I presume the Climate Change Authority has a mission statement about reducing CO2 but I doubt it requires them to pick technology winners such as wind and solar. But that's just what the recent RET review has done. It is noteworthy that places with high wind penetration (Germany, Denmark, South Australia) also have very high electricity prices.

One perspective on wind power is that of a gas saver. That is when the wind blows then quick responding gas fired power stations can be throttled back. This can be compared with the cost of doing the whole job with gas alone. Invariably the cost of the CO2 saved is many multiples of $23 the current CO2 price. That's while we still have affordable gas.

So apart from additional financial cost of a partially duplicated generating system there is the issue of wind power when gas backup is prohibitively expensive. The Danes claim to solve this problem by burning hay instead of gas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aved%C3%B8re_Power_Station
In reality they get hydro from other countries when the wind doesn't blow. Australia with 70% desert may not have either the hydro backup or hay burning option when gas is expensive.

I think the market should decide how much wind power it wants now and in the future without prescribing targets.

“For those, including this writer, who believe that wind power is a total waste of time that is of no particular concern, expect that substantial fines may result, and consumers (that's us) may foot the bill.”

I agree. And here are two reasons:

The cost of wind power is very high, and
It is virtually useless. It avoids about half as much CO2 as claimed by the proponents, and supplies unreliable power that causes costly measures to compensate so that consumers get the quality power supply they require.

Wind generated electricity costs aver $100/MWh [1] which is about three times the cost of electricity from conventional baseload sources. Consumers pay the difference one way or another. Government is mandating renewable energy which in reality means wind power. The cost of the subsidies we are forced to pay one way or another total to about $30 billion by 2020. Think of the good we could do with $30 billion if not wasted on these ideological beliefs like renewable energy.

Wind generation avoids about half as much CO2 emissions as claimed by wind power proponents [2].

Because wind is high cost and reduces little CO2, the CO2 abatement cost is very high. For the Australian National Electricity Market, if run on mostly renewable energy and gas for back up generation, the CO2 abatement cost would be about $300 per tonne. That’s about thirty times the current EU carbon price and about ten times the Treasurer’s estimated cost of the Australian ETS in 2020.

How ridiculous is that? How incompetent is a government that would impose such a scheme on Australia? Of course, like most of their policies, they have not done the cost/benefit analyses. If they did they’d find the costs are very high and the benefits negligible.

[1] BREE, 2012 AETA, Table 4.2.9 http://bree.gov.au/documents/publications/aeta/Australian_Energy_Technology_Assessment.pdf

[2] Joe Wheatley, 2012, Quantifying CO2 savings from wind power: Ireland http://docs.wind-watch.org/Wheatley-Ireland-CO2.pdf

I agree with Mark on this one. Further, meeting the world's total energy demands in 2030 with renewable energy alone would take an estimated 3.8 million wind turbines (each with twice the capacity of today's largest machines), 720,000 wave devices, 5,350 geothermal plants, 900 hydroelectric plants, 490,000 tidal turbines, 1.7 billion rooftop photovoltaic systems, 40,000 solar photovoltaic plants, and 49,000 concentrated solar power systems. Never mind the planets lack of neodymium.

Renewables have a low energy returned on energy invested (EROEI), or energy profit ratio, than we are usually accustomed to.

Achievable and maintainable levels of socio-economic complexity are closely tied to available energy supply, moving from high EROEI energy source to much lower ones will have significant implications for the level of complexity we can sustain in our societies moving forward.

Exploiting low EROEI energy sources is going to be a highly complex, energy-intensive activity and one that I doubt we can build at the scale required to sustain our ever growing, energy intensive way of life.

A more sensible and balanced approach, without the growth mantra at the forefront of every policy, economic, social and environmental endeavour, would be, in my view, a much more sensible approach than that which currently endures today.

We need to change how we live, do business, travel, grow food, transport goods and the myriad of other activities we take for granted in our current fossil fuelled lives.

The earth, our home is truly finite, and unfortunately it is highly unlikely technology can solve all of these predicaments.
Problems can be solved, predicaments can’t.

"The earth, our home is truly finite"

Wrong. Please see previous explanation re:sun

Mark Lawson here..

For once, at least to date, I won't take issue with any of the posts on an article of mine, even that of Geoff of Perth.. however, Geoff does say the only solution is to change how we do things.. That just isn't going to happen.

In any case, thanks to the revolution in the oil and gas industry, fossil fuels are going to be around for a long time yet..

Stezza, I am sure the earth (in terms of human capacity to survive) is 100% finite, when the Sun does go Super Nova or whatever it does in the future, human life if not already extinct, will become so less than 8 minutes later!