It’s a terrible shame that Alan Moran, who really understands energy and economics, bases his entirely justifiable criticisms of renewable energy (mainly wind but implicitly solar too) on his doubts about the climate effects of carbon dioxide. His arguments would have exactly the same merits and force without those doubts. All he does by raising the ‘global warming fraud’ is lose some of his credibility and audience. What a shame.

Tombee is absolutely spot on.

Everything else in this post is exactly what should be said and understood. Wind power has indeed degraded the reliability and capacity of the nation's networks, SA being the prime example.

An unnecessarily offensive throw-away comment about BHP's CEO distracts and diverts attention away from the reality that, regardless of the reasons for the swing towards wind, the costs and operational issues that attach to that decision must be faced or Australia's electricity will continue to become more unreliable and more expensive with time.

Keep writing, Alan Moran. You have much to offer the discussion, but first ensure that you don't chase your audience away.

There's an obvious market failure. It's not regulations that are the problem, it's too little government participation in the market! Privatisation was rushed into for ideological reasons before it became clear that what's most lucrative for the generating companies is totally different from what's most beneficial for the customers. The market won't repair itself any time soon, even if all subsidies are abolished, because fixing the problem is not in the participants' interest. Things would work a lot better if the government were willing to buy some of the power stations (including Pelican Point, which I suspect the SA government is now considering buying).

And when did Australia EVER have the world's cheapest electricity? Surely those countries with abundant hydroelectric resources have always been ahead of us? And didn't some of those countries with nuclear power have cheaper electricity than Australia in the late 20th century?

We could and should invest in renewables in a way that brings our cost of electricity down. But that's incompatible with the government's desire to make a commercial rate of return on investment.

Why on earth (pun intended) do we trend to the more expensive, more polluting forms of electricity generation? We are equating convenience with cheapness.
There is not much dispute that two forms of demand exist - base load and peak. Of these, base load is least affected by variables such as weather temperature, wind conditions, and time-of-day use.
Natural resources are cheaply available but may have high cspital utilisation cost whereas coal, natural gas, and oil fired steam boilers are expensive to build, generally in locations close to their energy source which means high cost electricity delivery networks to consumers.
Solar is a natural variable but will be financially more attractive when storage battery cost reduces, and has the advantage of installation exactly where the output is used.
We are not making use of nuclear. Many countries are, and we have ample supplies with lower transportation overheads, albeit the problem of safe disposal of degraded stock after use.
Yet it is a heat source which is on hand, despite also needing power transmission networking unless we can overcome our 'nimby' reaction (pun intended) and install one in each household or community.
Why not?

Renewables do not give us cheaper power prices, reticulated supply that has increased by 106% in just the last ten years!

Look, I could step outside my door, or almost anywhere and fill a one cubic metre box with dirt. Then using very simple gravity separation, and for a cost of around $100.00, separate out around 8 grams of thorium. The most energy dense material in the world!

The energy contained therein, enough to very safely, power my home and car for the next 100 years.

Do the sums, $100.00 to refine the thorium, which needs no enrichment, is less radioactive than a banana, and able to power my house and car for 100 years.

That's just a dollar a year! And it's carbon free!

Moreover, our dirt contains enough to power the planet for a thousand years and thousands more when we begin to mine igneous rock.

Our future and that of our children and their children absolutely dependant on clean, green, cheap energy! And none cheaper, cleaner, greener or safer than tried and proven, Molten salt thorium.

Or free if it's used to consume problematic nuclear waste/bomb making material and plutonium. All while extracting miracle cure nuclear isotopes and while the reactor is running at normal atmospheric pressure! And given the time needed to reprocess all current waste, centuries of virtually free power!

Had this tested and proven, walk away safe system been used in chernobyl or fukushima, they'd still by working away supplying the world's safest, cleanest, cheapest, power!

The word nuclear is used and the abysmally ignorant go into melt down and refuse to look at the overwhelming irrefutable evidence? Without question we need a pragmatic solution! Thorium or something cleaner, cheaper, better?

And resisted to the last breath by the ideologically driven coalition or green controlled and even less pragmatic moribund labor?

Which means they all need to be removed and replaced by patent no nonsense pragmatists! And sadly, they're a little thin on the ground!
Alan B.

You sometimes see negative spot prices on the AEMO homepage but to my recollection never at -$85 per Mwh. That's because wind and large solar can still make a net dollar via the subsidy. That is the direct cost. The indirect cost relates to what I'd call 'emissions not avoided' from thermal plant having to inefficiently throttle back when wind and solar get priority. God help us if we ending up paying thermal plant to remain on standby so we have double subsidies.

Nuclear is cheap enough to power aluminium smelting in countries like the US and Russia that went nuclear in the 1970s. It will be too pricey in Australia probably at over $100 per Mwh. If carbon constraints are imposed the package should include tariffs on carbon intensive imports. It would be bizarre if Australia lost its smelters then 100% imported aluminium products made from our own bauxite/alumina and some electricity from our thermal coal. If we lose the smelters but keep exporting ingredients I'd call that 'value subtracting'.