The big elephant in the corner is the multiplication of wind farms and
solar farms that have to be installed to guarantee 100% supply 100% of the time.
By 100% time I mean the normal that is acheived, say 99.9% or better.
What it means is that if the peak power demand in a year is 100 Gwatts
Then if you install enough wind and solar to supply 100Gwatt on a sunny
windy midday then you have to duplicate it a number of times to meet
the guarantee o 99.9% availability.
The big argument is what is that figure ?
The only guess I have seen is 12 times !
That seems excessive and the CSIRO study did not help.
I believe the figure is inversely proportional to expotentional geographical size of the grid.

Germany found out it was too small.
Is everything east of the WA border big enough ?
The proponents push batteries but they add large dollars to the cost.
However more generation has to be added so they can be recharged at any
inconvenient time.

The ultimate quest is can we afford it, it turns out to be a very
expensive way to generate electricity ?

Bazz,

Get up to date with your information.

All you have to ask when Googling is -

Are renewables cheaper than fossil fuels?

Fossil fuel plants are costly to maintain
and are closing down. Renewables are becoming
cheaper with new technology and they are our future.

Somehow we have to impress on China that we will not be intimidated by
the tactics they have employed. We must demonstrate by reactivating
industries that will quickest to crank up and show China that we really
do not need anybody else to be able to lead the good life.
We need to show them that if they do not want our food then we will
eat it ourselves or sell it to someone else, or grow something else.
Same with coal or iron ore. Plenty of other countries wanting to climb
the ladder of industry.
A country wanting to establish an industry, we could provide them with
the technical expertise to get it up and running if they use our feedstock.

Now back to the topic of the trade war with China.

The Australian Financial Review, May 12th 2020,
tells us that Australia is not blameless in the
current trade war with China.

We're told that "Australia has been imposing hefty
duties on Chinese steel, aluminium and chemicals for
much of the past decade. Apparently China reminded
Australia of its international obligations and said
Canberra should take the "China-Australia bi-lateral
economic relationship into consideration.

This indicates that Canberra hs been on notice for the
last six years that Beijing was unhappy with its
trade posture and may look to retaliate.

Australia ignored this unusually clear message from
Beijing and continued to impose hefty duties on Chinese
steel, aluminium and chemical imports even as -
the Productivity Commission said there was -
"no convincing justifications for the measure."

More grating for the Chinese perhaps was that Australian
Ministers continued to travel the world lecturing others
on free trade, while quietly erecting sizeable tariff
barriers at home. For steel pipes imported from China
those tariffs are currently as high as 144 per cent.

And there's so much more at the following link:

http://www.afr.companies/agriculture/australia-is-not-blameless-in-china-trade-war-20200512-p54sax

My apologies for the typo. Here's the link again:

http://www.afr.com/companies/agriculture/australia-is-not-blameless-in-china-trade-war-20200512-p54sax

'Get up to date with your information.'

Yes Foxy ask Michael Moore, Renewables need fossil fuels and massive subsidies to run. Prices for power continue to explode thanks to renewables.