Green Power just generates Red Ink

Cartoon by Nicholson.

By: Viv Forbes, 
Chairman,

The Carbon Sense Coalition. 


Email: Info@carbon-sense.com

The Carbon Sense Coalition has called for an end to all subsidies, mandated markets and sweetheart pricing for solar and wind energy.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that current energy policies were harming the existing power industry and robbing taxpayers and electricity consumers.

Forbes continued:
 "It's time to end the mollycoddling of wind and solar energy toys before this stupidity does irreversible damage to Australia’s electricity supply and costs.

"The mindless green dream of producing serious base load power from whimsical breezes and intermittent sunbeams has caused a halt to new low-cost coal power, a boom in expensive gas power, a national debate about nuclear power and has had no effect at all on global climate.

"The frivolous wind and solar generators already installed have caused a surge in electricity prices, a bonanza for Chinese manufacturers and well founded doubts about our future ability to keep the lights on.

"Transmission costs are also ignored or under-estimated by green disciples. Because wind and solar are dilute forms of energy, often best developed in remote locations, collectors must sprawl over large areas of land, with each collector needing expensive new power lines to connect to the grid.

"Provision of cheap reliable energy is a basic requirement for modern civilisation and is the engine that lifts people from poverty. It is far too important to be left to green dreamers, anti-industrial zealots, vote seeking politicians, engineering illiterates and guilt-ridden millionaires.

"It is already obvious from Denmark, Spain, California and Germany that subsidising green power creates very little power but much red ink in the accounts. It always causes massive burdens for tax payers, electricity consumers and industry. Tax payers and investors will rue the day they allowed politicians to waste their savings on chimeras.

"Get rid of all the mandated markets, subsidies and tax breaks for all energy generators, and leave power engineers and business managers to work out how best to supply our future energy needs in a free competitive market.

"Subsidised power must collapse under its own dead weight. But every day's delay increases the eventual cost. "

More Info:

The Green Energy Collapse:


Creating Green Jobs, in China:

The German Experience:

Some Uncomfortable truths on wind power and those promoting them:

How to Freeze in the Dark when the wind drops in Scotland:

Wind for the Birds – a comment on wind capabilities, written 30 years ago, but the physics of wind has not changed:

The Critical Problem for Wind & Solar –

Low Energy Density

"The low energy density explains why wind and solar plants require massive collecting areas. This means that wind and solar do not lend themselves to economies of scale. This diluteness factor guarantees diseconomies of scale would quickly kick in.

"There is no way technology can overcome this problem."

Gerard Jackson, Economics Editor BrookesNews.

U.K. Carbon reduction scheme explained:


For Australia instead of "6 and a half pints", read "one teaspoonful".

And a glimpse of the future:

What Happened at Cancun?

Here is a sobering report from Christopher Monckton on what they have planned:

But the world press is no longer swallowing the scare stories:


The concerned delegates call for rationing (for everyone else):

And what middle America thinks about global warming: "This is madness":

The Carbon Tax is Back.

Every day we are told that unless we provide "certainty" and levy another tax on carbon we risk electricity blackouts.

They have it backwards. Taxes and the threat of taxes always depress production of the goods or services being taxed. It is the fear of a carbon tax that has frozen the electricity industry and increased the risks of blackouts.

Their continual threats to introduce new carbon taxes ensure that no investors will build a new coal power station in Australia. And they have created fear in financiers who have backed some existing older facilities. They will be unable to finance expansions or upgrades.

Fear of a carbon tax is also a deterrent to new gas fired power stations (gas produces the same two harmless "greenhouse" gases as coal – carbon dioxide and water vapour. Burning gas just produces a higher ratio of so far untaxed water vapour.)

Until the details and amount of the carbon tax are announced, no one can calculate the economics of gas power. So vague threats of another carbon tax is also deterring gas fired power.

But there will never be enough Green Power capacity unless punitive taxes are imposed on all the competitors of Green Power. If Gillard and the Greens introduced carbon taxes so large that the soaring electricity prices made wind and solar a profitable speculation, the political reaction from electricity consumers and the electorate would be immense. So Green Power is also becalmed by political posturing and threats.

And of course nuclear power is not spoken about in polite company in Australia.

It is time for sensible people on both sides of Parliament to reject the nonsense from Gillard and the Greens, guarantee that Australia will not introduce a carbon tax, and thus allow the construction of power for the future.

The Task for 2011: "KILL THE CARBON TAX".

Feedback from a Reader

The Insignificance of carbon dioxide in the Atmosphere:

The graphic linked was on my site several years ago but has been now reinstated in a prominent position:

That graph alone should have stopped the insanity but nobody took the slightest notice. So much of my earlier work could just as well have been written today, it beggars belief how nothing I've done has made the slightest difference to the climate insanity.

Let's hope our book shakes a few people awake.

Hans Schreuder, UK

Reply: Hans, never feel that what you have done has been in vain.

People do not jump ship quickly. But, for a long time, they listen and think.

Then, one day, for an apparently insignificant reason, one will jump, and then suddenly they will all jump. But the idea of jumping has to lay around in their mind, fermenting and being reinforced by many people with many different ways of saying “this ship is sinking”.

Keep up the faith. Persistence eventually penetrates the thickest skull.

And this ship will sink.