JBowyer,

"Aiden probably our greatest problem in the world is the fact that Government have decided to dud all the savers."
That's not the greatest problem in the world, as it only adversely affects those fortunate enough to already have money, and the adverse effect on them is trivial compared with problems like pollution. I wouldn't rank it in the top ten problems, and were it not for the government's proposed Super changes, I wouldn't even rank it in the top hundred in Australia. Indeed globally there are thousands of much bigger problems. Usury is not a human right!

However, if you do consider low rates of return for savers to be a big problem, the solution is for the government to run a much bigger deficit. The economy needs stimulating (otherwise we'll go into recession and all be worse off) and we have a choice between a fiscal stimulus and a monetary stimulus (or both). But be aware that if our interest rates remain significantly higher than those of other countries, we'll also need to start a sovereign wealth fund to stop speculators pushing our dollar to unsustainably high levels.

"Interest rates are as low as they have ever been and there is abundant money so saying low cost finance is needed is a nonsense. You mean no cost finance, free money, well good luck with that."
No, I mean what I say. Solar thermal is, according to its promotors, economically viable with a rate below 4%. But commercially it's unable to get the finance that cheap.

"Our greatest problem is the dishonesty involved in these green schemes and finance."
Make your mind up!

I think the problem of dishonesty involved in the fossil fuel industry's far greater.

"Next time the world cannot trust itself to pay it's debts we will really be up against it. Lending Billions for school halls will not save us again. In fact it did not save us last time we are still deeply in trouble."
The main reason they went with the school halls scheme was because other infrastructure projects weren't shovel ready...(tbc)

JBowyer (continued)
...They set up Infrastructure Australia to avoid us having that problem again. Meanwhile the Rudd government's stimulus did keep us out of recession, though the recovery was subsequently damaged with an unnecessary interest rate rise and then the attempt to rush to surplus.

"Rudd the idiot is now posturing as some overpaid multi millionaire UN man, not just disgusting but pathetic!"
Neither disgusting nor pathetic, but he won't get the job.

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Bazz,

What we have now is NOT 100% reliability. Those who say the cost of 100% reliability is infinite mean that it would need infinite levels of redundancy to reach exactly 100%.

How fast we can get the money together is not the limiting factor for how many nuclear plants we can build.

Rationing coal is not the answer. There's no shortage of coal, but for environmental reasons we need to leave most of it in the ground. I look forward to the day when coal is only used for scientific, educational and cultural purposes instead of being burned to produce electricity that could easily be provided some other way.

We've only become significantly reliant on solar and wind in the 21st century. It is far too early to dismiss them based on the pathetic amount of infrastructure we currently have.

The real question is not "will it work?" but "how do we make it work?"

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CHERFUL,

Your dislike of windmills is entirely subjective, and most people find the visual effects of mining and burning coal to be far worse.

But the pollution from coal is also objective, with measurable declines in air quality, resulting in an increase in respiratory illness. Plus there's the CO2 pollution adversely impacting the climate.

Aidan,

Your comments are the ones that are pure unsupported conjecture.

The second biggest problem for renewables is that the capital cost is huge, and the recovery cost per kWhr for the 20yr life of the project is also high. Unless the capital cost is written off, the plant requires a hugely subsidised feed in tariff.

The most expensive is the molten salt solar thermal (which I challenge you to compare the costs against coal) and in spite of its massive cost still needs gas back up.

The biggest problem is still its unreliability, so that one not only has the cost of the renewables plant, but the cost of the back up too.

SM, the problem politically seems to be that the politicians do not
seem to understand that the backup has to be capable of 100% of the
countries load. It WILL happen that all storage, no matter how big,
will be exhausted at some time.
When it happens you can be sure it will happen at the very worse time.
So it means that we have to build an energy regime twice the size
that is currently being planned.
The difficulty is if they take the risk the system WILL fail at
2PM one hot overcast windless 2nd day in a row.
How many lifts are there in Sydney ?
I can tell you that there is nowhere enough lift mechanics to get
everyone out and walking home by dark. Remember they have to walk
up the number of floors plus one.
If it causes a system collapse like they had in the US people would
be in their lift for a couple of days.
Well that is one problem, what is the next one ?

Aiden you and I will just have to disagree.
If Solar or wind was economic there would be a line of companies doing it.
Nothing is ever said about tide power because it is just not trendy enough for all the usual suspects but that is a horse of a completely different colour lol.

Hasbeen,

Everyone knows the capital cost of solar and wind power is high. But you seem to be making the extraordinary claim that it's so high that selling the electricity it generates at the normal wholesale price, the operating profit over twenty years would not even cover the infrastructure cost.

Have I understood your position correctly?
If so, what evidence do you base it on?

The cost of the backup is trivial, particularly with solar thermal where it can be incorporated into the design of solar thermal infrastructure for much less than it would otherwise cost to provide that capacity.

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Bazz,

The figure wouldn't quite be 100%, as this is a big country; the winds always blowing somewhere. But yes, it would certainly have to be a high proportion of the demand. That's fairly well understood and it's not a particularly big problem; the backup infrastructure is relatively cheap and much of it's already there.

There's also a huge potential for demand management; that happens already with some heavy users of electricity curtailing their use at times when demand is high and supply low, but there is potential for much more of it, particularly if more heavy industry is electrically powered and if consumers are given access to the wholesale electricity market.

But even if our backup is inadequate and demand management fails, the catastrophic scenario you predict would not eventuate. Instead they'd just resort to load shedding (rolling blackouts). Highly undesirable, of course, but the system would not collapse.

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JBowyer,

We never have to agree to disagree. I can be swayed by logic and I hope you can too.

Unfortunately I think you overestimate the efficiency of the market. Marginally profitable investments are unlikely to attract a line of companies, and it can be hard to get regulatory approval for wind turbines. Having said that, have you looked at the rooftop solar industry lately?

Tide power has very few environmentally acceptable locations available.