Just as Anthony Albanese was touring the Great Wall of China, kowtowing to President Xi and walking away from our military alliance with the United States, Chris Bowen was in Germany seeking to bolster his case for green hydrogen and other green energy boondoggles to foist upon the long-suffering energy consumers of Australia.

But the real lesson to learn from Germany is that the promise of a green energy utopia is a dreadful illusion. Germany was one of the first countries whose government chose to eschew fossil-fired and nuclear power generation and the results have been disastrous. Germany was once an industrial powerhouse acclaimed for its high quality manufacturing capability and its productivity. But in the wake of this cult-like obsession with renewable energy it has become a country with the highest electricity costs in Europe necessitating de-industrialisation and the spectacular loss of manufacturing jobs. Labour unions are protesting against this unhealthy trend which has resulted in the loss of 100,000 manufacturing jobs in just the last twelve months.

The slavish commitment to renewable energy has largely been an overwhelming obsession for many Western governments. They have severely compromised their economies in pursuit of this mythical Holy Grail. And to our astonishment, we don’t have a noble Sir Galahad pursuing this ideal for us, we have a very lacklustre Chris Bowen!

Despite the fervent zeal of the renewable energy advocates, their efforts have come to naught. While we have capitulated to this net zero emissions propaganda, worldwide CO² emissions have continued to increase. And in aggregate, even in the developed world where seemingly otherwise sane governments have committed to renewable energy target fantasies, barely a dent has been made in the contribution of fossil fuelled generation in meeting electricity demand.

Whilst woke Western democracies have been promoting the benefits of renewable energy, more pragmatic developing countries have been trying to augment their electricity generation, understanding that this is a route to greater prosperity and the best thing they can do for their countries is to ensure they provide as much energy as they can at the lowest cost. And despite the protestations of Chris Bowen and others, this normally means the use of fossil-fuels!

Meanwhile in Australia we have seen the closure of such industries as glass making and fertiliser production just because of soaring energy prices. We are barely hanging on to any metals refining and that only through more and more generous government subsides.  (As I write Glencore is threatening to close down its copper smelting in Mt Isa and its copper refining in Townsville because of high energy costs.)

In the last twelve months we have seen the closure of over 500 small businesses, many due to crippling energy costs.

In the Albanese government’s first term 29,500 businesses were bankrupted and you can rest assured that many of those businesses failed because of rising energy costs.

Meanwhile the Albanese government has a pipe dream of recreating manufacturing industry in Australia. Yet its own energy policy and industrial relations policies virtually ensures that such a resurgence is impossible!

Bowen claims renewable energy is the cheapest form of generation, and when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing the incremental cost of renewable technologies is close to zero. But this ignores the inherent difficulties with renewable energy. In modern economies it is essential for electricity to be available at all times. Because of the huge variability in the load factor of renewable installations we must keep online a huge amount of despatchable generation to ensure continuity of supply when renewable generation inevitably wane so that we can have confidence that our hospitals will continue to function, our smelters don’t freeze up and our traffic lights don’t fail.

Predictions of renewable energy displacing fossil-fired generation have always been dependent on huge amounts of energy storage capability. Battery storage is still hugely expensive and can only provide short term support.

The other storage option is pumped-storage hydro. Australia is a relatively flat country and therefore suitable sites for both conventional hydro and pumped-storage hydro are relatively few. The history of Snowy 2.0 should also prove a stark warning about the capital cost of this particular technology at any useful scale.

Without huge improvements in electricity storage capacity it is impossible for renewables to displace fossil-fuelled generation.

Moreover, renewable energy installations are comparatively small scale compared with fossil-fuelled plant (and nuclear) and are widely dispersed.  Consequently the cost of aggregating these energy sources onto the electricity grid is very high.

So Chris Bowen and his fellow renewable energy zealots conveniently disregard these additional costs that must be incurred to allow renewable generation to make a contribution to meeting our electricity demand.

In a recent article in The Australian, journalist Chris Uhlman quoted US Energy Secretary, Chris Wright who was being interrogated by a congressional committee. (Unlike Australia’s Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, Chris Wright has run an energy company and has degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering.) He told the committee (with respect to renewable energy generators):

 If you are not there at peak demand you are just a parasite on the grid because you just make the other sources turn up and down as you come and go.

Our electricity markets have rewarded low-value electricity and we’ve subsidised it to put more of it on. We need to have people bidding in a market place that are both delivering the same product which is 24/7 electricity, because that is the only thing customers will buy.

This is a succinct account of the malaise of renewable energy.

Labor’s obsession with renewable energy also displays a marked political movement away from its traditional values. Labor’s major constituency in my youth were blue-collared workers, pensioners and the marginalised. But its renewable energy push is designed to garner the support of middle class voters, those from the leafy inner suburbs of our major cities.

The government offers opportunities for citizens to insulate themselves from the higher cost of renewable energy by providing subsidies to install roof-top solar panels and battery storage.

But even with government subsidies these ameliorative measures are still not cheap and are certainly beyond the financial capacity of most pensioners and blue collar workers to access.

As well as this, those businesses and industries that have succumbed to or are under threat from high energy costs have been disproportionally those that employ blue collar workers.

As a result of these influences, it would seem to me that if the opposition abandoned this foolish net zero target and were articulate in their explanation about how this might bring economic benefits to blue collar workers and the worst off in our society they could unleash a significant political advantage.

There is also increasing alarm in rural communities at the devastation that renewable energy projects are unleashing in regional Australia. The construction of transmission lines, the erection of wind turbines and the construction of solar arrays are having devastating impacts on arable farm lands, pastoral properties and bushland that provides important native habitat.

This has come about largely because Labor is competing with the Greens to win the support of inner city elites. Rural communities who are becoming tired of being the scapegoats in this insane rush for renewables are starting to organise in opposition and the government needs to tread more carefully if they are not to completely alienate these constituents.

In the wake of their humiliating defeat at the last election, the Coalition is doing some soul-searching with respect to their policies. There are elements of both the Liberal Party and the National Party that are now questioning continued support for net zero. There is no doubt that if they are to regain relevance they need policies that emphatically differentiate themselves from Labor. If the Conservatives are pragmatic the abandonment of the net zero fantasy could prove to be a strategy for their political revival.

The opposition prospered when it opposed the net zero mantra. But in the last two elections they were seduced by the arrant nonsense of having to appeal to the inner city elites and by doing so alienated their traditional base.

Moreover, even whilst Bowen won’t admit it, significant elements of his “green dream” are falling apart. To begin with his much vaunted push for “green hydrogen” has come to naught with, as far as I can tell, all his proposed projects now collapsing.  Along with this in recent months many of the large scale wind projects he has been trumpeting have fallen by the wayside as well.

Embracing the net zero target is foolish on many fronts.

Some salient points I would make in conclusion are:

• Australia is a minor contributor to atmospheric CO² pollution and nothing we can do will have any discernible effect on world climate.
• Far from being the lowest cost energy, as I explained above, when all the associated costs are added, renewables are far more expensive than traditional fossil-fuelled generation, (If you don’t believe me just check the rising energy bills you have had to cope with in recent years!).
• The pursuit of net zero resulting in high energy costs is deindustrialising Australia, reducing employment and compromising our international competitiveness.

It is time to abandon this fantasy!