So doog, if they just shut down the coal fired stations without
replacing their output how do you propose keeping the lights on ?
Forget gas turbines, no future gas to run them on anyway.

A couple of facts; ERoEI of world coal now down to approx 10.
Australia is lucky with coal. So can continue longer than others.
Longer term nuclear only possible answer, but can we afford to build
a fleet of nuclear stations all round the country. Probably not.
We could perhaps afford it if we agreed to store the world's waste.

Fundamental problem, you cannot build a renewable power system using
renewable energy. It cannot bootstrap itself.

The republic, same-sex marriage and Indigenous recognition are all causes in which Malcolm Turnbull believes — yet each remains out of his reach,
As I said there is more efficient types of boilers around these days. We have not built a boiler for generation for donkey’s years.
Renewable can and will do the job nicely, Those regulatory turbines run on Kerosene. A bloke sits there all day outguessing the demand for power continually pushing buttons. They fire up instantly.
You need a little more faith in wind and solar or wave and hydro. Anyone without solar on their roof has got rocks in their head.
The site where the atomic bombs were tested are off limits, build a bunker there and store nuke waste. Along the line someone will come up with a use for that stuff and we will have the lot. It is only sticks stuck in mud that is the hold up.
The current government is a hold up as they love pollution, they dream pollution, there is a lot of money in it. They are corrupted.

I gather you are a tribal voter doog and your tribe is the ALP or some LW Progressive Party, I mean you do spout their rhetoric constantly.
Were you a Turnbull fan that has become disappointed in your choice of leader?

Sorry for you but if there's a party he should be leading its the ALP... we don't need an ALP and a pseudo ALP. Some of us like to have a choice.

Turnbull leads what is ostensibly a Conservative Coalition... he must... in order to remain Leader address issues and concerns from that side of politics even if he is a WET. That is not being a Jelliback, that is pragmatism.

Doog, you are living in fantasy land if you think that renewables
can do the job.
I will bet you are basing that idea on the belief that they can run for one day.
However you have to decide on how many overcast, windless days there
might be in a row. To cope with that you need n+1 times the renewables
needed for one day where n = the number of continuous no generation days.
In the first sunny day you have to recharge enough for n days plus the first sunny day.
To achieve reliability like we have now will need close to infinity dollars.
I have counted five such days in a row here, but there could easily
be ten such days, or eleven ? Who knows.

Re the gas turbines, and where do you think we get the kero from ?
We just don't turn a tap on, we just hope the Singapore, Korean
and the Taiwanese refineries can/want/will be allowed to sell it to us.
It is mad enough that we risk our road transport that way but to put
our electricity at that risk would be utter madness.

South Australia has made itself the prime example of how not to handle renewable power. With power costs nearly 3x that of Victoria, and frequent power failures, Jay (Prince of darkness) Weatherill is now throwing $ms at previously closed plants to be on standby.

The NBN has saved about $20bn by running FTTN, which has proven prudent because only 1O% of customers are taking up the 100Mb/s speeds.

Even Germany is building coal power stations because renewables can't cut it. So I don't know why the Prince of Darkness (AKA Jay W) thinks otherwise?