The article is good in one sense in that it is a roundabout acknowledgement of the major limitations of renewable technology. Even when, say, a wind turbine is working at full capacity the electricity networks still have to back it up with conventional power - that is, have a gas turbine spinning away in the background - at perhaps 80 per cent of the wind turbine's output, simply because they have no idea when the wind will change.
The only known way of storing power on the scale required to offset that problem is a pumped hydro facility - basically a dam and hydro electricy facility with a lake below it. Water can be pumped up to the dam when the wind is blowing then let out when it fails.
All the rest of the technologies mentioned in the article are either pie in the sky, or fantastically expensive, or both. Litium-ion batteries in each home, big enough to make a difference to domestic power needs? Another set of Lithium batteries in the family car which should be recharging every day, rather than adding to national power net?
Further, nothing has been set up, and there are no studies to indicate the effectiveness of all this. Its straight speculation. Meanwhile we are going to be locked into a bizarre policy of mandating that 20 per cent of our power must come from renewables by 2020. Govenrment policy is renewables is expensive and will do next to nothing to reduce emissions. It is madness.

It is not madness when we run out of oil and the coal reserves are not as high as people think.

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Peter A - have you got a big enough food supply for when the Oil runs out?

The site assumes that nothing new will be found, It dismisses Nuclear power as only dependent on Uranium, what about Thorium, what about reusing radioactive waste?

Instead of using all the taxes raised by CPRS to fund stopping CO2, which by that websites reckoning doesn't matter anyway, we use the money to develop better nuclear facilities.

I personally blame the green movement and their shrill alarmism in the 70s for the AGW we have today as they essentially left us with no alternative but coal power. (sarc of course, I don't believe in the "A" of AGW, though happily accept GW)

I am still waiting for them to admit they were wrong and apologise for that, and to ensure us that this time, the world really will end.

OK, enough frivolity, I note the site pushes emergency freeze dried food, (up to two years use by date too!), isn't it interesting that there is always someone ready to help out regardless of the circumstances? In this case it's US survivalists, also called extremists by some and to call them quirky is a kindness.

We would still need new batteries with nuclear power, but don't need a new source of base power, so pumping water from lake to reservoir is unnecessary.

If we had listened more closely to the green movement in the 70s (actually the 60s) then perhaps we would not be in the mess we are in now. Overpopulation, environmental degradation, River Murray problems etc.

There are no commercial plants to use nuclear waste or thorium.

Where is all the uranium to come from to supply all the generators needed with present day designs. And if we had built plants in the 70's then we would now be close to peak uranium as well as oil.

Nuclear waste disposal has still not been solved, UK still has no depositary neither has the USA.

Pumping water is a problem as we have already used most suitable sites for building dams on and water is used/allocated for other purposes - drinking, irrigation.

Peter A. - sorry but nope to all of those concerns. To forecast an end to energy reserves of all kinds requires ignoring a lot of history. The size of coal reserves, for example, is more likely to vary with price than with use, and that is just one of the many, many, problems with this form of doomsaying.
As for overpopulation.. okay, house prices in Sydney are high but does that count as overpopulation?
In any case, even if the doomsaying is correct, wind energy will simply make no difference, as it is largely ineffective. Wind towers will only be useful if (and its a big if) we becoming truly desperate. Until then they remain a sop to green voters. They exist to make them think the government is doing something..

Taswegian,
Isn't king Island soon going to be powered by wind backed up by thermal graphite blocks? Use excess electricity to store as heat in the thermal graphite block and then release to drive a steam-turbine later on. Cheaper than diesel.

These blocks are even better for solar thermal as the BLOCK sits up the top of the tower, storing the sun's heat directly meaning the storage is part of the normal process anyway! Far more efficient than "draining off" some liquid salt (which by the way is also another great way to store the suns heat).

http://www.lloydenergy.com/heatstorage.htm

RPG, you haven't read widely enough, speak to some energy economists. Wind IS coming down. Coal could peak in 2025, driving up coal prices worldwide. The concerns about Co2 mean we have been pursuing alternatives that are clean and green LONG before we would have because of fears of depletion, because depletion actually hits FAR earlier than the average Aussie realises — not when it "runs out" but when it peaks, or half way through the stuff! So grow up and apologize to us for trying to push the most expensive form of electricity ever invented, nuclear! Also, you seem to have chosen the MOST expensive of the expensive...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_breeder_reactor

[quote]The breeding of plutonium fuel in FBRs, known as the plutonium economy, was for a time believed to be the future of nuclear power. It remains the strategic direction of the power program of Japan. However, cheap supplies of 'off the shelf' uranium and especially of enriched uranium have made current FBR technology uncompetitive with PWR and other thermal reactor designs. PWR designs remain the most common existing power reactor type and also represent most current proposals for new nuclear power stations.[/quote]

Cheaper nuclear may be on the way, but it will take some serious time. We don’t have that time! Solar thermal with backup and wind will be orders of magnitude cheaper by the time nuclear is “reasonable”, if ever!

Nuclear's ONLY future is in space.