There haven't been visionaries in Australian government since the Whitlam government of 1973 which tried to promote and finance a West to East gas pipeline to bring North-West Shelf gas to the East coast and to the interior resource industries.
Liberal cretins ended that initiative with the CIA instigated ouster of Whitlam.
Now blackouts are foreseen in the coming summer because coal-fired power stations are in a poor state of repair because nobody wants to invest in a dying industry.
Meanwhile, consumers are bleating about high gas prices while nobody wants to build pipelines or LNG terminals in the gas-poor cities.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Australia-s-big-power-blackout Quote:... Australia has more energy options than most countries. It has uranium in abundance, exporting it to customers in Europe, Asia and North America, but it will not countenance its own nuclear power industry. There is simply no mainstream public confidence in nuclear power since the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.
Australia is an ideal location for wind and solar energy projects. Utilities and infrastructure investors are building solar power plants and wind farms at a rapid rate, but many lack the crucial battery storage and smart grid capability to make full use of their output. Similarly, Australia has all the essential ingredients to create a battery metals industry, from nickel and copper to lithium, cobalt and rare earths, but not the long-term vision, scale, technology nor money to realize it.
The country exports vast quantities of valuable liquefied natural gas to customers in Asia but its own domestic industrial users struggle to pay the rising price of gas at home. Two key states, Victoria and New South Wales, are opposed to onshore gas development over concerns about the impact on agricultural land and water.
Despite boasting one of the world's most efficient export-oriented supply chains for thermal coal, Australia's own coal-fired power stations are on the way out because power generators and retailers decline to refurbish them, arguing that coal should not feature in the country's long-term energy future.
They prefer to make more money from adding renewables to the power grid, but have yet to overcome the problem of supply breaks that plague wind and solar. Batteries are being added to some renewable projects but their cost and limited capacity relegate them to a minor role so far, well behind gas and hydropower.
The need for reliable power remains paramount across Australia as the high-demand, blackout-prone summer season approaches, but there is little cohesion between the various state governments and the federal government in Canberra on investment in transmission infrastructure. Initial construction work on Turnbull's ambitious plan to expand the capacity of the big Snowy Mountains hydro power scheme is due to begin in December but it will not start delivering extra power until 2025.
Meanwhile, nervous banks and other investors will not fund new baseload coal-fired power stations in Australia because of environmental concerns and a fear that their 50-year payback time will come under threat. Australian conservation groups, led by the Australian Greens political party, are determined to protect environmental treasures such as the Great Barrier Reef, but their no-holds-barred approach antagonizes conservative rural communities who fear their livelihoods will become collateral damage to a distant Paris emissions agreement. ...
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Australia, rich in resources, poor in inspiration (Read 718 times)
