Are we on the right path to net zero? | John Anderson

Australian taxpayers are being charged with the highest prices for gas. Australia is one of the world's largest suppliers of natural resources, and Australia spends subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The multi national corporations are making billions and paying what taxes and royalties. The entire parliament has always been a corporate takeover and not for the benefit of the people.

We also need to avoid confusing what may work in Northern Europe. Australia that has a massive comparative economic advantage in renewables. What we need are properly fact-based options for Australia to decide what the future energy plan should be. A viable option may be renewables with gas peaking, it could be nuclear, it could be renewables and storage. I despair that both side of the debate are often ignoring facts and logic. This is a great debate and a necessary one. Well done panel.

It’s like believing you can walk on water and then tell everyone they have to as well. Many will drown in this.

Essential viewing for all engineers, scientists, and economists. Oh, and I hope some politicians in government try and get their brain around the true issues, and that will be hard! A great talk, John and Aden.

At 63 years of age this is the first time in my life I have had to go without heating. Not good enough in a country like Australia. Worked and paid taxes all my life. One person looking at $500 for a month of electricity. Usual bill is less than half that.

I can’t see my energy bills going down like labor promised. I had a letter from AGL this week that my rate was increasing from a flat rate of 31c/kWh to 48c/kWh (peak 2-10). Now having a family this is the time we naturally use the most electricity. So I’m very excited to see my next bill.

Firstly it’s the 2 major political parties, Labor and the Coalition who have created the high energy costs in Australia. The Greens and Independents have never been in power as all they can do is vote with or against the party in power. Australia is extremely lucky to have all of the options of coal, gas, sunshine, wind and uranium unlike most countries throughout the world. The original proposal to reduce our emissions was to go with wind and solar with gas being the base load option. Gas as a base load obviously emits harmful emissions but they can be turned on and off unlike coal and nuclear. It’s the Labor and Coalition parties that have made gas so expensive and it’s availability so unreliable. Gas power plants are considerably cheaper than nuclear, requiring less security, less maintenance, easier to rehabilitate retired facilities and no nuclear waste for future generations. John Anderson spruiking nuclear shows no evidence of discussion just driven ideology just like Snowy 2 which is now costing 6 times its original quoted price and we taxpayers end up paying for this extreme waste.

When talking about moving to net zero we should first ask the question why. When looking at whether there is any threat due to global warming then we need to keep in mind that there is no climate emergency, there is no threat of extinction, there is no threat of major sea level rise and there is no threat of major human migration due to extreme heat. There is climate variability – has always been and will always be – there is climate uncertainty, but there certainly is no emergency that hasn’t existed from the beginning of time. The threat is not due to man made influence on the climate – the real threat in the world today that is killing millions of individuals is due to man made power struggles, rampant militarism with a view to get access to resources of countries other than one’s own, which is simply another form of colonialism. The maintenance of the status quo, as in suppressing the economic rise of the Global South through an imagined climate threat, not allowing them to realize an industrial revolution in order to gain financial prosperity in the same way that the West has done previously and keeping the Global South in economic servitude for the benefit of the West – this is the political nonsense behind the global warming psychosis, created by the West for the benefit of the West - that is sweeping the world today.

The determining driver of energy generation and delivery is simply PEAK power demand: it is rediculous to believe that we can store (and generat energy for storage) enough energy to fill the gap between base load and peak demand.

I disagree about the carbon price. All it does is pass financial pressure onto the community without achieving anything substantial and helps support a fantasy that CO2 is bad.

I would like to see the nuclear debate also take into account the Molten Salt Reactor designs based on the Thorium Fuel Cycle - eg. LFTR etc.

Declare that wind and solar are not renewable…. How are they renewable?? They goes against the laws of thermodynamics.

Thanks for the truth stop the b/s

Great to see Aidan's media skills and media presence increasing month by month. His challenge to CSIRO and the ISP has benefited the rest of us. Constantly amazed by folk who continue assert that "CSIRO science is above reproach !! ". Appreciate this work - thanks to all involved.

Recently I learned about a year in mid 1800’s that had no summer it remained winter all year because of there being so many volcanic eruptions. There were famine immediately just one summer and nothing could be grown but the next year it returned to normal.

Mr Anderson is too soft in his assessment. The energy transition we're facing in Australia is critically important, and we must consider all angles carefully. The current push towards wind and solar dominance in our energy mix is proving more challenging than initially anticipated. Firstly, the infrastructure required for large-scale wind and solar farms faces significant hurdles. We're seeing unexpected social resistance in rural communities where these projects are planned. Concerns about land use, visual impacts, and potential effects on local ecosystems exist. These aren't just NIMBY issues - they reflect real concerns about how we're reshaping our landscape. Economically, the costs of this transition are ballooning. The grid upgrades required to handle intermittent power sources are far more extensive and expensive than initially projected. We're also finding that the lifespan of some renewable technologies is shorter than hoped, leading to higher replacement costs. Environmental challenges are emerging, too. The raw materials required for solar panels and batteries have their ecological footprint. We're trading one form of environmental impact for another. If we continue down this path without addressing these issues, we risk creating an energy system that's unreliable and prohibitively expensive. This could have severe long-term consequences for both households and industry. Energy-intensive industries might relocate to countries with more stable and affordable power, leading to job losses and economic decline. If we can't provide reliable, affordable energy over a 100-year timeframe, we risk becoming an economic backwater. Our standard of living would decline significantly as energy costs consume more of household budgets and all industries struggle to hold a competitive edge. We need to reevaluate our approach. Perhaps we should only consider more singular long-term low-emission technology like nuclear power. The stakes are too high to commit fully to a plan that is already showing significant flaws. Our goal should be an energy transition that maintains or improves our standard of living, supports our industries, and achieves our highest priorities in economic goals. The current path risks failing on all three counts. We need a robust, national discussion without ideological misinformation about our energy future that considers all options and their long-term implications. The Australian parliament is elected to improve Australian lives, not to send them back to the bush caves where the only mark of their existence may one day be handprints on a rock wall. Therefore, what guarantees does the current Prime Minister give that the future of Australia will be affordable to every citizen?

South Australia had synchronous condensers running in the 60's and earlier. McGill substation and one other that I worked on.

Detective of Money Politics is following this very important issue for Clean energy cheers VK3GFS and 73s Frank

You’re wrong regarding risks from Nuclear Accidents. Here is the facts in regard to Chernobyl The official death toll directly attributed to Chernobyl that is recognized by the international community is just 31 people with the UN saying it could be 50. The initial steam explosion resulted in the deaths of two workers. 134 plant staff and emergency workers suffered acute radiation syndrome (ARS) due to high doses of radiation The total number of cases of thyroid cancer registered in the 1991–2015 period among those under 18 years of age in 1986 (for the whole of Belarus and Ukraine, and for the four most-contaminated oblasts of the Russian Federation), approached 20,000. About 5,000 thyroid cancer cases were attributable to radioactive iodine (iodine-131) exposure to those who were children or adolescents at the time of the accident. The remaining 15,000 cases are due to a variety of factors, such as increased spontaneous incidence rate with aging of the population, awareness of thyroid cancer risk after the accident, and improved diagnostic methods to detect thyroid cancer.

an intelligent debate about energy - what a surprise?