The irrational pursuit of renewable energy as the antidote to planetary pain must eventually confront the immutable laws of physics and the scarcity of land.
Seven years after Daniel Andrews’ presumptive declaration that his state would be carbon neutral by 2050, a Victorian government review has concluded the replacement of coal and gas generation with the existing sources of renewable energy is “an implausible prospect”.
“Achieving 60GW using only onshore wind and large-scale solar could require up to 70 per cent of agricultural land, or four times the area of Greater Melbourne,” the review concluded.
Sadly for the people of Victoria, this rare moment of bureaucratic clarity is fleeting.
Rather than searching for other sources for low-carbon electricity, nuclear small modular reactors for example, the review team recommends building wind turbines offshore.
Electricity produced from offshore wind turbines is almost twice as expensive than that from land-based turbines, $94 MWh compared to $49 MWh according to the Department of Energy’s calculations.
Maintenance costs are 20 per cent higher and the expected life is 15 years for offshore turbines compared to 20 years on land.
You don’t need a doctorate in marine engineering to know why planting a wind turbine in the ocean is considerably more challenging than building on terra firma.
A 5MW offshore turbine typically requires more than 1,000 tonnes of low alloy and electrical steel, 500 tonnes of copper, 70 tonnes of non-recyclable plastic and a couple of tonnes of magnet.
The damage to the natural environment, the thing we’re supposed to be saving, is not inconsiderable.
A 2022 review of studies on the environmental side-effects of offshore wind plants reported that the impact was negative in 86 per cent of cases.
More than a third had reported the damage as high.
Australian studies find that the threat to bird life is significant.
It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out who will be the loser in a fight between a ten-tonne turbine blade and a 45g orange bellied parrot.
And then there is the whale problem.
Since early December, more than 20 large whales have washed up on or near beaches on the US Atlantic coast, where offshore wind construction is in full flight.
Local environmental groups are blaming the spike in beachings on the noise and disruption of heavy construction.
The possibility should not be taken lightly.
In 2007, a proposal by Gunns to build a wood chip plant in northern Tasmania collapsed after objections from environmentalists that included the effect of noise from pile-drivers on passing whales.
A scientific study published in the journal Endangered Species Research in 2021 examined the potential disturbance of low-frequency noise from turbines on the clicks, whistles and pulsed calls made by pods of migrating whales to help navigate obstacles in their path.
It concluded that further studies were urgently needed to inform appropriate strategies for future wind energy development.
“The area of the potential effect of acoustic exposure can extend far beyond the immediate vicinity of the proposed development,” the report said.
It warned alteration to the physical and oceanographic habitat could have “cascading impacts on the food chain”.
The risks to the natural environment and the despoilment of the pristine coastal skyline have turned Bob Brown, the founder of the Greens party, into an opponent.
He says it is in the wrong place, will ruin the view and kill endangered birds like the Tasmanian wedge-tail eagle and the white-breasted sea eagle that live on the island, and potentially migratory birds like the swift parrot and the orange-bellied parrot that travel between Tasmania and the mainland.
“We have alternatives for renewable energy. We don’t have alternatives for extinct species of birds,” Brown told the ABC in 2014.
“We should be looking at the whole suite of those and determining as a community which to develop, not leaving it to developers who have profits in mind.”
That the federal and Victorian governments should persist with the development of offshore wind plants in the face of the considerable investment and logistical challenges, compounded by the demonstrable loss of biodiversity and natural amenity, shows the power of the mono-maniacal obsession with wind, solar and batteries that the threat of global warming has induced.
The vanity emissions reduction target of zero by 2050 was passed into law in Victoria in 2017 without any costing by Treasury or any assessment of the incidental damage it might cause to nature and local communities along the way.
In fairness, it would have been impossible to make such an assessment, since no practical plan was set out to achieve the goal other than replacing coal and gas with renewable energy.
The momentous decision was clearly made without a single engineer around the table, for the impossibility of powering Victoria with wind, solar and batteries alone was clear from the very start.
Six years after the Andrews government’s zero-2050 commitment, it has yet to produce a feasible plan as to exactly how it might be done.
The nameplate capacity of wind and solar so far installed is little more than a quarter of the 60GW Victoria is expected to need by 2050.
The target of installing 13GW of wind turbines might get them halfway there, providing we put the obvious problems of intermittency to the back of our minds.
The rest is pure fantasy unless our political leaders come to their senses and realise that the notion of replacing fossil fuels with energy-dilute, land-hungry, unreliable alternatives with a short lifespan is crackers.
Not every centre-left administration in the world is as blind to this reality as the Victorian and federal governments.
In Canada, the centre-left Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau is backing nuclear small modular reactors, the technology Chris Bowen laughs off as way too expensive.
Construction of Canada’s first SMR is underway in line with the government’s all-option approach to reaching its emissions target.
The government’s total commitment so far is $1.1 billion, a fraction of the figure the Victorian government plans to spend on wind, solar and batteries.
The amount of land required and the cost of construction will be considerably less than building any wind or solar plant.
The incidental damage to the natural environment will be minimal since the SMR is being installed within the perimeter fence of an existing power plant in Ontario.
The expected life of the plant, 80 years, is roughly five times longer than the life of an offshore wind turbine.
A report by PWC estimates the total investment required to build the government’s target 13 GW of offshore solar generation will be $29 billion, far more than all other sources of renewable energy.
Running costs until 2040 will be $8 billion.
It is getting harder for the government to persist with the lie that renewable energy is cheap.
The federal and state energy ministers would do well to follow the recent example of shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien and take a fact-finding mission to Canada before embarking on a perilous sea adventure.
Nick Cater is executive director of the Menzies Research Centre
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