Dear mhaze,

You claim without basis as usual that: "Pretty much every government since then has tried to reconcile the electorates desire for cheap, reliable, 'green' power, with reality. They've failed."

The move to home solar panels and energy smart appliances has reduced the average energy consumption per household be about 20% in the last 15 years. This has been purely as a result of government subsidies.

Leaving aside foreign owned operators of our gas and coal stations rorting the hell out of the energy market it has worked, it continues to work, and will do so into the future.

It looks like we are in for a long high inflation and a period of
very high debt which will restrict the whole infrastructure of our
countries. To add into this regular failures of electrical supply
and its effect on industry could cause a total meltdown of the economy.
It could even get to mimic Lebanon, I do believe it is that serious.

It has been clearly shown that privatising electrical power generation reduces prices and improves reliability.

shadow,
>It has been clearly shown that privatising electrical power generation reduces prices and improves reliability.
That's what was clearly shown in Victoria, yet the exact opposite was clearly shown in SA. So rather than make sweeping statements, isn't it better to look at the circumstances that caused the prices to change?

Aidan,

The opposite was not shown in SA. The closing of the coal generation was the tipping point. It meant that SA was dependent on coal-generated power from Vic.

TTBN demonstrates their complete ignorance of the globalised energy system we live in, and the international trade commitments and contracts we have signed. It's almost too painful to watch - almost. (Winks ha ha!)

Seriously, a DROUGHT of all things in Brazil has increased global gas prices. How? Brazil relies on hydro power, and the lack of water has increased their demand on gas. Australian floods have done something similar - flooding some of our coal mines. Who said climate change can't hurt the economy?

Meanwhile, Europe has finally learned not to rely on Russian gas and is getting more serious about their climate obligations. They're going to massively increase their offshore wind capacity (while also creating and protecting marine parks where there will be no fishing or wind turbines.) Global maps of potential off-river PHES (Pumped Hydro Electric Storage) show that Europe has many orders of magnitude more potential sites for economically storing wind for days when it might be quiet. For bad seasons? Don't store energy - overbuild the renewables to cope! With LCEO of Wind and Solar showing them to be 1/4 the price of nuclear - we can afford to do this!