Now they’re talking in $trillions, the mere $billions in wind and solar subsidies pocketed so far sounds like chump change.

When we’re talking about subsidies to wind and solar, where including all the thoroughly unnecessary associated costs, like new pumped-hydro schemes; giant lithium-ion batteries; additional fast-start peaking plants (either diesel or gas); and tens of thousands of kilometres of additional transmission lines to bring occasional power from far-flung places to market. And that’s why the total cost of what taxpayers and power consumers are required to stump up for the grand wind and solar ‘transition’ is being spoken about in terms of multiple $trillions.

As Alan Moran explains below, the wind and solar industries’ demand for subsidies is simply insatiable. However, power consumers and taxpayers are unlikely to keep stumping up the amounts now being demanded by those profiting from the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time.

Retrieving Australia’s energy policy disaster
Spectator Australia
Alan Moran
29 February 2024

Australian governments are in denial but it’s clear that the great green revolution they planned for energy supply has failed abysmally. Supply has become precarious and electricity prices to households and commercial users alike are skyrocketing. This is threatening the ongoing viability of industries like nickel and aluminium smelting where energy accounts for a third of the costs.

Rather than abandoning the folly of an energy policy dictated by ideology and bereft of industry knowledge, governments are responding with ever more market interventions. These attempts to remedy the adverse effects of the interventions already in place will aggravate the economic injuries.

Federal and state government measures impose a cost on energy customers of $10 billion per year. These measures include regulations plus direct spending on wind/solar and the costs of system management, transmission, and battery support to counter their poor reliability.

New programs are constantly being announced. But anyone who thinks the government can accurately forecast the costs of these should recall that its original announcement to convert the Snowy system into a pumped hydro storage had a price tag of an estimated $2 billion – that has now grown to $20 billion.

Among Canberra’s more recent new initiatives is the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS), which is to provide further direct assistance to wind and solar and for battery storage to combat the shortcomings of those electricity generation sources. The government said this policy would ‘unleash’ $10 billion of investment. Even renewable-friendly voices suggest the CIS will cost the taxpayer over $30 billion out of a $50 billion national spend. Others estimate that a minimum of 7 days of storage is required and that the forced abandonment of the existing coal facilities will require at least 3,600 GWh of battery storage at a cost of $1,800 billion ($500M per GWh) and that would need replacement every 10 years.

Placing these numbers in perspective, replacing Australia’s 21 gigawatts of existing coal plant – which supplies over 60 per cent of electricity – would cost $3 billion per gigawatt or $63 billion with no need for battery backup or additional transmission. The existing coal plant actually provides some 13,000 GWh of storage.

A previously unanticipated subsidy is the compensation to coal generators as a result of the Ukraine War’s effect on global energy prices.

Compensation for generators’ additional coal cost is estimated at $1.85 billion. In previous years, reimbursing such costs would have been out of the question. Moreover, any additional costs would have been modest until recently. This is because coal generators were (and mainly remain) co-located with coal mines. Victorian brown coal is non-transportable and, being abundant, its costs remain insulated from international energy prices. But NSW and Queensland black coal used by Australian generators is also largely untradeable as it is mainly of a lower quality than that required by overseas generators.

Moreover, most generators were either commonly owned or closely contracted to their coal source. Those using coal that may have export potential are Eraring and Mount Piper in NSW and Gladstone in Queensland. Gladstone is half-owned by Rio Tinto which, seemingly under pressure from Woke politicians and shareholders, sold its mines. Rio declared that this delivers ‘exceptional value to our shareholders’ and it would surely be double-dipping if it also received compensation for what, in retrospect, was a poor commercial decision. However, if unreimbursed, Rio would shut the Boyne Island aluminium smelter in an act that would reveal the enormity of the government-induced energy policy disaster (with a state election
looming).

Energy-intensive industries like smelting were originally attracted to Australia in the wake of oil price hikes 40 years ago and most industries received a fillip in their competitiveness because Australian coal was insulated from cost impacts from the global increase in oil prices. Political actions have changed all this and energy-intensive industries are now being kept open only by a mounting series of ad hoc subsidies to counter the adverse impact of the very subsidies governments themselves have put in place.

The fact is that the electricity and gas industries are now totally under government control and subject to the associated political whims and inefficiencies. Governments have conspired with others to create the myth of cheap wind and solar, while traducing the superiority of coal (and gas and nuclear). The impetus for this were ill-founded concerns about climate change and a conviction that Australia could prevent this by closing down coal (and gas) at little or no cost. Instead of allowing that belief to be tested in a market, governments tilted the playing field thereby destroying the nation’s comparative advantage.

Politicians are now discovering the economic and, above all, political penalty being incurred in terms of overpriced energy. To restore past efficiencies, a start would require removing all energy subsidies, discriminatory requirements, and restraints on new power stations (including nuclear – though for eastern Australia, given the fabulous low-cost coal and gas resources, this is unlikely to be commercial). Sadly, such a hands-off policy approach is anathematic to most current politicians who, like supporters of full socialism, attribute past political disasters to their predecessors’ failure to do it properly.
The Spectator

From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog

Cliff Mass

During the past six months, research scientist David Ovens and I have worked intensively on the meteorology of the August 2023 Maui wildfires and have completed a paper that was accepted in an American Meteorological Society journal with a few revisions.

This blog will describe our results, some of which provide different conclusions than those discussed in many media accounts.

The City of Lahaina with the West Maui Mountains to the east before the fire.To start, it is important to note that there were multiple fires on August 8-9, 2023 (see map below). On Maui, Lahaina was destroyed by one fire and there were large fires in the generally rural area of central Maui. Substantial fires also occurred over the Kohala area of northwest Hawaii.

The August 2023 wildfires were associated with strong, dry downslope winds gusting to 60-80 mph.

But why did it happen?

An unusually strong high-pressure area developed to the north of Hawaii (see map below), which resulted in very strong northeasterly trade winds approaching the West Maui (and other) mountains.  

Importantly, the subtropical inversion, a stable layer often evident over Hawaii, was unusually low (because of the high pressure).  

The strong trade winds and inversion were optimally positioned to produce a high amplitude mountain wave downstream of the West Maui mountains, a wave that resulted in intense and very dry downslope winds on the west slopes of the terrain (see cross section of winds and temperature for northwest Maui, below). 

 The winds that descended into Lahaina and initiated and spread the fire.

Look closely at the above figure and you can see a hydraulic jump structure, not unlike the situation accompanying water descending a dam ( see below).

This structure was even evident in the clouds and smoke the day of the Lahaina fire (see below)

One of the most amazing aspects of this event was that it was forecast nearly perfectly DAYS before by operational models and certainly by the research model I am using (WRF). 

 Below are the predicted surface winds on Maui for a short (17-h) forecast, as well as predictions 41, 89, and 137 hours in advance.    All are similar and very accurate.  The star shows the position of Lahaina; red and brown show the strongest winds.

The National Weather Service HRRR model was similarly accurate.   There was no excuse for not warning the population of a terrible threat.

There was a lot of talk about the role of Hurricane Dora, which passed about 800 miles to the south of Hawaii (see satellite imagery below).  Many media outlets and some politicians blamed the strong winds on Dora.  

But is this true?  The wind circulation of the storm was not large in scale, so the direct winds of Dora would not be a factor, but what about indirect effects?

 David Ovens and I came up with a way to determine Dora’s impact with some confidence.

We started with an excellent 6.5-day forecast of the Maui winds and the hurricane.  Then we weakened the storm by slightly cooling the surface around the storm.  Hurricanes are VERY sensitive to the temperature of the sea surface and require sea surface temperatures of at least 80F.

The result was a profoundly weakened storm (see the difference below for the flow around 5000 ft (850 hPa)

And now the exciting part.  The winds with the weakened (attenuated) storm were essentially the same as the full throttle beast  (see below).

Hurricane Dora played little role in the Maui wildfire disaster.

Finally, there was a lot of talk about the Maui fires being the result of drought and climate change, particularly from Hawaiian politicians, the power company whose lines failed. and some advocacy groups.

So we checked out the conditions before the fire. Turned out that precipitation around Lahaina was above normal BOTH for the summer and the previous year (see below)

And temperatures were near normal (not shown here, but in the paper).   Ironically, the heavy rain contributed to the fires by increasing the amount of grass upwind of Lahaina. 

In short, climate change or drought had little to do with this event.

The Bottom Line

Lahaina was a disaster ready to happen.   A human-caused disaster.  Large areas of highly flammable invasive grasses were just east of Lahaina.  Grasses growing in abandoned farmland.

The power infrastructure was poor and prone to wind damage.

The National Weather Service and local agencies did not make the best use of greatly improved weather forecast models.

Warnings were inadequate, and roads were blocked by powerline crews and fallen poles/lines.  

But the weather forecasts were stunningly good.  We have come a long, long way.

Hopefully, our paper and future work will contribute to ensuring this terrible tragedy never happens again.