Letter to the Editor: 2030 Operational Date Questioned

Recently, we reported that HISTORIC RENEWABLE ENERGY BUILD A BIG DEAL, indicating that the WA State Government with the Federal Government had just announced 10 renewable energy projects in country WA would be operational by 2030, the year WA goes off coal. In this Letter to the Editor, North Fremantle stalwart, Gerard MacGill expresses scepticism about the 2030 operational date, and also wonders about the backup for the proposed energy supply should the wind stop blowing and the sun stop shining from time to time.

Dear Editor

When the cheers have died down is it permissible to inject a note of scepticism about these proposals, even if to do so might imperil long-standing friendships?

Completion of ten major renewables projects across a vast area of the state with the bold prediction that they ‘will be operational by 2030’ strains credulity (one might even say it’s ‘heroic’). The history of big chest-beating projects – Snowy 2 being of course the poster boy – is not great. Are they indeed ‘shovel ready‘ to start tomorrow? There is no mention of the approval processes you would expect to apply to major infrastructure structure projects, in particular the social and environmental impacts on communities, farmland, wildlife and landscape to name but a few. These projects have been highly contested elsewhere, even in Tasmania.

Then there is the cost to the taxpayer, something difficult to find among the subsidies and the ultimate cost of the Capacity Investment Scheme, which is in effect a guarantee to the developer against losses. What is never made clear is the lifetime cost of the projects, including that of the disposal of vast quantities of wind towers and solar panels. This may be thirty years away, time enough for seven changes of government, and is a cost that will be paid by our great grandchildren. For a government obsessed with ‘intergenerational equity’, a surprising omission.

It’s comforting in a world where coal is dead and gas is next that batteries will supply peak demand for 400.000 households for four hours during peak demand, but if this is meant to cover outages caused by wind and sun droughts it’s taking a bet on such events being short and not very sweet. In truth, renewables need 100% backup to be reliable. One doesn’t want to stir the pot here too much by mentioning the backup that dare not speak its name in Labor circles.

That might be enough for the moment to get the bees buzzing. But someone had to do it.

Oh, and by the way , the Financial Review reported on 30 March that fifteen renewables projects approved under the CIS had not even started.

Gerard MacGill,

North Fremantle

Note from the Editor: one imagines that Mr MacGill might imagine the wind farms, for example, will be in an incomplete form, as in this AI created image, as 2030 ticks by!