Speaker 1: Each Saturday where we catch up with Leith van Onselin,
Speaker 1: chief economist at the NB Fund NB Super from Macrobusiness
Speaker 1: dot com dot au. We are asking of late Leith
Speaker 1: to come up with a economic clown or economic champion
Speaker 1: each week. We've had a couple of clowns. We're about
Speaker 1: to get to a champion in a moment or two, but
Speaker 1: not before we get to talk about Australia facing energy armageddon.
Speaker 1: How am my friend? I hope you will Yeah?
Speaker 2: Did I work? Yeah? Well? Or go down at yourself?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Not too bad at all, not too bad at all.
Speaker 1: Look the question of our energy crisis, and it is
Speaker 1: I think in the minds of many a crisis. I
Speaker 1: don't know where it was during the election campaign. I
Speaker 1: don't want to revisit that at all, but I mean,
Speaker 1: what's going on here? Is it simply the fact that
Speaker 1: the government collects tax from workers and gives it back
Speaker 1: to workers in the way of some kind of assistance
Speaker 1: to pay their power bills? Is that why people don't
Speaker 1: see the train coming? Or what is it? Because we're
Speaker 1: in an ale of the miss Oh?
Speaker 2: Absolutely mate. So anyone who pays an electricy bill or
Speaker 2: a gas bill knows that, that knows that your bills
Speaker 2: have surged. And the only reason why we've had any
Speaker 2: relief is because the governments doled out billions of dollars
Speaker 2: of our own money, like basically returned our taxes in
Speaker 2: short term subsidies. But it's not fixing the underlying problem. Now,
Speaker 2: as we all know, the Albanese governments set a ridiculously
Speaker 2: unreal realistic target of having eighty two percent of Australia's
Speaker 2: electricity generated by renewables by twenty thirty. Now, if we're
Speaker 2: going to do that, it means we obviously need to
Speaker 2: shut down a qualifire generation pretty much now. Some of
Speaker 2: Australia's states have gone even further. So, you know, while
Speaker 2: I live in then the clown state of Victoria, Victoria's
Speaker 2: legislator ninety five percent renewal easy target by twenty thirty five,
Speaker 2: so that's just in a decade. South Australia has set
Speaker 2: a one hundred percent renewable energy target by twenty twenty seven,
Speaker 2: so that's in two years right now. These targets are
Speaker 2: completely you know, a logical They defy reality. And the
Speaker 2: reason for that, Luke, is that renewable energy is whether
Speaker 2: dependent and it's intermittent and it cannot be relied upon
Speaker 2: to provide power whenever it's needed. And we actually witness
Speaker 2: that this week because Eastern Australia, as is so often
Speaker 2: during winter. It happened last year in New South Wales,
Speaker 2: the entire Eastern Australia, so talking you know, Brisbane, New
Speaker 2: South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and act it experienced a
Speaker 2: wind drought and it lasted for days on end. Now
Speaker 2: what a wind drought is, As I said, this often
Speaker 2: happens during winter. It's when you basically have very low wind,
Speaker 2: which means you get very low wind wind generation from
Speaker 2: wind turbines. And this is coincided with obviously being winter
Speaker 2: where you got shorter days and you get less sunshine,
Speaker 2: so you obviously get less solar. Now let's you get
Speaker 2: some data here which have pulled off the National Energy Market,
Speaker 2: which is basically you know, the Federal Government's website which
Speaker 2: tracks where all energy comes from, and it showed it
Speaker 2: in the forty eight hours between eleventh and twelfth for June.
Speaker 2: And to be honest with that, I could have picked
Speaker 2: the twelfth or thirteenth of June. But you know when
Speaker 2: I was writing this up, I could have replaced this
Speaker 2: with another set which said exactly the same thing. The
Speaker 2: wind and solar combined over that forty eight hours provided
Speaker 2: only fourteen percent of Australias electricity generation because we had
Speaker 2: the windrow and battery storyge only provided one percent, right,
Speaker 2: so it's fifteen percent if you count batteries now. Fossil fuels,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, because we are in the middle
Speaker 2: of the winter, provided seventy four percent of Eastern Australias
Speaker 2: electricity generation and the forty eight hour period, now that
Speaker 2: that is coal sixty percent and gas. I've left hydra
Speaker 2: out of there because hydro can't we can't scale it up.
Speaker 2: It's just basically it's there every day. But the fact
Speaker 2: matter is that the federal government wants to get rid
Speaker 2: of our coal and gas, well coal through to predominantly
Speaker 2: in the next few years, replace it with this renewable stuff.
Speaker 2: But the renewable stuff doesn't supply when we need it.
Speaker 2: And this was shown this week and for example, at
Speaker 2: seven to fifty pm on Thursday night, when obviously the
Speaker 2: sun had gone down, only three percent of it the
Speaker 2: whole Eastern Australia's electricity generation was came from wind. The
Speaker 2: solar was zero obviously because there's no sun, and batteries
Speaker 2: only provided two percent. This is a seven fifty. This
Speaker 2: is a snapshot. Meanwhile, coal fifty four percent, gas twenty
Speaker 2: three percent combined to contributed seventy seven percent of Eastern
Speaker 2: Australias generation. So theilarious thing here, Luke is earlier this
Speaker 2: week in Victoria. I'm using Victoria obviously not talking to
Speaker 2: Victorian audience, but this is relevant. Victoria experienced and aren't
Speaker 2: expected outage at one of its old coal fire generators
Speaker 2: and it basically led to the renewables lobby coming out saying,
Speaker 2: see Cole's unreliable. Therefore we need to expand renewables to
Speaker 2: get off coal because coal cannot be trusted because there
Speaker 2: was a breakdown. Right, so that there's this outfit I
Speaker 2: call them a propaganda said renew economy. They just write
Speaker 2: less garbage about renewables all the time and just integrate
Speaker 2: any sort of fossil fuels good. And they and they
Speaker 2: wrote an article which said, quote that the your lawn
Speaker 2: coal plant outage quote underscores the urgent need to build
Speaker 2: enough solar, wind and storage to replace them and highlights
Speaker 2: the folly of sweating aging coal assets past the years
Speaker 2: by dates. That's a direct quote. Now. Hilariously, when this
Speaker 2: article came out, the muppet who wrote this wrote it
Speaker 2: during a wind rout when the renewables clap crashed almost zero,
Speaker 2: and they couldn't see they they couldn't see the irony
Speaker 2: that they're calling coal unreliable because there was a out
Speaker 2: each one of the generators. When literally we had a
Speaker 2: wind drout and coal and win the solar combined, we're
Speaker 2: providing bugger or electricity. And the reality here, Luke, is
Speaker 2: that the most unreliable part of the energy system is
Speaker 2: actually intermittent where the dependent renewables because the only work
Speaker 2: when the sun shines, the wind blows, and we never
Speaker 2: know when the wind's going to blow, and the sun
Speaker 2: only shines through the middle of day injury, and if
Speaker 2: it's overcast you get very little of it. Yet yet
Speaker 2: the government and these lobby groups and everyone are trying
Speaker 2: to say we need to get rid of stable baseload
Speaker 2: power and just basically rely on the wind which may
Speaker 2: or may not arrive and the sun, which obviously during
Speaker 2: winter is pretty unreliable. And these same people won't admit
Speaker 2: it that aging coal fire power plants remain the foundation
Speaker 2: of the country's electricity supply. And that was proven this
Speaker 2: week when renewables failed and they could not cover the gap.
Speaker 2: So it's crazy stuff, mate. And so it's what I've
Speaker 2: been saying over and over again is instead of going
Speaker 2: down this road, we need reliable baseload power, otherwise we
Speaker 2: will literally face blackouts and soaring energy prices. Now the
Speaker 2: way I see, we've got two options. First of all,
Speaker 2: we could replace or refurbish the existing coal fire generators.
Speaker 2: So they obviously do need renovation. They're very old, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But they're already all the transmissions already built, right, so
Speaker 2: all the infrastructure is already there. But yes, they do
Speaker 2: need some work, and that, honestly is my favorite option.
Speaker 1: Look, I'm with you. I you know, I was drinking
Speaker 1: the I don't want to say the nuclear kool aid,
Speaker 1: but I will because I understand. Then you can just
Speaker 1: go your hardest and have generation knowing it to missions
Speaker 1: free if that's a thing, had that everywhere. But look,
Speaker 1: I think that argument, that argument was probably lost. It
Speaker 1: was probably lost on misinformation and poor salesmanship. It seems
Speaker 1: to me, our only option, and again you know the
Speaker 1: mother law scare campaigns, but you don't have to do
Speaker 1: much high efficiency, lower mission coal. And if people are
Speaker 1: so worried about the emissions that come from coal, then
Speaker 1: whatever we burn here reduce what will reduce what we
Speaker 1: export by that and that might even touch asides, but
Speaker 1: that we don't have to rewire anything that's a trillion
Speaker 1: dollars potentially. This to me is a no brainer.
Speaker 2: I'm with you, yea one hundred percent. So the second
Speaker 2: member is, yes, toll is carbon intensive one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Is that Australia exports five times as much coal as
Speaker 2: as we can shoot in domestically, So why not just
Speaker 2: export a little bit less and burn more ourselves and
Speaker 2: the world's climate would be no worse off? Right, No,
Speaker 2: But but then again I actually think we should probably
Speaker 2: go down the nuclear road as well. You know, but
Speaker 2: it'll take a while, but do obviously, because you know,
Speaker 2: nuclear is the only way to achieve lower missions and
Speaker 2: stable reliable power, Like the only way you can get
Speaker 2: both is through nuclear, because you can run a twenty
Speaker 2: four to seven it's not whether dependent, it's zero emission. Yes,
Speaker 2: the upfront costs are very high, but so renewables and storage,
Speaker 2: and renewables and storage storage are making batteries and you know,
Speaker 2: building pump high dress stations and that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: That stuff is completely unreliable and intermittent, and it's going
Speaker 2: to cost a bomb, whereas we could actually just build
Speaker 2: some nuclear generators where some of the old coal fired
Speaker 2: generators were, where there's transmission lines and that sort of thing. Yes,
Speaker 2: it will cost a lot of money, but you know
Speaker 2: it's going to be stable. It'll give you a sixty
Speaker 2: year lifespan. Is renewables have to be replaced, you know,
Speaker 2: fifteen to twenty years, so you have to keep replacing them.
Speaker 2: Batteries you've got to turn over all the time, you
Speaker 2: know when a solar and wind turbines don't last more
Speaker 2: than twenty years, So that the environmental footprint of nuclear
Speaker 2: is way better. You know, one bunton sized warehouse sized
Speaker 2: generator can create the same amount of energy is probably
Speaker 2: you know, four hundred plus wind turbines which are spread
Speaker 2: out all over the place and need concrete footings, You
Speaker 2: need to clear a whole bunch of land. All the
Speaker 2: resources that go into that is insane. Now, it was
Speaker 2: very interesting this week Luke so UK has gone down
Speaker 2: the same zero delusion as US, and they've got a
Speaker 2: guy called Ed Milliband who's their Energy minister, who's just
Speaker 2: like Chris Bowen, he's an absolute zealot. But even the
Speaker 2: UK came out at the start of the week and
Speaker 2: they said that the renewables aren't working properly, it's not reliable,
Speaker 2: so we're going to build out nuclear. So even the
Speaker 2: UK has gone down this road. And Ed Millerban, who's
Speaker 2: just as much of a zelot as Chris Bowen said,
Speaker 2: he declared quote a golden age for British Britain's nuclear industry.
Speaker 2: So so how is that Australia, that holds the world's
Speaker 2: largest deposits of uranium, has banded nuclear power in banded
Speaker 2: nuclear is the source of generation when these other countries,
Speaker 2: like pretty much everywhere else in the world bar Us
Speaker 2: in New Zealand, are going down to the nuclear roid.
Speaker 2: We literally have the world's biggest deposits of uranium, so
Speaker 2: we could go down this road and we've got the
Speaker 2: we're the second biggest, so we're the biggest coal exporter
Speaker 2: in the world, so we could be doing that as well,
Speaker 2: and we're obviously one of the biggest, the second biggest
Speaker 2: gas exporter. But we think there's stupid thing here is
Speaker 2: that we deny our cells access to our own energy,
Speaker 2: our own coal, our own gas, and our own uranium,
Speaker 2: and we'd sell this stuff to the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: We give the rest of the world cheap energy, and
Speaker 2: then we starve ourselves and then we you know, and
Speaker 2: then we say, oh no, no, we know we can't
Speaker 2: burn this stuff. We've got to go down this renewables road,
Speaker 2: which which in times of winter when there's not much
Speaker 2: sun or we have these winds routs which happened regularly,
Speaker 2: they just don't work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy, It is crazy. It is crazy. And
Speaker 1: the best of interests and the you know, the people
Speaker 1: with Daddy's billions who get the government subsidies in the
Speaker 1: billions and just make the easy ride. I mean, there'll
Speaker 1: be a day. Tell me who the champion of the
Speaker 1: week is. I think we've got some champions time views
Speaker 1: at Who have you gone with.
Speaker 2: Mate, mate, I've gone with journalist Chris Willman. Yes, now,
Speaker 2: now you know former ABC. Now he does some stuff
Speaker 2: with Sky and some others. But the yeah, mate, Christian
Speaker 2: Wilman gave a fantastic he's been right on this energy
Speaker 2: stuff and he's done excellent work, done a great documentaries,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And anyway, it was on the John Anderson
Speaker 2: podcast a week ago and I watched the whole thing
Speaker 2: and it was fantastic and he actually predicted pretty much
Speaker 2: what happened this week, right, So literally a week before
Speaker 2: it happened, he said that the He said, basically, I
Speaker 2: tell you what's going to happen to the East Coast
Speaker 2: energy market. We are running our last coal fire power
Speaker 2: plants about as hard as we can, is what he said.
Speaker 2: He said, one day, when the sun's not shining and
Speaker 2: the wind's not blowing, and probably in the middle of
Speaker 2: winter when it's really quite cold, one of those big
Speaker 2: coal fire power plants is going to give out. It
Speaker 2: will break because the stress it's under. And then we'll
Speaker 2: see the energy ministers come out and say, see we
Speaker 2: told you old power break down. You know, we need
Speaker 2: more renewables, that sort of thing. And that is exactly
Speaker 2: what happened this week, all right. So one of you know,
Speaker 2: as I said, Victoria's coal generators went down the renewables
Speaker 2: lobby came out and said straight away. See coal's unreliable.
Speaker 2: This is why we need more renewables. And this is
Speaker 2: exactly what Chris Juman predicted a link before it happened,
Speaker 2: and it has played out exactly as he said. And
Speaker 2: you know, anyone who wants to learn more on this topic,
Speaker 2: I highly recommend that you go on YouTube, for example
Speaker 2: and search for Chris Juhlman and renewables and power and
Speaker 2: energy and that sort of things. He's done some fantastic
Speaker 2: work in the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he really has, right, I mate, have a great weekend,
Speaker 1: take care and talk to you in a week's time.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Lead fan ONNSOLIN Chris the Juelman. Big fan
Speaker 1: of his work, as you well know.