Crap.
Max Green,
Prove it !

More ugly, unreliable wind turbines to blight the horizon off the Victorian coast. 250 of them - maybe. The media can't get the distance from land right - 10km or 25km - so who knows.

For people who claim to love the environment, climate hysterics sure don't care about its appearance, nor about the millions of trees (in Europe mainly) that have been ripped out to make way for turbines and glittery solar panels. And, I shudder to think of what the vandals will do to the countryside with all the pylons and wires they intend run all over the place not only ruining the environment, but also good farmland.

And to think that one day, we are going to have to pay to have all these eyesores decommissioned just like North Sea oil rigs. That has already started in Europe - wind 'farms' being dug up to get at the coal underneath them.

Hi Max,

No worries. As many are trying to point out (I hope you read Luciferase's link to the Quadrant article), renewables are more costly and less reliable than the glossy brochures tell you. I hope pumped hydro works out, and if it lasts a hundred years it might get quite cheap. Like many here I am completely flummoxed by the adoption of unproven generation and supply technology for a national grid.

Hi Fester,
do you believe in free markets? Why should coal get the biggest subsidies of them all - especially when it costs our health services $6 billion a year ON TOP of the electricity price?

Why should we use coal when a La Nina rain storm can flood a coal mine and put it out of business for a season? Why should we use this dirty energy resource when we've got cleaner, less polluting ones? Have you ever heard Freakonomics about the cost of pollution on our BRAINS?

Seriously - we owe coal some gratitude for giving us the Industrial Revolution. But I wish it had peaked and started to decline in the 1950's and then we wouldn't have climate change. Then we would be 100% nuclear by now - and maybe seeing whether renewables + storage could compete with nuclear. It would be clean vs clean.

But how you can feel nostalgic about something so old fashioned and polluting when we have better just amazes me.

IF new GenIV breeder reactors arrive that are actually commercially competitive with WWS, then I'll be equally happy to support them. I just don't see it happening, as wind and solar continue to drop in price! Solar is now the cheapest form of power EVER - even with backup. I know you deny this but don't care - you people just assert what ever you want and sometimes can't even read your own source material!

But solar + backup might even be able to compete with wind soon. It's that cheap - and various super-cheap grid storage systems - whether chemical or flow or thermal - are all on the way. They might even give PHES a run for it's money! We will see.

"various super-cheap grid storage systems - whether chemical or flow or thermal - are all on the way".

Yep, & just like nuclear fission, these "various super-cheap grid storage systems - whether chemical or flow or thermal - are all on the way", just another 10 years, & they will be just another 10 years, OR SO.

Commercial fusion will be here while affordable storage will remain a dream. Why must we wait for Gen4, btw. Koreans are building Gen3 affordably and on time.