every 24 hours. Some algae are up to 60% oil; and apparently the U.S, wants ours?
We need to decentralise power provision; as the 50% grid transmission losses; effectively doubles the carbon emission.
Local schemes that include turning locally produced biological waste into power, are already in service elsewhere; and if rolled out here, with ceramic fuel cells converting the methane produced into electricity and free domestic hot water; for around one third of the current cost of converting coal to electrical energy?
We need to ask our so-called leaders who'se interests are they actually serving?
If there is money for alternatives; then it could be far better spent than in the provision of intermittent and notoriously unreliable wind power, which is a visual blight on the landscape? Rhrosty.

Rhrosty

Wow! Now I don't mean this unkindly but you've been through every green dream booklet there is.. I won't go through all of that but lets look at wave power.. what you say about wave power is quite true as far as it goes. It is far more reliable than wind and the energy is more concentrated..

So why have no wave power generators made it out of pilot stage in Australia, particularly given our extensive coast line? The answer is that they are an order of magnitute or so more expensive than wind, and the wind farms are not there to save carbon (although they may do so as part of their operations). The wind farms are there to generate renewable energy certificates and otherwise meet legislative requirements. If a wind farm generates a megawatt of electricity it is assumed to save a MW. Whether it does or not is irrelevant - that's the assumption.

As wind farms are the cheapest way of meeting legislative requirements they are the ones to get built. The emphasis is not on real carbon savings but on nominal savings. Hence no one will worry about the other stuff you mention.. its costly and not needed for what they are aiming to do..

A lot of the criticisms made in comments thus far have been answered in detail at yes2renewables.org so I will just make a few key points in response.

The Energy Users Association, i.e. big energy intensive businesses, has said SA's power prices are the highest in the world. Yet SA wholesale electricity prices are now the lowest since the beginning of the National Electricity Market.

Further, according to AEMO figures, their carbon emissions decreased significantly over 2005-2011, even while their overall energy use increased.

There are no reports of massive or unusual blackouts, power surges etc in the SA grid. If there are, please let me know!

Germany also has very high electricity prices, but costs per household are half Australia’s due to sensible energy efficiency and demand management. Their per capita emissions are likewise far lower.

Fossil fuels have been shown to receive around $11 billion in subsidies in a year. These do not take the form of such obvious and literal subsidies as RECs; they are built into the system in the form of rebates, the failure to index fuel excise for ten years, etc.

Further, the obvious point is that the costs of fossil fuels are far more than the dollars. There's the fact that once burned, they take millions (billions) of years to regenerate. There's climate change. There's air pollution. There's damage to farmland and water tables. Wind farms take up a little space but other than that, do none of the above.

The carbon price is set far too low to account for all these. In particular, none of the critics here have addressed climate change. The International Energy Agency says that the investment decisions to go clean and avoid a catastrophic 2°+ of global warming must occur within 5 years.

That is why a rapid rollout of renewable energy at large scale (including replacing baseload coal and gas with renewable energy) are needed and that’s why a feed-in tariff would work better. Fantasies about nuclear and “clean coal” will just see endless delays

Curmugen: If you'd bothered to check with ABC's new inventers, you'd have discovered that we have had wave powered pilot projects and arguably proved wave power as almost the most reliable source of endlessly sustainable alternative peak demand power.
[Please engage brain before putting mouth into gear.]
Am I being critiqued for simply being very knowledgeable and well read; or, not wielded to a particular favourite form of alternative energy? Really?
I am extremely tired of Idealogs and the constant demand in some quarters, for much more expensive energy options; which of course can only ever spell the demise of our energy reliant manufacturing industries.
I'm not bothered where ideas come from, green pink or purple!
All that I care about is that they are good ones and potentially less expensive than what we have now.
Cheap energy gave us our manufacturing base and even cheaper; ultra reliable, endlessly sustainable alternatives, will not just revive it; but confer on us the ability to compete with and or beat the emerging Asian economies.
I contribute my ideas; which could make me a personal fortune, because I actually give a dam about my fellow Australians and our future!
Moreover I'm not long out of hospital, with a number of health conditions, which are normally terminal; and regard every new day as a bonus and another chance to make a difference!
Which can hardly be said for the plethora of self serving, I'm all right jack, posters; clearly over represented on most public forums?
Of greatest promise is, I believe, solar powered, solid state, hydrogen production, utilising catalyst assisted water molecule cracking; probably worth at least 5-10 trillions per, when in full production. WOW! Said it for you? Cheers, Rhrosty.

Ben. You see nuclear power as 'a fantasy'. How ridiculous. Would you kindly give your reasons for that statement, and please give numbers? I am uninterested and totally unimpressed with statements without data-how big, how long etc. Do not say that xyz is dangerous or very dangerous, give numbers, statistics, not adjectives. I await your response with interest.

SA people like to cite the 26% wind power but omit to mention that another 44% of their electricity comes from gas, about double that of the eastern states. Torrens Island gas fired power station is the largest single gas user in Australia. Gas generation unlike coal has the flexibility to shadow variable wind output.

SA gas comes from the Cooper Basin from which gas is also sent to Gladstone Qld and from the Otway Basin around Pt Campbell Vic. Both basins are in their twilight years. It won't be possible to run heavy industries, hospitals, air conditioners in heatwaves and the breakfast power demand rush with fickle wind power alone. SA does have another large potential controllable energy resource. No it's not geothermal.

Ben Courtice that was the most dishonest post I have ever seen on the net. Are you a either Labor spin doctor, or even worse, a Greenie? I can't believe that anyone could twist facts so completely, & still expect to be treated as if they possessed any integrity.

To suggest that not indexing the excise on fuel is a subsidy, an obvious lie if one actually understands what you are talking about, is bad enough. To then claim that rebating the "road tax" charge from fuel used on farm to run machinery is a fossil fuel subsidy displays your complete lack of a genuine argument of any value.

The fact that this rip off is no longer called toad tax, is just another sign of spin doctors at work.

The fact is that if we were charged the true cost of petroleum fuel, rather than a price dishonestly loaded with massive tax to fund wasteful government, we would all be happily driving big comfortable V8s. This was, until recently, almost the case in the US, but then they were stupid enough to elect a socialist, & are now screaming as they are ripped off, just like us, & the Europeans.

You had best go back to socialists blogs, where the ratbags can gather, & enjoy lying to each other. Too many here are too bright for you & will see straight through your bulldust, & laugh at you.

I could go on, but the rest of your post is so bad, it's not worth the effort.

Feed-in tariffs are certainly successful at getting renewable energy generating capacity rolled out. Actually reducing emissions...not so much. The first 20% or so of wind-supported grid is easy, beyond that the cost of abatement begins to climb steeply: http://docs.wind-watch.org/Inhaber-Why-wind-power-does-not-deliver-the-expected-emissions-reductions.pdf

Wind Mills don't work.CO2 is not a pollutant and is a minor warming gas.Go back to coal for now.New advances in nuclear fission will be the way of the future.

Wind is irrevocably unreliable; wind cannot sustain the electricity needs of a modern society; some facts:

1 Back-up fossil or nuclear has to be kept running 24/7 to supply electricity when wind fails. Renewables like wind actually increase emissions!

2 Wind fails from minute to minute; this means whatever power wind generates will be both dearer than fossil and therefore not usable.

3 Wind usage figures like 29% for SA are completely misleading; wind is measured in terms of installed capacity which is the output figure if power is being produced 24/7, capacity factor, which is the power actually produced and world wide, averaged over any quarter, is about 20% of the installed capacity; thirdly, what is actually used, after the much cheaper and available fossil is used, is essentially nil. That 29% for SA is the capacity factor and is therefore meaningless.

4 Wind power is only considered because of AGW; AGW is a failed theory; there is NO evidence to support AGW; in fact there is a mass of observational, that is scientific, evidence to disprove it. Given this all 'sustainable', 'renewable' or 'green' energy sources should be left to compete in the market place without the leg-up of the massive subsidisation which has grown under AGW policy.

5 The fossils are not subsidised beyond the tax regime and deductions which all businesses operate under. It is the 'renewables', particularly wind and solar, which are massively subsidised and invariably collapse when that support is removed.

Generally wind and all the 'renewables' are boutiques which do not work; they have cost the economies of many nations dearly, driving them to failure in places like Greece, Italy, Spain etc.

Ultimately, people and groups who advocate wind and the other renewables, including solar, should be held to account if they have benefitted from their advocacy.

Oh dear the knuckle draggers are out in force, wind power is working just fine and so is solar despite your moaning.

You see nuclear power as 'a fantasy'. How ridiculous. Would you kindly give your reasons for that statement, and please give numbers? eyejaw

Oh dear you want numbers how about taking the wife and kids to pretty cheap houseing in Japan. I would love to see one of these right wing nut jobs put their money where their money is. Move to that little sea side vilage in japan for a year or two. What no takers just more wmoaning about left'e. Thought so, gutless trolls to a man.

Taswegian just how much subs do you think the snowy got when it was built. Now you'll need to put your thinking head on that one. you can use cohenite's he/she is clearly not using theirs.

"Failed theory" find me ten climate scientist who would agree. I'll give you a hint Alan Jones is not one.

cornonacob. You seem to be a bit excited.
I asked for numbers and the only numbers in your rant are the time and date. No good raving old son, I want numbers. The fact that you have not done so suggests to me that you do not have any. I hope that you have and that when you settle down will put them in your next post.
Cheers.

Cohenite: the figure of 26% for South Australia’s wind penetration is measured in actually kilowatt hours, over the year. Capacity is something else. You need to check facts with AEMO before making hasty assumptions.

It’s an intriguing theory you have that wind farms have caused the economic crashes “in places like Greece, Italy, Spain etc” – please explain more! I’m sure this astounding new explanation for the global financial crisis would be well worth publication at this site. Or perhaps you should try the Fortean Times.

Rhrosty: I’m all for wave, algae biomass and geothermal if and when they are working at scale. But right now, wind and solar-thermal are the best large-scale renewables that have been demonstrated at commercial scale.

Eyejaw: Nuclear power is a fantasy in the sense that next to no-one in Australia would accept a nuclear plant within hundreds of kilometres. Look around. Japan is only running one of its fleet of nuclear power plants. Germany is planning to phase them out altogether. That giant hole in the ground that BHP is planning at Olympic Dam may turn out to be a stranded asset the way we are going.

On the other hand, solar and wind power are very popular in any poll you look at.

For all the people suggesting that wind power doesn’t, can’t, shouldn’t etc work: you need to study the places where it is working, and how it is working. Start with AEMO figures on South Australia. You will see that the simplistic models that predict it can’t work in the grid are just that: simplistic models.

And for those who think global warming is bogus, well what can I say that scientists haven't? Gravity is just a theory too, so why not go jump out the window and see what happens? Honestly, I can’t give you a much more sensible answer than that

Ben. I 'look around' as you suggest and I do not see just Germany, I also see the UK. There, after Fukushima they instituted a high powered scientific examination of UK nuclear power in the light of the East Japanese accident. The outcome was that the accident was irrelevant to UK because there has never been an earthquake of energy within orders of magnitude of the monster that hit Japan. and there has never been a tsunami.
As a result the Minister for energy (or whatever his title is) said in the Commons that the government (Right of centre) was going ahead with the 10 new nuclear stations planned. As he sat down the shadow minister (Labour) stood up and agreed with that decision. Even the one Green party member (from a wealthy area of course) said that she wanted certainty that the plans would not require government subsidy.
The position of the Labour party was and is only to be expected as it was the former Labour government (Brown) that instituted the planning for the new plants.
Ben, you did not mention the UK decision. Why not? Did you not know or did you selectively choose only Germany?

Let’s hope we can put the final nail in the coffin of wind farms before they bankrupt Australia.

http://thegwpf.org/uk-news/5151-the-p120-billion-blunder-wind-energy-ten-times-dearer-than-gas-power-stations-.html

India already has 2 30 megawatt thorium reactors! Pebble reactors can be factory mass produced; making the nuclear option one of the cheapest. [Moreover, they are small enough and safe enough to power all our future shipping, which would be a big advance on bunker fuel and many tons of carbon; or indeed, the endless environmental threat this represents.]
Pebble reactors are small enough to be trucked on site and put into service within days. Additional modules can be bolted on with increased demand. Marble sized pebbles of enriched uranium are coated in grapefruit sized carbon. Even were the coolant flow, [helium,] stopped the separating carbon balls; prevent a melt down from occurring.
I live not to far from a coal-fired power station and they reportedly emit heavy metals including arsenic, cadmium, lead and uranium, just to mention a few, which arguably makes them a far greater health hazard than say a new thorium reactor or pebble reactor.
If I were given a choice of living alongside a coal-fired power station; replete with smokestack emission or a new pebble reactor, I'd choose the reactor!
But then I've been trained in some of the sciences and worked in a power station, in a science based capacity. Rhrosty.

Eyejaw: Nuclear energy is not my main interest, so I was unaware of the sad news from the UK; but I understand some other countries have also decided to forge ahead with nuclear.

Rhosty: you seem very keen on technology that is hypothetical. Where is the pebble-bed-reactor-factory? Is it really safe enough to entrust to mass production? I also work as an industrial maintenance fitter; I barely trust cars, let alone reactors, based on what I've seen.

More broadly, as a cheeky person told me today, all that happens when there'a big spill of solar energy is what's called a nice day...