Image by Manuel Angel Egea from Pixabay
By Jo Nova
Welcome to Futility Island
Anthony Albanese was elected in May 2022 and set God-like new emissions targets in to legislation. Ponder the scale of the national achievements of the last three years. All that money, all the wind factories, the solar panels, the batteries, the holes bored in the Snowy Mountains, and this is all we have to show for it?
This is the graph from the latest Quarterly figures shown on the DCCEEW website (with added notation from me):
Poignantly, Mr Bowen, the Minister for Weather Changing and Energy said — “We’re turning around a decade of denial and delay, by setting serious climate targets in law and delivering the policy certainty to industry to bring down emissions”. Indeed. (Do tell us when you start Chris?)
The bump last year was because the clouds didn’t rain on the Tassie Hydro Scheme as much as we needed. And the wind didn’t blow anywhere much in Australia in Quarter 2 last year. Who can forget the calm days of April-May-June last year when the wind turbines on the continent stood still? At one point, $20 billion dollars worth of wind power could only make as much power as two diesel generators.
For some reason none of our expert Climate Models saw any of that coming far enough in advance for us to plan ahead. So we just had to burn a bit more gas and coal. You’d think at this point, the failure of extra wind and solar would be so obvious, the Greens would be begging the Labor Party to build some nuclear plants. But they don’t care about CO2 either.
Beyond that, ponder that even despite weather anomalies, the Labor Government and all the extra “renewables” have not seemingly achieved much in the last three years (or not much in the way of emissions). With all the money spent, wasn’t the line supposed to dip below the trend, not plateau?
The thing is, more than a million people have immigrated to Australia since 2022, and they like emitting carbon dioxide too, and need houses and cars, but no one talks about that. Does the Labor Government care about our national emissions, or is it all just a performance art to justify trips to Davos and Brazil, and enrich their friends and donors?
Carbon emissions go up, hydro power down, data shows
By Greg Brown and Perry Williams, The Australian
Anthony Albanese’s 2030 target to reduce emissions is on life support after new data showed Australia’s carbon footprint rose slightly last year driven by a 2.2 per cent increase in the electricity sector.
Figures released by the Climate Change Department show carbon dioxide emissions rose by 0.05 per cent in 2024 to 446.4 million tonnes, equivalent to 27 per cent lower than in 2005.
Despite Labor going all in on renewables as part of its climate change agenda, emissions in the electricity sector increased in 2024 with coal and gas needing to step up due to a lack of water limiting hydro generation in Tasmania.
Australia has currently reduced its emissions by 27% in total since 2005 (mostly due to land use changes, not electricity, but that’s another story). Supposedly, if something supernatural happens, like aliens visit, or a meteor hits Sydney, we’re going to get to a 43% reduction by 2030.
Otherwise to have even the faintest ethereal chance we’d need to increase “renewable-unreliables” from the current 40% up to 82% and 2030 is only five years away? Everyone knows it’s impossible, and yet the crazy bus keeps going?
Even the believers like Bruce Mountain are saying he did not think there was a chance… yet Mr Bowen is still emphatic that “we’re on track”. (Like we live in a different decade of denial now?)
We’re so “on track”, that 75% of the projects the Minister is expecting are not taking off:
Only a quarter of the large-scale renewable energy generation required to hit Labor’s 2030 target in the first three months of 2025 progressed to a firm capital commitment, new data showed this week, sparking a warning that the pace of investment must quickly accelerate to hit the end of decade goal.
At this point in our breakneck transition, wind-factories and solar panels should be going in all over the country. But we just heard that the price of high voltage transmission towers was going to cost up to 55% more than expected, and the AEMO was throwing their previous plans to the wind. Now, we’re all supposed to subsidize each other to buy home batteries, EVs, and solar panels. What do we call that — a pyramid scheme?
Black-Out Bowen has stuffed EVERY portfolio he’s had.
I’m just wondering if
1. Is this on purpose
2. He doesn’t know what he is doing
3. Albanese is making sure Black-Out can’t challenge for leadership
4. Black-Out is getting instructions from an outside entity
5. He missed a few classes at uni
6. He’s never worked in a non government job
7. …
Did I miss something?
[Sorry, Excellent question. Help up in moderation accidentally – Jo]
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The reason for the madness has been expressed in another way….” Follow the money “
Time for “ DOGE “ type investigations ??
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See Figure P1 here:
https://www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/nggi-quarterly-update-december-2024.pdf
Graph on Page 4, Figure P1: Emissions by quarter, September 2004 to December 2024
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The graph was Weather Normalised. What’s that? Not only are temperatures being manipulated by the government, now they are manipulating the weather. King Canute was humble enough that he demonstrated to his acolytes that he could not harness the sea but Chris Bowen is not that humble. He just demonstrates his dumbness.
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All you have to do is look out the window as you travel to see the depths of the wasteful idiocy in roof top solar.
There are panels facing in all directions, shaded by trees, buildings, geographical features or in the new suburbs placed on their little box in a sea of little boxes. Any energy efficiency disippates when you realise the planned neighbourhood is a services nightmare where what could have been groups of terraces sharing common walls with combined services have been spaced to give the impression of a single dwelling yet without benefits of any real space. Once was a scrub, field or more likely a low swampy area is now a sea of reflected sunshine, devoid of trees and running air conditioners to make the box livable. All this livable community stuff without a sign of life as you drive about in the maze of curving culdesacs wondering how to escape.
Good luck escaping the conflagration when the EVs and the battery back-up thrown in to sweeten the deal start to catch fire and explode.
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I’m surprised at the number of neighbours that have panels on the south side of their roofs.
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One of my neighbours has an A frame house with a very steep pitch.
Solar panels on the roof are facing due south!
Even here in Brisbane there are times during winter when that side of the roof gets zero sun due to the angle of the roof.
I have no idea why the panels were not placed on the north facing side.
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May be British solar panel installers. In Britain putting panels on the South side is what they do 😉
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I would grab a bottle of Hunter Valley Shiraz and walk over and ask.
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Mmmm you wouldnt want to take the good stuff
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Got anything for ten bucks?
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Ronin,
One of the electricity marketing companies has a coloured artistic TV commercial with a number of solar panels arranged in a circle, all tilted to the same angle.
Art trumps physics.
Geoff S
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What caused the red downvote? Do you work for the advertising company? Geoff S
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A brilliant description Broadie, absolutely brilliant. I am remined of a popular song, when I was much younger, called little Boxes.
https://youtu.be/CQ5s1Eza0j8
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Oh! Gawd! I’d forgotten about that song. So prescient for today’s housing schemes and their residents. Thanks for the memory!
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The rate at which lush, arable farmland is being replaced with amenity-free, tree-free, space-free estates deserves a massive class action.
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Love the phrase we are live in an era of a different denial now! So true, era run by incompetents, liars and panic merchants. Add to that the fiscal mess we are by the current mob. Politically we are probably at or nearing the worst time in our history, here on Gold Coast shops are closing, traffic increasing, taxes increasing, fines increasing, overbearing governance increasing. Let us also remember the current mob are going to over ride our vote on the Voice, we have an American woman who tells us what information we are allowed, soon we will be like the UK with thought police. No wonder the Canberra mob get away with so much.
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No “soon” about it, Dave. Remember Covid in Victoriastan? Even a pregnant mum arrested in her pyjamas for posting a suggesting for an anti-lockdown rally on Facebook.
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Or the two old grannies in trouble with the police for sitting on a park bench.
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FWIW
Have a look at
“Renewable Push Sends Aussie Electricity Prices Skyrocketing”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/26/renewable-push-sends-aussie-electricity-prices-skyrocketing/
Have a look at the opening image and think of its suitability for a “Suggest a name” competition?
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There are a lot of home owners who are insulated from electricity price rises. They have to wear inflation in other areas and have little prospect of working in any heavy industry other than mining and construction but they are not exposed to electricity price rises because they make their own.
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Their electricity is only cheap because poor people pay for half of their panels.
Home owner have been “insulated” from the truth too.
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Even the best deal is not a good deal, just the least worst.
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“The AER said retail costs, such as the cost of billing customers, running call centres, acquiring new customers, managing defaults, and the rollout of smart meters, have added to the price hikes.”
So, the cost of electronic billing, designed to save money, is suddenly more expensive than posting out bills, running call centres instead of having retail outlets is more expensive, acquiring new customers is more expensive than having loyal customers that were happy with the pricing, managing defaults is expensive because the product supplied is to expensive, the roll out of smart metres is more expensive than having metre readers.
So, everything that we were told would “bring” prices down has had the exact opposite effect. Yep I’m happy to pay more to help out struggling retailers, like hell.
Speaking of retailers, remember when we were told that lots of retailers would mean competition and therefore lower prices. That doesn’t appear to be working either.
Remember the SECV, low cost producer and retailer, a monopoly designed to keep prices as low as possible while still allowing the state to develop.
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Without new transmission lines, much of the planned investment under the AEMO contracts will be white elephants. The only point to building them is to extract the capital guarantee from the taxpayers. A whole heap of generating capacity doing nothing other then earning income from tax payers. Any reputable firm would just agree to withdraw from the contract and save the taxpayers’ money.
I remember the submission from the distributors from the fist ISP and thought these guys could see the future with the grid essentially dead with weak, low capacity interconnectors and distributed rooftops supplying the bulk of the generation. AEMO has finally recognised what they were on about.
Once my grid battery is operational, I will draw next to no power from the grid but will lean on the grid on consecutive cloudy days and the occasional demand surge. The grid operator is increasingly blind to the actual power demand because it is being generated behind the meter, stored and then used internally.
I am not alone with the battery purchase. The battery subsidy has supercharged demand for household batteries:
https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/australia-is-on-the-cusp-of-a-home-battery-boom-20250518-p5m052.html
Payback on subsidised batteries if you have existing solar is around 4 years. There are 4 million homes with solar panels.
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I will draw next to no power from the grid but will lean on the grid on consecutive cloudy days and the occasional demand surge
Great plan and good luck to you. No doubt you have factored in the cost of your “lean” – the supply charge – which for us in Queensland is $1.2605 per day. This is the Archilles heel as far as suppliers passing on the increases caused by transmission line installation and upkeep costs go.
Cheers.
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But if the supply charge becomes exorbitant then it encourages houses to leave the grid. For the distributor, something is better than nothing.
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Totally agree and while we progress down the “cheaper renewables” path it will be their game of finding out where the “real” resistance point is and this process alone brings in the extra $$$$ while they play it. I too am thinking of the battery path however would never locate one in the house or attached so when we get to the stage of building a backyard brick sh oops sorry brick shed for battery (or 2 have big enough roof to probably support another 20-30 solar panels) and wire it/them up specifically for house supply and let the original panels continue to push all their power to the supplier during the day.
Interesting times ahead. Cheers.
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Australian Standards require the battery to be fire isolated from living area. Authorities will not allow a battery to be switched on unless it is fire isolated from the living areas. They are commonly mounted on an external wall near the meter box where the box was installed before smart meters.
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I thought that a lot of batteries were being installed in garages attached to the houses. Would this meet Australian Standards?
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The grid is still there right in front of your door!
You are living in LA LA land or you are going to be one of those sad buggers who run around looking at your usage app and switching appliances and lights on and off. OKay if you live by yourself and do not need to use an oven, an electric hotwater, air conditioning, clothes dryer, iron, charge an EV or any of the modern appliances. Any of those items will send you back to the grid in no time flat unless of course you have a generator.
So why spend $70,000 to save a couple of grand a year and have the problem of maintaining all those capital assests that may at any time go up in a flash and will be junk in 10 years.
Go out and join the bee-keeping club or do something for your community rather than waste time trying to outfox a ravenous beast that does not care.
In fact, go to the camping store and for less than $10,000 you will Have all you need to prep for the inevitable grid failure. A few panels a couple of AGM batteries, a 12V fridge freezer and a portable toilet, gas cooker and you will be ready for anything and have a cool $60,000 left to spend on some fun and you can go camping as well.
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Are you including the additional Opportunity Cost in your payback period calculations Rick?
And I’m not sure if there will be a battery boom. Only one in 40 home solar systems now have a battery, and the indications from recent comments in The Australian were that most system owners were not planning to add a battery. Include me in that group, as I don’t believe that the extra savings from adding a battery will pay off the battery within its short 10-year lifetime. As it is, it will take me 8.5 years to pay off my existing solar system.
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The quote I provided above came from The Australian so it appears that “free” stuff from government is attractive . TDs currently getting around 5% so add a few more months to the payback if you want to count opportunty costs.
Do the sums yourself and I will check them.
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Hi Rick impossible to do the sums on the battery, as I would need to have the battery installed and check it over a year to obtain accurate figures.
Even with the battery subsidy, I would expect to pay at least $10,000 for a suitable battery installed, probably more. That includes the extra Opportunity Cost. So I would need to save an additional $1000 a year to pay off the battery. Given that I expect to pay around $1400 total for my imported electricity this year, I very much doubt that I would be able to wipe off $1000 from this amount. Especially during winter, when my solar cannot keep up with power usage, let alone recharge a battery.
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I think you are projecting your battery enthusiasm Rick. There are nt that many joining thi supercharged market
As usual it will be a minority relatively wealthy elite. The market is coming off a low base, and times are tight. It will be interesting to see where it sits in a years time, if we can get real numbers.
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Please add the cost of the equalisation TAX which is a tax on power station electricity tax payers consume.
This TAX was invented to make renewable energy look competitive against power station output.
The government has perfected a circular economy TAX Tax Tax and give the tazpayer a little feedback with an electricity rebate using taxpayers money.
What a ripoff.
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This entire rock-show has ALWAYS been about the “spillage”; especially of tax-payer’s money.
Riffing off Josef Goebbels dictum; (paraphrasing): ” If you tell a big enough lie often enough, it becomes the truth”.
SO: “Run a big enough fraud long enough and it becomes the new economic reality”.
And that is just the “good” part.
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Physics 1, Ideology 0
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There’s a term in power systems called “dynamic equilibrium” which is all about the balance between generation and load, so that when load goes down, generation goes down, and when load goes up, generation goes up. It’s the opposite of what’s called “Bowen equilibrium” – when he says something will go down, it will go up, and vice versa. Science.
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Musk on his vision for Mars. Talking equipment, time line and funding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwf-rVuCEkU
I expect he will carry many along with him for the ride and maybe the riches that they unlock.
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I should have put this on unthreaded rather than here.
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Apparently, Elon left the job of making Government more efficient because he thought sending humans to Mars would be much easier😊
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No. His term of employment ended.
It was some form of agreement which allowed Trump to hire him without going through the normal Congress approval process, but for a fixed and short time.
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120 days I read.
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Correct. A special government employee (SGE) is an advisor or consultant appointed to work with the federal government for a limited time, not exceeding 130 days in a year. This classification allows the government to utilize outside expertise while applying specific ethics rules to their service.
Apparently, until Musk, the best-known example of SGEs happened when the web site for the Obama health plan went belly-up on its first day. Bright tech folks were brought in to produce a quick fix.
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You guys need to lighten up, I was trying to be funny🤪
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Albanese’s goal to make Australia a renewables energy superpower is coming apart because most people don’t want the consequences of destruction of their environment to make way for 10,000 km of new electricity grid, wind turbines and solar farms. The pushback to Albanese’s plans is gaining momentum. Already many plans for proposed wind turbine farms have been shelved. People want affordable electricity and Albanese can’t deliver. As more wind and solar projects go phut, Albanese will start using more gas and coal to keep baseload power generators as firming life support to keep the green power dream alive.
My prognosis is that eventually the traditional baseload life support will stay switched on and increase in capacity. However, Australia as a renewable energy superpower will switched off and relegated to the waste bin of failed experiments. And, as usually happens, the Aussie taxpayer will end up paying for the cost of cleanup.
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I wish I knew what a renewable energy superpower was. It seems a contradiction as if you have too much “renewable” energy you certainly wont be a superpower as you will be deindustrialized.
Agree with your prognosis. I think we will probably land roughly where Spain is now with their strengthened network, as they call it.
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Without a doubt, this site is my refuge for reality. When pretty well most of the rest of the media is double spoken, fact ignorant propaganda Jo shines a little light on what is really happening out there. Here is a classic case of the law of unintended consequences. Government intends doing one thing, exact opposite happens. One state in India had problems with Cobra snakes biting people. We know, (the government said)we’ll instigate a bounty for collected cobras. People can catch them and receive money in return , numbers of dangerous snakes will reduce and less people will die. Good theory? Nope. People “farmed” cobras and started making good income. Government found out and dropped the cobra bounty. Then the cobra farmers let all their cobras loose because there was no money in keeping them. End result – there were now more cobras than before the bounty program was begun. Carbon dioxide emissions=cobras.
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QUESTIONS:
What are the CO2 emissions per head of population? Population in 2005 vs 2024.
1. If Australia stops uncontrolled mass migration, will it reduce Australia’s CO2 emissions?
2. Is that the giant green elephant in the room the Labor Party refuses to see?
3. Can we get an international carbon credit for transferring the migrant’s carbon emissions to Australia?
4. Is mass migration from the low emission countries to high emission countries actually increasing the world’s carbon emissions?
5. Compare the carbon footprint of a migrant in their homeland for say India or Africa with their new carbon footprint in Australia and see the impact.
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Electricity is going to become a luxury for Australians. With 100s of gas turbines on standby sitting idle but still being paid, and BILLIONS spent on ruinables, your energy bills a going to sky-rocket.
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I would have preferred to see Australia’s ENTIRE emissions, from 2005 to the present day. I believe that they only dropped by 5%. Can somebody refer me to a decent graph that clearly shows our total emissions?
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Assorted search engines took over my Internet concierge role some tiime ago.
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Figure 1
https://www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/nggi-quarterly-update-december-2024.pdf
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Thanks Greg.
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Rudd-Gillard-Labor governments 2007-2013 Renewable Energy Target set and coal and gas marked as unacceptable emissions sources to be phased out as quickly as possible, power stations penalised with an emissions surcharge and other penalties against profitability and therefore incentive to replace as had been scheduled.
The Albanese-Bowen since 2022 RET raised from 32% to now 82% and gas is now referred to as the “transition fuel”.
No mention of coal power stations negotiations to extend generating operational life!!!
And the transition to so called renewables is far behind building schedules anticipated, and investors are not coming forward as the government had planned for.
When will Labor start hinting that they always intended to build nuclear power stations as part of their transition?
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“You can educate a fool, but you cannot make him think.”
Talmud proverb.
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In modern version,
“You can lead a horse to drink but you can’t make him water”
Geoff S
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The data used by the Department of Climate Change etc for that graph is only for fuel used by electricity generators and doesn’t take into account any of the other emissions from electricity generation. eg – manufacture and construction of generators, extra infrastructure, etc.
From the paper here:
https://www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/nggi-quarterly-update-december-2024.pdf
‘5.12 Sectoral emissions sources and sinks
Electricity – Emissions from the combustion of fuel used to generate electricity for public use.’
The graph should really read ‘Australian emissions of CO2 from fuel used in the electricity sector’.
I doubt CO2 emissions from electricity generation have dropped that much if at all.
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“Fugitive” emissions is an interesting one in here.
It looks like after all of this, land use change and forestry (planting trees) is our greatest contribution to emissions reduction….
About time for some plans to do something with all that desert….
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In the bigger picture we need factual cost analyses of the choices we have to re-establish an affordable/reliable electricity supply.
…Wind, solar battery etc
… Nuclear
…Coal
Such analyses would include all the costs of transporting the energy from the generation sources to the end consumers and in particular the agricultural/environmental assets foregone in locating sources and transporting energy.
Surprising that such analyses are yet to be published. To many vested interests controlling those experts capable of providing such analyses?
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If there is no industry to use the power you may as well sit in a Gunya and cook on wombat poo!
All these houses and no productionfor the inhabitants to get up in the morning and apply their skills. Quite simply. ‘Planning without a purpose’!
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Emissions reduction is just a game. At the end of the day, or at the end the century, it won’t matter to the climate either way. Increased emmisions doesn’t hurt anything. Burning fossil fuels as a sin is a constuct of modern idolotry.
But the game is about who pays and who get’s paid. And who becomes weaker and who becomes stronger.
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Australia’s emissions are far worse than shown if we work out the emissions we are responsible for. Such as emission generated in India and China by exporting coal to them as well as emissions created in the manufacture of EVS and Renewables that we import. I find it bizarre that we do things to reduce the impact on global warming but measure our success with our impact only in Australia. Its called global warming not Australian warming.
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