Luciferase - China is building renewables on a pretty big scale.

Bloomberg predicts out of US$7.7 trillion in gross electricity generation investment by 2030, $5.1 trillion will be renewable and $2.6 trillion will be non-renewable.

China will grow the most gross capacity, 1,536 GW compared to Australia's 36 GW.

"The Chinese (and world) economy would completely tank before getting anywhere near the goal" - this is a very interesting point. Currently we have an abundance of private capital that could be invested but is being held as cash or in liquid assets due to uncertainty in global and Australian markets. The RBA cuts interest rates to deter people, businesses, and investment funds hoarding cash and bank deposits - as well as other reasons.

Renewable infrastructure would likely grow and improve some sections of the economy. It would be lucrative for the construction sector and would undoubtedly help improve our trade account as we'd import less diesel and export more coal and gas.

Moreover, we'd have to build quite a lot of renewables to create the equivalent to base load - when electricity demand isn't high, these power plants could sell electricity for extremely low cost because it is almost free to produce. Electricity prices may invariably fall as renewable companies go bankrupt and renewable projects are purchased for a fraction of the price - once one goes bankrupt it will be far more competitive than the others, operating in a circle of ever expanding scope until they all go bust and are purchased for pennies.

Of course, I don't advocate for any of this - just curious. It's sort of like some economic analysis showing that crime can improve the economy - it's unexpected.

"without much prospect of technological advancement" - Tesla has a home battery unit they've developed. Not sure about the viability, but it looked promising.

Unlike Australia, China would face huge health care and productivity costs because of their air quality; it would be far more economical to build renewables/nuclear as healthcare costs and productivity outweigh the added expenses in electricity infrastructure.

Spencer, if you make a wish and tap your heels together three times, maybe it will happen. The planet is in the grip of this reverie and it looks like I'll be waiting awhile for the voices of reason to prevail, hopefully before it's too late.

Good luck with that.

Spencer Wright, it simply isn't true that "Australia has limited capital to invest in projects". Australia owns the Reserve bank, therefore has unlimited credit in Australian dollars. Of course just because there's no limit doesn't mean there's no consequence, and we do have to watch out for inflation. But at the moment inflation's so low that the Reserve Bank's had to cut interest rates to half of what Joe Hockey's previously described as "emergency levels". And spending on things that make electricity cheaper has a long term deflationary effect.

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Luciferase, though it's not my preferred method of encouraging renewable energy, the RET is not a tax, and its effects on electricity prices are far from clear, as the encouragement of more renewable energy prevents price gouging by the electricity suppliers.

Asking "who pays for intermittency?" is like asking "who pays for the supermarkets to shut at night?". Intermittency is not something you buy, it's something that simply occurs, so when the cheap electricity isn't available we can either pay more for electricity from elsewhere or adjust consumption to exploit variations in supply (which in practice means variations in price). The latter approach has been going on for decades (with things such as off peak hot water systems) but with internet connected appliances there's a much greater scope for short term demand variation.

EROEI is usually only a minor factor in determining commercial viability, and P&H's EROEI figures are garbage. They used flawed methodology to convert non energy inputs into an energy equivalent to make the EROEI look much lower than it actually is.

Spencer says "Moreover, we'd have to build quite a lot of renewables to create the equivalent to base load" .

Well that's the understatement of the millenium! The cost and scale of the undertaking, even without obstructions is devastatingly massive. Affordability is not something that can simply be ignored. EROEI DOES matter greatly in determining the path carbon mitigation.

It is EROEI that underlies the Spencer's statement. P&H valued inputs other than energy in terms of energy inputs, and came to the very unsatisfactory conclusion for some the EROEI of PV's is a REAL 2.45, and that's unbuffered! It's possibly in negative territory with storage added.

Furthermore, technological improvements will have little effect on this situation as it they are swamped by the other issues. Prieto sees solar as only ever being a projection of fossil-fuelled energy, or nuclear I'll add. The cost of intermittency is also underwritten by fossil-fuels if storage is not calculated into solar's cost.

Applying P&H methodology to nuclear can't possibly damage its EROEI to the point of uselessness for baseload as it does with solar. It remains still miles way and above what is needed to sustain our level civilization and our aspirations to improve it, which require ever more energy.

Regarding RE projections for China, which probably includes hydro BTW, I'm sure the projections for Germany and Spain were looking stratospheric a few years back too, but there's a return to coal. Why? https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/194335/Poyry_Report_-_Coal_fired_power_generation_in_Germany.pdf

There is no such thing as free energy from the sun, so stop dreaming AGW away by pursuing a chimera.

PS, My references to EROEI's is to their "effective" levels, per P&H.

PSS, EROEI's don't matter a fig to commercial investors if gov't subsidy and assurances makes investment a no-brainer. That goes for corporations as well as Jo Public wanting to save on energy and feel a cosy green glow by buying a PV installation.

German wholesale power prices drop to €30/MWh

In the face of strong input from some 80 GWe of solar and wind capacity, averaging 13.5 GWe through April (9.7 TWh), heavily subsidised and with preferential grid access, the wholesale price for electricity has dropped to about €0.03/kWh, making much conventional capacity barely economic at best. A lot of gas-fired capacity has been closed and cheaper coal-fired plants are being built, disregarding the CO2 emission implications. In 2014 the grid companies paid €21.5 billion in feed-in tariffs and marketing premiums for electricity from renewables which was then sold for €1.6 billion on the wholesale market, the difference being funded by the €0.0624/kWh “Umlage” surcharge on consumers’ bills, totalling €22.4 billion for 2014.
Power in Europe 11/5/15, German Energy Blog 9/1/15 quoting www.netztransparenz.de.