The talk is of 10,000 to 40,000 km of new power lines to usher in the 'clean energy revolution'. If you put a small nuclear reactor at a former coal station use the existing power lines not to mention skilled employees i.e. no new power lines. The above ground pylon mounted lines might cost $1m per kilometre, underground several times that. Then there may be restrictions on farming activity and pipe laying. Ditto for underwater cable which may have to ban trawling in the area.

Hyper-connection won't entirely solve the intermittency problem of renewables. Windless or cloudy region B may look to region A to send them power, but A may want it for themselves. Perhaps all regions should have double the number of windmills and solar panels. Combined with the new power lines it will alter the appearance of the countryside. We'll end up paying double, both cash and loss of visual amenity.

The countryside is certainly being ruined by the abominable windmills and glittery solar panels; the latter are being bulldozed in Germany so that the coal under them can be accessed.

Wind turbines are the single-use plastic bags of the renewables industry. The only reason we don’t talk about how awful they are more often is because their reputation is protected by an axis of social media, political egos, and billionaire investors.

Two million of the things will be ripped out and put into landfill every year.

Solar panels will also be a nuisance, not worth recycling for the $8.15s worth of reusable material in them.

Just wait until 28,000 kms of ugly pylons and cables ruin the beautiful NSW countryside and take productive land off farmers.

All this craziness to make a few rich people richer.

Quite an appropriate post, for Eight Billion Day.

The UN invented this "transition to Net Zero" guff, to distract from the African population bomb. "Net Zero" suits Albanese too. A virtue-signalling distraction, from his own massive population-growth program.

Mugged by Russian reality, Germany is razing a wind-farm, for a lignite coal-mine. Meanwhile, Queensland's razing virgin bush, for wind-farms

Right. It is "Not Green At All". It is "a failure of concept, buoyed by trillions of dollars in public money and the artificial destruction of its market competitors", according to one commentator.

And what could have been the saviour from Green lunacy, the Liberal Party, has turned out to be "gutless, spineless and soulless"; just like all Australian politicians these days, more interested in shaking all the right hands at the UN than they are in taking care of Australia

Agree with most of this, Viv.

Bird chopping wind turbines need to turn for thirty years just to offset the carbon created in their manufacture.

Solar voltaic comes with, before and after mountains of toxic waste and wild fish stocks heavily contaminated with mercury and other toxic metals. Even then solar voltaic has a useful optimal commercial life of just 25 years or less.

Back them with batteries and or pumped hydro and any worthwhile cost benefit analysis, will ensure all manufacture, value adding food production and processing heads with alacrity, offshore!

If one wants truly green energy that doesn't come with a failed state, banana republic status.

There's only one candidate and that is MSR thorium, connected to clingwrap thin road underlays of the superconductor, graphene. Which is 200 times stronger than steel!

SMR MSRs can be sited where we now place transformer stations and connect same to microgrids to eliminate most of the transmission and distribution losses which together make a combined total of 75% currently. And the mug consumer pays for those losses in the energy bill.

Electric cars would also make sense and cost dramatically less to charge with such a (adults in the room in charge) system.
Alan B.

Why do these looney tune, imbecilic stupidity personified, get these taxpayer funded, economy killing energy policies on the table?

Because where are shackled with democracy destroying preferential voting coupled to dirty deals done in the dead of night preference swaps with the devil.

If preferences were once again optional Labor would govern indefinitely. Make one wonder why labor doesn't use legislation or regulation to make the above suggestion a reality.

No adults in the room perhaps or a case where the inmates have taken over and are now running the asylum.
Alan B.

A list of problems.
Putting power lines, ie local power lines, not grid lines, underground
seems linke a good idea but in a storm falling trees rip them out of the ground.
The repair would take much longer.
A figure for the proposed solar farm installations was given as 22,000
solar panels would be installed every day for 8 years to meet the
Labour Party's program for 2030. Just to generate for six hours a day.
Of course another team of maintenance people would follow along
replacing those that fail.
I did hear but have forgotten what the number of wind turbines have
to be installed every day. I think it was in the hundreds or was it thousands a day.

I have always said that the greens and Labour who proposed this scheme were stupid;
BUT THEY REALLY ARE STUPID !

On the other hand, the fraction of Australia required for 100% solar is tiny - and no one is suggesting 100% solar but a mix of solar and wind.
The ANU have modelled it and YES they are suggesting a super-grid from Queensland down to Sydney and Melbourne, across to Adelaide and then to Perth. The meme "They're wrecking the countryside!" is a bit rich from people who boost coal. If you REALLY want to see the country wrecked, go out to our biggest coal mines and see what's happening! Go to our hospitals, where a good chunk of the health bill is treating our pollution victims.

Otherwise, we'll have a few solar farms (in the right ecological spots not endangering anything), a few wind turbines (away from migratory lanes and any endangered birds) and a few transmission lines. And home-grown CLEAN renewable energy that doesn't poison our population, is immune to global gas price surges, and yes - is MORE RELIABLE than today's grid because of all the extra interconnectors and hydro-plants. Remember, solar farms generate half their energy in the cloud. Not zero. Half. Some energy. If we overbuild solar farms for La Nina as the ANU staff behind the CSIRO report recommend, we'll be OK.

$100 billion to clean our grid and / or think of it as $12 billion per year from here to 2050 to clean up our grid AND replace oil!

https://reneweconomy.com.au/for-100-billion-australia-could-have-a-low-cost-and-reliable-zero-emissions-grid/

Alan B,
I think you need to double check your 'factoid' about wind. The EROI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) is much higher these days. Wind turbines are only meant to have an expected lifetime of 25 years - but the latest figures show some wind having EROI's higher than that - suggesting that they repay the energy cost of making them earlier than their first year. I'm aware of Weisbach's studies but they're in Germany where solar isn't as good, and his studies are a bit old these days. Wind turbines are HUGE today - adding exponentially more power.

"Data collected in 2018 found that the EROI of operational wind turbines averaged 19.8 with high variability depending on wind conditions and wind turbine size.[12] EROIs tend to be higher for recent wind turbines compared to older technology wind turbines. Vestas reports an EROI of 31 for its V150 model wind turbine.[13]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Wind_turbines

Wind is the cheapest form of renewable energy. An EROEI of 31 means it can not only rebuild itself 31 times over, it can also energetically 'pay' for its own storage, in that it is so abundant it can build hydro dams which last 100 years. Given the dams will last on average 4 times longer than the wind turbines, that means 3 generations of wind don't have to energetically pay for their storage. So their EROEI will still be 31, but they won't have any ESOI (storage) costs to factor in.

You know, I think Max Green might actually believe some of the tripe he is posting here.

The power of indoctrination must be even grater than I realised, or could it be that his income depends on him believing this garbage?

"Already there is a petition circulating in Australia calling for ugly destructive power lines to be put underground to save farms, forests, wildlife and scenery."

Yes and how much is that going to cost?
Price estimates in CO2 please...

When I was running the marine division of Telford I became very friendly with the engineer running the power house & other infrastructure of South Mole Island. The power system of the island was underground. I spent some time on the island.

In winter after rain he would come & collect me for a patrol of the island at first light. We would basically follow the rather poor map of the underground system looking for steam rising from the sandy ground. This indicated hot areas where the mains were leaking power due to damage to the insulation, or in some cases from very poorly constructed junctions.

He had no idea what was degrading the system, but the loss of power was an expense he could do with out.

I live in a 3 kilometer long dead end country road. My end of the road
about 1.5K long has larger properties with an old over head power system. Despite many large trees we have little trouble with the local supply. The first 1.5K is a new development of 4000 Sq meter to 1 hectare blocks, with "modern" underground power only 5 years old. They have continual problems with their local power supply.

Why the hell do some people want to fix that which is not broken.

Wireless nuclear power ! Problem solved ;-)

Stop saying nonsense! Boredom solved

YES!

"In a historic ruling today, a Queensland court has said the massive Clive Palmer-owned Galilee Basin coal project should not go ahead because of its contribution to climate change, its environmental impacts, and because it would erode human rights.

The case was mounted in 2020 by a First Nations-led group of young people aged 13 to 30 called Youth Verdict. It was the first time human rights arguments were used in a climate change case in Australia.

The link between human rights and climate change is being increasingly recognised overseas. In September this year, for example, a United Nations committee decided that by failing to adequately address the climate crisis, Australia’s Coalition government violated the human rights of Torres Strait Islanders.

Youth Verdict’s success today builds on this momentum. It heralds a new era for climate change cases in Australia by youth activists, who have been frustrated with the absence of meaningful federal government policy."
http://theconversation.com/this-case-has-made-legal-history-young-australians-just-won-a-human-rights-case-against-an-enormous-coal-mine-195350