Offshore wind energy locations unveiled      


New Daily
Aug 5 2022

Energy Minister Chris Bowen has flagged six possible locations for offshore wind energy as the government looks to increase the amount of renewables in the grid. 

The government has proposed an area in the Bass Strait off Gippsland for a site for the offshore wind facility, along with parts of the Pacific near the Hunter and the Illawarra.

Further locations in the Southern Ocean near Portland, parts of the Bass Strait and the Indian Ocean near Perth and Bunbury have also been flagged.

Mr Bowen said the facilities would help Australia to reach 82 per cent renewable energy by the end of the decade.

“This is good news for these communities. A lot of jobs will also be created. These are areas undergoing economic change as our energy system transforms,” he said in Sydney

“We are way behind the game, way behind the rest of the would in producing wind off our coastline.”   


Mr Bowen said consultation for the offshore wind projects near Gippsland would begin straight away. Details for consultation for the other five sites would be announced in due course.

It’s estimated the Gippsland proposal would be enough to power 1.2 million homes in Victoria, with the industry to create up to 8000 jobs a year once fully operational.   

The announcement came a day after the Albanese government’s climate bill passed the House of Representatives.

The bill enshrined a 43 per cent reduction in emissions based on 2005 levels by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050.

It will be sent to a Senate committee, due to report back by the end of the month, before being debated in the upper house.

Mr Bowen said the bill’s passage was a step forward and he looked forward to it passing the Senate.   

“It is not symbolic, it is practice. There are 10 years of delay and dysfunction, this parliament is taking big steps for it to end,” he said .

“The passage of this bill sends a message to investors in renewable energy, transmission and storage around the world that Australia is open for business to become a renewable energy powerhouse.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said an “economy-wide transition” would be needed in order to cut down on Australia’s emissions.

He said more work was needed to be done to reduce emissions, particularly among the country’s biggest polluters.

“You have to have an economy-wide transition here. It will take effort. It’s not easy, but we can do it,” he told ABC Radio on Friday.

“While doing it, we can create economic activity, create jobs, particularly in our regions.”

While the opposition has warned the government’s emissions reduction target would lead to higher power bills for families, Mr Albanese said the changes would help to grow the economy.

He warned a lack of action in reducing emissions would have a negative impact on the country’s finances.

“Unless we do this transition, then Australia will actually suffer and shrink, so we also have the possibility of cleaner, cheaper energy, creating new industries,” he said.

More pointless environmental destruction for minimal benefit. 

AusGeoff wrote on Aug 6^th, 2022 at 8:35am:




Costs - to build and maintain -  and subsidies??



Funny how we are going back to windmills, the Knight Errant of the Sorrowful Countenance said to Sancho Panza.

Frank wrote on Aug 6^th, 2022 at 10:20am:


The prime contractor (yet to be formalised) will receive  $19.5 million
in Victorian government funding.  The overall costing for the Star of
The South project is $12 billion.

Compare this with the 4km West Gate Tunnel project cost of $10 billion,
and tell me which is a better return on taxpayer investment, with the
Victorian government putting in $2 billion of taxpayer's money.

The ill-fated West Gate Tunnel project should never have been greenlighted.
It's been roundly criticised by transport and urban planning experts for
overstating its benefits, increasing traffic in the inner city, and failing to
consider better alternatives.

AusGeoff wrote on Aug 7^th, 2022 at 1:01am:


No commonwealth funding and subsidies? No guaranteed price for the energy produced?

AusGeoff wrote on Aug 7^th, 2022 at 12:41am:


I certainly favour the retention of coal and gas fueled power  stations until their eventual replacement with nuclear.  It has been shown the so called 'renewables' are both inefficient and environmentally unfriendly.

https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-100-percent-renewable-e...

https://v16-webapp.tiktok.com/b32f84a02545a3d848189cc45c3e1aa3/62ef8828/video/to...

https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/green-technologies-cause-ma...

These are just a few examples. The placing of wind turbines offshore is simply an out of sight out of mind attitude that will lead to unnecessary degradation of the marine environment.

Belgarion wrote on Aug 7^th, 2022 at 1:46pm:

Two of your links to the grandly-named Institute for Energy Research (IER) see
it often described as a front group for the fossil fuel industry, and is the most
prominent organisation questioning the existence and extent of anthropogenic
climate change.  It receives funding from the fossil fuel industry, and has accepted
financial donations from organisations in that sector such as the American
Petroleum Institute, Koch Industries, the American Energy Alliance, and ExxonMobil.
So of course they're gonna bad mouth wind and solar farm electricity generation.

I'm not sure what you mean by "degradation of the marine environment".  Any
chance of some links?  Presumably you prefer open cut coal mining and fracking?

AusGeoff wrote on Aug 8^th, 2022 at 3:15am:


sure.



Belgium, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands – all members of the North Seas Energy Cooperation (NSEC) – have jointly signed the Esbjerg Declaration. Their plan is to transform the North Sea, which contains the 1.5 billion barrels of oil required to re-stabilise Europe against Russian aggression, into a useless ‘Green Hub’.


The enormous turbines are expected to be set a kilometre apart in a grid, driven into the seabed with concrete and steel platforms that weigh approximately 1,000 tons. Those in deep water include 60m structures with 3-4 anchor points. Even floating versions contain huge quantities of additional material, all of which require fossil fuels to create and maintain, the cost of which increases as governments constrict the industry.

During the public unveiling, no one bothered to ask if the cost of re-building the first half of the project had been factored in, given the lifespan of wind turbines means that those constructed for the 2030 deadline would have to be replaced by the time 2050 rolls around. 14,000 blades are estimated for decommission by 2023, with that figure increasing exponentially year-on-year.

During the public unveiling, no one bothered to ask if the cost of re-building the first half of the project had been factored in, given the lifespan of wind turbines means that those constructed for the 2030 deadline would have to be replaced by the time 2050 rolls around. 14,000 blades are estimated for decommission by 2023, with that figure increasing exponentially year-on-year.

Germany has the most wind turbines in the European Union, and their industry is drowning in legal challenges, predominately brought in the interests of protecting the local wildlife. The more wind turbines that are built, the more people hate them.

‘You have to have a grown-up conversation with citizens and treat them as adults and say, “Listen, the status quo has changed, we’re in a climate emergency, we have to make radical and fast changes to our systems,”’ said Patrick Devine-Wright, a social scientist and adviser to the IPCC.

And there it is. By declaring, without sufficient evidence, that there is a ‘climate emergency’, the norms of law, land ownership, and citizen rights are routinely swept away.

If you turn the conversation around on this argument and point out that solar and wind have enormous carbon footprints and cause wider environmental carnage with both their creation and swift decline, those pushing wind and solar become violently pale. If you follow up with the suggestion of nuclear power, they start gluing themselves to random bits of tarmac.

Why? Because nuclear is a quick and permanent solution. Instead of costing trillions in public money, the world’s energy can be secured with an accompanying rapid decline in mining.

‘Oh, but it’s expensive!’

What happened to ‘nothing else matters because this is a climate emergency’?

If we are in an emergency, then nuclear is the logical, scientific solution. If this is not an emergency, then it must be about money – an absolute truckload of it. Each skyscraper-sized spinning blade sticks out of the water as a white elephant, built on public cash, fear-mongering hashtags, the misguided tears of brainwashed children, and the vanity of politicians seeking public virtue in the absence of character.

As for the birds, the seas are set to become a nightmare of blood and feathers.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/08/do-north-sea-birds-dream-of-giant-spinning-mach...