When I graduated from university with an engineering degree I felt decidedly incompetent compared to those who were my peers.

I have tremendous admiration for engineers.  They deal with and master technical complexities that leave me baffled. But, as Jordan Petersen has alluded, their competence is dealing with the Physical world and they often lack the requisite skills to deal with people.

Now this is a general statement and it would be wrong of me to infer that all engineers are not capable managers of people. As I found in the later years of my career there were some who were exemplary managers. But I would have to say they were the exception and not the rule.

After a few years working as an engineer, I eventually discovered that my real vocation was not doing clever things with plant and machinery but engaging and motivating people. Fortunately at quite an early age, I escaped into management.

I was appointed manager of my first power station at the grand old age of 26. (Mind you I had been acting power station manager a few times previous to that filling in for people on leave.)I then spent almost thirty years managing power stations before being appointed CEO of Stanwell Corporation where I was responsible for a number of generating assets.

Now why should I bother telling you this? It partly explains the disappointment I felt this week watching a video of the demolition of the stacks at Liddell Power Station in the Hunter Valley that AGL decommissioned a couple of years ago. Most observers seemed to get some sort of visceral thrill at the sight of the destruction of these magnificent structures, but I could only feel disappointment and, to be honest, some resentment.

This power station provided reliable generation for NSW and later after grid interconnection to the eastern states for some fifty years. It had a substantial generating capacity of 2,000 MW.

It is true the station had a long life and not only contributed significantly to the supply of energy. But it was also a substantial employer, employing hundreds of people and contributing generously to the local economy.

This is not unique to Liddell but is a common feature of all the major power stations that have been retired in recent decades.

Now after the demolition of Liddell, AGL intend to install a large battery bank on the site. This does not generate energy but merely stores it.  Such infrastructure is only required because of the growing level of intermittent renewable energy generation. When assuring us that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy, Chris Bowen neglects to tell us about such additional costs as the energy storage necessary and often the high cost of the transmission lines required to connect these disparate energy sources to the grid. The horrendously costly and vastly delayed Snowy 2.0 Hydro necessitates the acceleration of extra storage capacity.

But compared with the coal-fired power station, the battery bank which will replace it will only require a handful of employees.

The burgeoning growth of renewable energy has hastened the demise of coal-fired generation. Now this is not because renewable energy is cheaper than coal-fired energy, but because the favoured treatment of renewable energy in the electricity market results in coal-fired generation having to operate in an uneconomic way. Coal-fired generation was largely designed to run as base load generation That is to say it is best to run such plant continuously. Because of the priority given to renewable energy coal-fired plant is now required to vary its load and even worse to come off line to accommodate renewables. This load cycling greatly increases the maintenance requirement of such plant reducing its reliability and increasing maintenance costs.

Beyond that the federal government has subsidised investment in renewable energy projects with billions of dollars.

Consequently we have seen the decommissioning of many of our traditional coal-fired generating units.

An existing power station site is a valuable asset. It is possible to construct useful assets there without impingement on the environment at large.

What might AGL have constructed there after the demise of the Liddell Power Station?

It could have chosen to replace the old coal-fired plant with modern new generation High Efficiency Low Emissions technology which could have generated cheaper and with fewer emissions than the original plant. If they had done so more than likely they could have retained in use those chimney stacks they have now destroyed.

Alternatively, if the government allowed, they might have located a couple of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors there and continued to generate base load power emissions free.

If either of these options had been pursued the new Liddell Power Station could have provided base load continuous generation at reasonable cost and with reduced emissions. What’s more it would have provided substantially more employment in the Hunter area,

If the government is really motivated to attract AI capability into Australia and to re-establish some manufacturing capacity (which has been progressively lost because of the burgeoning costs of renewables)it must encourage investment in electricity generating assets that not only minise the cost of electricity but ensure reliable supply. Experience around the globe suggests that renewable energy can’t achieve such aims.

Around the world there is a waning of renewable energy zealotry.

Let me relate to you a couple of indicators that the international push for renewable energy is changing.

The UN body established to monitor the effects of climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IGPCC), recently conceded that the extreme adverse climate effects from carbon pollution are unlikely to occur. This negates the catastrophism propagated by the likes of Al Gore and Greta Thunberg. It suggests we should just calm down a bit and perhaps be more rational when addressing climate change.

Then we had the UK’s arguably most successful Labor Prime Minister counselling the Keir Starmer government to abandon the pursuit of Net Zero because of its deleterious impacts on the UK’s economy.

The Iranian war with the subsequent closure of the Straits of Hormuz has highlighted the necessity for Australia to be less dependent on others for the supply of petroleum products and gas. Despite all of Chris Bowen’s rhetoric we are still reliant on fossil fuels and will continue to be so for decades to come. It is inevitable that Australia will need to source more fossil fuels to reduce our reliance in imports. The maintenance of our sovereignty depends on it.

And Another Thing

The Pursuit of Happiness

Despite of all the world’s distractions and those things that seem to be always demanding our immediate attention, it is useful sometimes to come back to the philosophical and psychological basics. Let me share with you a little primer based on my previous publications on the pursuit of happiness.

My late friend, the psychologist, Dr Phil Harker, had a formula for achieving psychological robustness. If we are to be well-adjusted, he taught, first we should take steps to know ourselves, then we must learn to accept ourselves, and then finally, if we are to live lives of contentment, we must forget ourselves.

It has been truly said, that those who are most content don’t think less of themselves, they, in fact, think of themselves less.

People who are depressed can’t let go of their problems and are obsessed with themselves. Try as they may their minds continually come back to their problems and they wrestle with them over and over. (Psychologists call this process rumination. It is a metaphor stolen from the digestive processes of ruminant animals who chew their food over and over to help digest cellulose. But unfortunately rumination in human beings does not help us digest our problems at all – it intensifies them!)

Very perceptively the Dalai Llama has said, “If you want others to be happy, be compassionate. If you want to be happy, be compassionate.” Obviously those that are compassionate are able to focus their minds on the suffering of others, rather than their own suffering. It is part of the formula forgetting ourselves.

Similarly, the research of the positive psychologist, Martin Seligman suggests that if we want to have a long- term sense of well-being we need to align to a purpose greater than ourselves. When we seek to promote our own happiness, paradoxically we revert to issues of our own self-interest and this prevents us from forgetting ourselves and as a consequence deprives us of an opportunity to promote our own sense of well-being.

Even though the efforts of Martin Seligman and his colleagues have only been manifest in the last couple of decades, many of the sages in times past had learnt this lesson as well.

Shantideva, an eighth century Buddhist scholar wrote:

Whatever joy there is in this world
All comes from desiring others to be happy.
And whatever suffering there is in the world,
All comes from desiring myself to be happy.

But what need is there to say much more?
The childish work for their own benefit,
The Buddhas work for the benefit of others.
Just look at the difference between them!

So contentment, well-being, enduring happiness – whatever we wish to call it – comes from not pursuing it for its own sake, but as an indirect process of subjugating the self. The pursuit of material possessions, attractive partners, status and fame and all such things that we form attachments to, in the end can’t help us in this pursuit because they are all self-serving. It is a marvellous enigma that what we all want most from life – contentment – can’t be achieved by directly pursuing it!

Ted Scott