Monday 17th February 2025

The first “Inconvenient Truth” occurred in 2006 when Al Gore exposed global warming to the world [1]. Now a “Second Inconvenient Truth” is that avoiding global warming will require all forms of zero carbon energy, not just renewables. The Australian Government has been slow to admit they’ve failed us, by relying on gas, as outlined by AEMO [2]. They’ve also left a range of zero-carbon technologies, unexplored including nuclear carbon capture and clean carbon technologies [3].

Some Inconvenient truths:

1. Energy density of renewables is very low compared to coal and nuclear power.
2. Thousands of wind turbines are needed to match the output of a single power station.
3. Solar power is produced when the sun shines, not when load demands dictate.
4. Battery storage is extremely expensive and inadequate to run city scale grids.
5. The life of  batteries are around 10 to 15 years, making ongoing replacement unaffordable.
6. Exposure to corrosion of turbines and solar panels, makes their life far shorter than nuclear.
7. Large grids are costly, environmental & socially damaging and don’t prevent wind droughts.
8. Transmission is a significant cost often ignored in moving wind power over long distances.
9. Grid reliability is compromised by solar and wind being intermittent and non-synchronous.

So why the WWS delusion:

1. Advocates  prefer  renewables for net-zero, without nuclear, even if it doesn’t work.
2. Inner city elites don’t care about environmental and social impacts, in rural communities.
3. No one counts the waste from renewables projects and batteries, being unsustainable.
4. Billionaire investors don’t care if it works, with guaranteed profits locked in by government.
5. Big players have the funds to overcome objections from rural and environmental groups.
6. Governments maintain the illusion they care, advocating 100% renewables to the electorate.
7. Anti-nuclear activists justify have a solution even if it doesn’t work without a lot of gas.

Example of the “Second Inconvenient Truth”

Compare an existing coal power plant (CPP) with wind Australia’s largest turbines:
Loy Yang Coal Power Plant Output = 3,280 MW Capacity Factor = 0.9 approx	Number of wind turbines = (3,280 x 0.9)/(6 x 0.3) = 1,640 Loy Yang = 1,640 wind turbines
Wind Turbine Vestas V150-6 Output = 6MW Capacity Factor = 0.3 (approx.)	Life of a Loy Yang = 80 years Wind turbine life span = 20 years Loy Yang = 4 x 1,640 = 6,560 (needed)

Loy Yang Power Station A&B Adobe Stock: Daria Nipot	Mount Emerald Wind Farm (multiply x 100) Steven Nowakowski [4]

The Mount Emerald photo shows 15 wind turbines [4], over 100 times this number of wind turbines 1,640 needed to balance the coal power station, or a nuclear power plant with 2 or 3 reactors. AEMO Step Change Model have 61,000GW of onshore wind turbines by 2050, or over 10,000 of the biggest 6GW and over 10,000km of transmission lines for the National Electricity Market NEM [5], up the East Coast of Australia, the impact of these are outlined in Table 1.

Wind Farm and Transmission Line Positions	Wealthy Energy Companies and billionaire investors	Communities and the environmentally concerned
Visual impacts from turning natural beauty to industrialized	Pay our way through the planning process, and crush any objections.	Suffer wide-spread industrialization, and the loss beautiful, natural bush.
The quantum of damage from overbuilding wind is not considered	Get approvals one at a time, so the overall scale and damage isn’t appreciated.	Try to raise awareness of the quantum of the problem, see Steven Nowakowski videos.
Approvals processes fail to address real environmental impacts	Use hand-picked, paid experts to downplay all environmental issues.	Rely on unpaid support from experts, brave enough to stand up to big business
Wind turbines on the Great Divide are not scalable	Select the best wind sites from Qld to Vic along the Great Divide.	Look beyond current approvals, 2050 targets and 2100, it isn’t practical.
Rural communities effected by wind turbines and transmission lines	Compensate based on biased, paid, expert reports that downplay losses.	Don’t fully appreciate the financial losses, social dislocation and harm.

References

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/An-Inconvenient-Truth

[2] https://aemo.com.au/energy-systems/major-publications/integrated-system-plan-isp/2024-integrated-system-plan-isp

[3] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Nuclear-a-vital-tool-in-achieving-decarbonisation,

[4] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-27/wind-turbines-for-atherton-tablelands-farm-arrive-in-cairns/100786196

[5] https://ipa.org.au/research/energy-security-is-national-security-a-framework-for-better-energy-outcomes-in-australia