CJ, & Bugsy, I can see it all now. If you pair had been around 120 years ago you would have taxed the horses, to pump money into academia to reasearch, & develop steam power.

Of course that would have led to the development of the internal combustion engine, I don't think.

Now I know you may prefer that technology had not been developed, but without it we still be delivering goods by horse & cart.

So Hasbeen, which private companies were involved in setting electricity generation and distribution in Australia then?

Certainly many technological developments have been made by private companies, and we should not discourage private enterprise. This does not exclude the use of taxpayer funds for research and development. You appear to be under the impression that if it's government funded it must be academic or some sort of 'in house' thing? Much industrial research is funded by government, but through private industry. The only catch being that it tends to be research that is for the good of the industry involved as a whole. Telecommunications being one such example. The government funds a lot of research there.

Your overgeneralisations are really very tiresome Hasbeen.

Governments cannot do anything? That is utter nonsense.

The wind turbine industry in Denmark was given its start by subsidy. Now with the subsidy long gone the Danes have a healthy wind industry.

We might have had a thriving PV industry in Australia were it not for the opposite and destructive effect of government during Howard's reign. Suntech was born in China, not Australia, but its founder was educated and trained in Sydney. I am not so sure that this "homegrown" model still obtains. Nokia did it in Finland but I doubt that the phones themselves are made there.

Examinator - unfunded (hidden/ignored) costs/liabilities of coal generated electricity.
Ah the notional, unprovable and thus perfect strawman contender for the spurious intellectualisation of commerce

The point is you are promoting a hypothesis.

And the market for hypotheses is very much over supplied relative to demand,
I
n fact it is a bit like trying to sell people an extra backside.... when a consumer has one or their own they do not need another.

When you can produce a tangible measure of real cost it sill be part of the negotiated cost of coal and cost or wind energy.

Until then you are trying to promote what remains just a figment of a greenies imagination , which, in market terms is not worth a thing.

On a commercial basis every real benefit introduced has succeeded on the basis that it has been accompanied reduced consumer cost or enhanced consumer benefit and where the consumer makes an independent choice.

That wind farms cannot pay their way and need subsidy from commercially competitive coal burning power stations is to declare them sub-economic and unable to justify their existence.

Mind you a sub-economic notions are the usual stuff and can be expected as a natural component of moronic collectivist political whimsy

renew, re Danish wind industry... if the process was so advantageous and able to justify itself by producing an economic return, they would not have needed no government subsidy but been able to sell their idea into any venture capital market who are always hungry for suitable investments. That they needed subsidy just shows they are founded on a fraud

Renew, with the Denmark wind power industry, you could not have picked a better example of the catastrophes that follow, when governments get involved in things they have no understanding of.
Wind power in Denmark is a total failure, for the Danes, all though Sweden does OK out of that failure.

Yes Bugsy, governments can get into an industry, after it has been proven by private industry. They can also overman those industries by a factor of 3. They can also do a brilliant job of it, just like the Queensland, NSW & Victorian power industries, & Telecom, before privatisation.

To use Hasbeens transport example, cars are useless without enabling technologies and infrastructure, eg. roads. Private enterprise does not self-fund research into road building either, it gets paid for by the taxpayers.

Theorectically, how does road maintenance get funded? By a tax on petrol of course. I say theoretically, because I suspect the tax on petrol is often use to blanalnce the books elsewhere.

Industry needs to see a recurring revenue stream and does not invest massive amounts of capital without it. The problem that we always face is that established revenue streams tend to be protected by the industries that have them.

The gas industry initially resisted electricity saying it was expensive and unsafe and cost too much to install. And it goes on....

The use of tax advantages and public and private investment has a long history of successful implementation with energy type projects and policies. I don;t see why it couldn't do so in the future.