As most of you know, I'm not the brightest star in the sky! However, to me, there's one word that should govern our power policy, that's 'reliability.' To my way of thinking, it's either clean coal-fired generation or (dare I say it) nuclear generation. Anything else does not provide the necessary reliability that we all need.

If people wish to seek a more 'natural' ways to generate power - wind, sun, waves or whatever, that's fine, as long as it doesn't violate the 'reliability' policy. Perhaps one day they'll be able to refine more natural ways to generate power, reliably. Until then, it's either coal and/or nuclear to provide that power.

"With roof top solar panels with the Government annual subsidy given, it could have built a Nuclear power station".

Or a dozen efficient coal-powered stations.

o sung wu,

Yes. If it isn't reliable, it doesn't matter how clean it is.

Spot on TTBN - The operative word is reliability. For our personal use, the community, and of course business and industry. After all aren't we a first world country? Surely then, we should be setting an example of how to maintain reliable power for all those Nations not as advanced as us when it comes to supplying - constant, uninterrupted & reliable energy.

o sung wu,
You are wrongly assuming coal fired power to be reliable. I refer you to:
http://reneweconomy.com.au/coal-power-plants-in-australia-broke-down-once-every-three-days-in-2018-2018/

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Josephus,
The amount of energy our planet gets from the sun does indeed vary. But if that were the only source of climate change, our planet would have been cooling for a few decades.

And you greatly underestimate the cost of a nuclear power station...

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ttbn,
...as do you with coal fired!

Georgetown, Texas is 100% renewables in the same way as Canberra: net not gross. Its mayor is a Tea Party Republican, so he may well double as village idiot. But he made a commercial decision to go with renewables because he wanted certainty about prices.

I'm puzzled as to your reference to Trump lifting the ban on fracking, as there was no such ban; it's always been a state issue, and Texas allowed it during the Obama years, and as a result of that (and export restrictions) has had cheap gas and cheap electricity. There have been a few changes under Trump, making more federal land available for drilling, but looking at http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3035tx3m.htm there does not appear to be any great reduction in prices in the Trump era.

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Armchair,
Global taxes on pollution would be a good thing, alas there's practically no chance of us getting it.
Sovereignty does not require sealed borders!
Global government would be a good thing, as long as its scope is strictly limited.
The New World Order conspiracy theorists fail to understand that the prophecies of Revelation will not be the result of human efforts.

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Individual,
Nobody's claiming global cooling. Even when people with a poor understanding of statistics said the warming had stopped, they didn't claim it had been replaced by cooling.

Variability is something that needs to be coped with anyway. And the environmental cost of manufacturing wind turbines and solar panels is insignificant compared to their output.

The quickest way to get reliable power is to undertake a program of
refurbishment, repair and replacement.
Maintenance has been neglected because the priority given to wind/solar
has taken away the stations profit and directly caused the closure of
Hazlewood power station and others such as Liddel are suffering from
the same problem.
I am advised that a crash maintenance program, which will need considerable
money and more staff can improve output and reliability faster and
quicker than building new. Quicker is a major priority !
My friend commented that he could not see why they could not be kept
running for a hundred years.

Aidan,
I didn't say warming has been REPLACED by cooling. I'm saying that presently there is warming AND cooling.
Cooling is not far off being the new fad for funding rorts. Anything that we are unable to control yet claim to be able to by funding, is a rort, scientific or not.