Green Energy - a Stealth Tax

Forcing power retailers to buy expensive renewable energy has negligible effect on carbon dioxide emissions and no climate benefits, so it is all about buying green votes.

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The policy is obviously an insincere fraud. If politicians sincerely believed there is a critical need to cut CO2 emissions, they would investigate what France has done to generate 75% of their power using nuclear energy, or what Norway has done to get 97% of their power from hydro energy. Unlike wind power, these options generate reliable electricity cheaply, with zero CO2 emissions and without needing costly backup capacity from coal or gas plants. But there are no green votes in nuclear or hydro, and thus no proposals to build nuclear stations in the Latrobe or hydro stations in Tasmania. Wind farms have proved useless in critical times. During the recent frigid spell in UK, their wind turbines were becalmed and produced a ludicrous 0.4% of total UK power – reliable old coal stations were cranked up. Carbon fuels provided 81% of the heat and light for shivering Britons and nuclear, another 16%. Then during heat waves in Southern Australia, the contribution from wind generators was small and generally in periods of low demand. Things were worse in West Texas, where a sudden wind drop on the Texas Plains caused such instability in the power grid that the whole grid shut down. Denmark is finding its thousands of wind turbines a liability – they cannot use the unreliable power and have to sell it at a loss into the European power grid. Already wind towers are being scrapped in Europe so why is Australia still forcing consumers and taxpayers to subsidise these expensive playthings? Green power is just a stealth taxes on electricity consumers.

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