According to a 2023 report out of Stockholm, 'Phasing down or phasing up', mining countries intend to increase their fossil fuel outputs by an amount 110% more than is consistent with the fairy tale about limiting temperature increase to 1.5 degrees.

And so they should.

The whole net zero/carbon dioxide reduction/Paris Agreement palaver is a hugely expensive, wealth-destroying farce.

A great article.

Here are some of the points made by the author:

"Primarily, energy and electricity got confused. "100% renewables" works for the electricity sector."

"Clean electricity is essential to strategy but it is the means, not the end."

"So, all things considered, reducing fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions where feasible seems an entirely reasonable ambition for a modern world."

"The answers lie in the proper setting of clean energy targets."

The author correctly identifies that "clean" electricity input while increasing is not increasing enough.

He states: "Clean energy policy needs to be overhauled if the necessary targets are to be reached in any sensible period."

I agree with the author's overall conclusions that it is policy that is holding back "clean" electricity.

There are other hurdles to overcome such as storage and transmission (as they exist in the current state) but it is great to read an article that looks at moving forward with "clean" electricity instead of looking backwards.

We could also question whether biomass burning is a form of renewables that is truly clean. A looming problem is the way gas fired generation is needed to balance supposedly cheap wind and solar. Gas isn't going to get any cheaper. Same goes for batteries, frequency correction, new powerlines and compensation for demand reduction. The fossil backup has additional carbon penalties like the 'safeguard mechanism'. It may be that around 30-40% renewables is the sweet spot beyond which it gets progressively more difficult. Note both the UK and US were 38% gas fired electricity in 2022. I see no way of of Australia getting to 82% by 2030. As of 2023 homes and businesses can barely afford electricity prices and increases could cause a recession.

Baseload generation, be it coal or nuclear, has many advantages. It stabilises the frequency so that remedial measures are not required, it reduces the need for expensive storage, the transmission is mostly already in place and it reduces wild fluctuations in spot prices due to weather. It may make green hydrogen more affordable by producing it with diverted baseload in the times wind and solar are going well. If you accept the need to reduce CO2 then nuclear is the answer.

As long as Green technology is more polluting than coal & oil we should stick to coal & oil until Green energy achieves lower emission ! It goes without saying that every effort to reduce the use of conventional energy is kept to a minimum.
Military exercises & sport are the worst offenders.

This piece of fairy tale nonsense relies on data from the 50s and 60s! When the essay would've been relevant.

Today power generated from fossil fuels, the most expensive and getting even more expensive.

There's little doubt that mining coal will need to become hugely automated, as the workers have priced themselves out of the labour market. Moreover, black lung disease is back in the news again along with other coal mine disasters.

We currently can sell all we produce offshore. Given how much electricity is used to mine fossil fuel and liquify NG. The power required needs to come from a different source.

Namely nuclear, and that nuclear ought to be MSR thorium. To ensure it is as cheap as possible.

The only cheaper option would be MSR nuclear waste burners, burning nuclear waste we are paid annual millions to take.

And given undersea cables, we could sell this power to a world market for much more than we get for our rocks and finite gas.

Our forebears laid a cable from London to Australia and if we were so minded, so could we! London is just one example of what could be available Europe wide.

Given the foregoing, we could indeed become an energy superpower. That cannot happen if we rely on fossil fuels or renewables.

China has perfected MSR thorium and might be persuaded to sell us a couple to get the price of mining iron ore and liquifying NG.

In any event we could build a perfected prototype with what we already know and with the intellectual talent we could obtain on a world labour market!

Then we could start to mass produce the same and transition our own energy sector to Australia owned and operated enterprises/co-ops.

Given we did all the above, we'd be trampled in the stampede high tech manufacture would create, in the rush to relocate to these shores.

Even more so if we had genuine tax reform as a 15% flat tax taken as a transition tax as money enters or leaves the banking sector.
Alan B.

Much of the much needed infrastructure will not be built as the generations of the very recent past & the present & more likely than not the next also do not have the required mentality instilled courtesy of their just as self absorbed parents & tutors & role models.
Only people who actually care & not just say so make things happen. I was listening to a progressive sheilah a few days ago on ABC Radio that "We need to get to Net Zero before 2050 & this can be achieved" but she failed to enlighten her listeners how she thought it can be done.
We could put all those ineffectual intellectuals to pick & shovel as that would do way more than just paying them for being insipid !
After many, many years I have yet to hear one of these progressives now called Woke, explain how their perpetual "need to do something" will actually work.