NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean is on a collision course with the State’s powerful Parliamentary Development Committee which has warned renewable energy is incapable of meeting growth demands.
Mr Kean, who hopes to reduce State carbon emissions by 35 per cent by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2050, is under pressure to back away from his pet project by the cross-Party committee findings.
Committee member Natasha Maclaren-Jones said last week the committee had found renewables alone were neither “viable” nor “reliable”.
“We found that a composition of wind and solar firmed with gas, batteries and pumped hydro energy sources is not a viable solution to meet the demand of electricity at a reliable and efficient rate,” the NSW Liberal MP said.
“Australians want reliable, cheap and clean energy and the best way to do that is with a mix of coal, gas, renewable and nuclear.”
Ms Maclaren-Jones said the government’s responsibility was to serve the citizens – not push pet projects.
“We have a responsibility to examine all options and deliver reliable, clean and cheap power,” she said.
“Businesses need reliable cheap power, especially during these economically challenging times, and the best way to deliver this is with an energy mix.
IRONIC
“I find it ironic that the people who protest against the use of uranium are the same people who proclaim that more must be done to protect the environment.”
The eight-member Parliamentary Development Committee is a cross-Party panel consisting of MPs from the Liberal Party (2), Labor (2), Nationals (2) and one each from the Shooters, Farmers & Fishers and the Animal Justice parties.
It has a broad reach of inquiry overseeing planning, infrastructure, finance, industry and environmental issues.
Ms Maclaren-Jones said the committee had recently conducted an inquiry into lifting a ban on uranium mining in NSW and the use of nuclear energy.
“We are happy to export it, to the benefit of other nations, but not use it ourselves as a way of providing an economical means of power generation to our citizens,” she said.
EXCLUSION
“To me that doesn’t make any sense.
“Modern nuclear reactors are small, modular and safer than any other energy generation method.
“Furthermore, there is no compelling environmental or safety evidence given in the inquiry that would justify a blanket exclusion of nuclear energy being considered as a reliable clean and cheap energy source.”
Mr Kean, whose ministerial portfolio includes energy, has contradicted the Development Committee’s findings saying renewables were the “cheapest and most reliable” form of electricity.
“We know from the CSIRO that the cheapest form of reliable electricity today is a combination of wind, solar, batteries and pumped hydro,” he told green website Renew Economy earlier this year.
“The benefit of those technologies is that they’re not only cheap and reliable, they’re also cleaner.
“I’m not going to have ideology get in the way of the decision-making processes. I want to make decisions based on the economics, based on the science and based on the facts.
“That’s why we’re moving towards new technologies and transitioning our grids by building renewable energy.”
According to The Conversation’s FactCheck website the marginal cost of generating power from an existing coal station is less than $40/MWh, while wind power is $60-70/MWh.PC
If NSW liberal party members have any collective courage or moral imperative at all, they will stand up to and expel Matt Kean and his cohort, whose policies have hurt wildlife and poor people so much, and damaged the national interest and economy so badly.
They vehemently opposed clearing the fuel load from forests and elsewhere. The consequence was the massive and totally unnecessary scale of last summer’s bushfires, which they then cowardly claimed was a consequence of global warming, and not the result of their enforced policies. So much wildlife and so many koalas died such terrible deaths as a result, and then other injured koalas then became easy prey to wild dogs. No-one who had any heart or decency would have done what they did, as what happened was well within their foresight of the consequences of their actions.
Similarly, the greens in Victoria likewise stopped the clearing round people’s homes in the 2009 bushfires, which killed about 180 people. One property owner who took on the greens, cleared round his property, and consequently managed to survive whilst his nearby neighbours died, was still apparently fined $50,000-00 for so doing afterward.
The answer to the Greens and like liberal and labor green responsible decision makers in these regards, is to put them before the courts on charges of manslaughter, and have them face a jury of their peers.
Their energy policies greatly increase the cost of electricity, which has caused huge hardship, resultant stress and mental anguish to pensioners, who can’t pay their bills. Energy costs are a critical impost on manufacturing, and as the greens have utilised subsidies on green power to raise prices, businesses have closed their doors and workers have lost their jobs, who are only trying to provide for their families.
If Kean and the Greens really believed that it was necessary to reduce emissions to save the planet, then why would they vehemently oppose nuclear power, which is now safe, has no emissions, and little remaining residue! They have not nominated any other currently available, baseload power alternative. If the planet is warming at the alarming rate that they claim, then there should be no need for their sympathisers in the Bureau of Meteorology to falsify the temperature records from past decades to show a bias, which is not what the public purse pays them to do. However, these employees will never be able to go back in time to change the recorded temperatures shown in the country’s newspapers since the 1800’s, so they will always be on a hiding to nothing in these regards.
Anyone who seeks to debate their climate science is branded a heretic, as their totalitarian view of the world does not brook dissent. None of their number are prepared to debate the likes of Ian Plimer, inferring their lack of confidence in their premises put. Tim Flannery’s climate and rainfall predictions for instance have been ridiculed by time.
As the greens and sympathisers have put up the cost of power and not allowed the export of uranium, so creating unemployment and loss of productivity, and lowering what living standards would have otherwise been, plus burnt out farmers (who feed us) and wildlife, they remain to be properly called to account for their actions. An analogy of sorts would be when it was decided after World War 2 not to put Germany’s Das Reich on trial for the mass wholesale slaughter of french village inhabitants in 1944, on the dubious premise of national reconciliation.
These generic greens are also proponents of frightening and brainwashing our school children into believing their ideology. They also want young children to be taught how homosexuals have sex in school, gender fluidity and other subjects, and the indirect outcome of their efforts will be the destruction of family life and young children’s innocence, should we fail to stand up to them. Their like seek to destroy statues, deny our history and re-write the past, as totalitarians do.
Their denial of history and fact underlines the ridiculous nature of their premises put, and it’s time to bell the cat, so as to safeguard our children, grandchildren and way of life, and move on from all their demonstrably proven dangerous nonsense.
Man made global warming is a hoax because historically it has been shown that the Earth meanders its orbit around the sun because it can, rather than travel in a formal geometric orbit. History is a subject avoided in much of our curriculum, these days because of the influence of those who want to economically profit from Renewables. But history shows that the Earth has warmed and cooled for milleniums every few hundred years, because of this meandering orbit. A meteor crashing into the Earth some thousands of years ago changed the climate to a temporary ice age, but human ego wont do it. Someone would have to go out into space and physically hold the Earth on a formal geometric rather than allow it to meander as it does to be able to claim ‘Man Made Global Warming’. But good luck with that attempt!!
Ms McLaren-Jones is right, we should be mining our uranium and building some small, modular nuclear reactors. However I would add that we should also be building some HELE coal-fired power plants as Japan is doing.
These two solid, reliable power sources are absolutely right, absolutely necessary for modern, progressive Australia.
As for relying on renewables, Mr. Keane should look at the massive shortage of electricity CALIFORNIA is experiencing at present. They ‘went green’ and as a consequence they are now blacking out!
Forget renewables! They are unreliable, oft-needing-to-be renewed and only suitable for supplementing small town, domestic consumption.
Our commercial world, businesses, industries and institutions MUST BE PROVIDED WITH THE PRODIGIOUS AND RELIABLE 24 HOUR POWER THEY NEED! This is one of the most important functions of any Government.