Curmudgeon, solar thermal is capital intensive, so whether it is competitive with conventional power depends very much on the interest rate. At 4% it's cost competitive. Lower it's cheaper. Higher it's more expensive.

Whether or not a fully renewables grid is possible has no bearing on whether or not we should increase our use of renewables. The same is true for India, and solar thermal does not have the supply problems that wind does, and can be built with gas backup.

Excellent article Mr. Johns. These people care absolutely nothing for the poor. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

I generally agree with Gary, but not on this occasion. Not because I care about a snake (horrid things, snakes). Not because of some small animal that few have seen, or heard of, or even care about. There is water there for birdlife, and the area is not without outback charm.

No. My concern is the suggestion that the 'poor of India' are Australia's problem, and we have some obligation to sell them cheap coal.

When Australian politicians are not actually selling off our land to the Chinese Government, and actively encouraging them to buy our real estate, they are sucking up to foreign companies to come and pillage our natural resources for foreign benefit.

True, there might be a FEW jobs in it for Australians, but how much comes back to Australia in taxes is a closely kept secret. China, for instance, buys our land, works it, and sends the produce straight back to China without, we have every right to assume (because of government secrecy) any benefit even touching Australia.

Adani, I understand, is a private Indian company, and that has to be an improvement on the Chinese situation. But, we still do not know what, if anything apart, from a FEW jobs, is in it for Australia.

There also the hypocrisy of the whole thing. If it is good enough for India to burn coal, it is good enough for Australia to continue burning coal for cheap power. The coal is in Australia; it should be developed by Australia, and used in Australia for our benefit. Any spare can be exported to India. Australian natural rescources are for the benefit of Australia, not the poor of India or anywhere else. We have blown manufacturing. Natural rescources and agriculture are all we have left. With current low prices for raw materials we should be squeezing every cent we can out of them.

The same goes for uranium: dig it up, use it oursleves and export it. If we can't dig our own holes and trade our products, we are a very, very silly country.

Curmudgeon it's not figures you need look at, but actual electricity Producing solar thermal projects in California and Arizona!

What, you think hard nosed American investors are going to throw billions at projects that just don't stack up?

It's just not a figment of my overactive imagination!

I know you just don't want it to be true because your patent (full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes) obsession with coal!

Even so there are other even more cost competitive examples to look at that are carbon free or carbon neutral!

And cheap enough to actually resuscitate and revive our manufacturing base!

And our punch drunk and staggering economy!

If we used our remaining smarts and converted our economy to half price thorium power; we'd still have to mine and process it, and employ possibly more folks in the power industry.

But more than saving what that costs us by the fact we just don't need to dig up and transport millions of tons of no longer competitive coal!

It's not the workforce that make coal increasingly uncompetitive with these alternatives; but rather the cost of the tons of fuel that must be burned in them!

And indeed the fact that the cost of this form of fuel never ever goes down; or the fact that the great white elephant of a national grid make the eventual supplied reticulated energy twice as expensive and carbon emitting as it could be.

My rationale is based solely on sound economic grounds; rather than some half assed green ideology.

I mean we have enough thorium to power the world for 700 years and ourselves for thousands, if we were just smart enough to kept it for our on industries!

These solar power projects are built and producing cost competitive power, thanks to essential economies of scale, and forever free fuel in the most competitive free market in the world!

But then the fact you don't know about them just doesn't surprise!

It's hard to see anything from where you've patently buried your fact free head!
Rhrosty.

Where the whole article falls apart, is that if you are poor in India you don't have access and cannot afford electricity anyway.

Some of the comments ignore evidence and valid opinion by competent people. I have done the sums and at 50% efficiency (actual efficiency likely to be less than 10%) all the worlds annual production of food grains and sugar, converted to biomas energy, would supply about 5% of the world's liquid fuel consumption annually. Biomas is no solution.

The former CEO/Chairman of BHP, Sir ian McLennan, and the senior coal mining union official in the Hunter Valley were both of the opinion than coal is too valuable (actually essential )to future generations to be burned now simply for its thermal value.