By Jo Nova
Nishant Gupta set up a green energy hedge fund last year managing about $100m in assets, but he probably wishes he hadn’t.
His words are about as blunt as any hedge fund owner could possibly get.
Hedge Fund Built on Energy Bets Says ‘Clean Is Dead for Now’
Bloomberg
“The whole sector — solar, wind, hydrogen, fuel cells — anything clean is dead for now,” said Nishant Gupta, founder and chief investment officer at London-based Kanou Capital LLP.
Against a barrage of political headwinds in the US, a war-fueled energy crisis and stubbornly high interest rates, large parts of the clean-energy industry are stalling. In the past year, the S&P Global Clean Energy Index has lost 20%, a period during which the S&P 500 Index gained 16%. And with the Trump administration shredding climate policies in the world’s largest economy, many green investors are taking a timeout.
Over the last year clean energy stocks have lost 20% of their value, whereas stocks in fossil fuels are up 13%.
So after the last year, skeptical investors are 30% richer than their believer friends. As it should be.
Gupta now says that ““The fundamentals are very poor”. Which is true if you were fundamentally betting on government handouts. The truth is the electrical fundamentals of Green investment were always awful, as were the “carbon” fundamentals. Investors should have got better advice from friends who were engineers who saw that unreliable renewables were an expensive fantasy that were doomed years ago.
He still claims there is some long term need for a clean energy transition, but his big plan is to find the “corners” of the market where he can identify “supply-chain bottlenecks as core investment opportunities”. Apparently that means he’s moved into companies that make compressors, vacuum systems and switches and fuses. Which sounds a lot like a man who’s stepped right out of the clean energy space.
The fall for clean energy shares started at the end of September last year, presumably as it dawned on green investors that Kamala was not going to win and keep the subsidies rolling.
The great unravelling of the Green delusion continues. Amazing that there is still 80% of the clean energy sector value left on the chopping block.
h/t Reader
Image by Eynoxart from Pixabay
The biggest problem with ‘green energy’ as an investment is that there are no fundamentals to speak of. The whole industry is crony capitalist that relies on personal connections and public money rather than on fundamentals like having a great product or exceptional management. Even if you invest based on who has the best connections and is most likely to get fed at the government trough, the people making those decisions change every four years and bring a whole new set of friends/donors with them who expect access to the government teats. Or in the case of Trump, someone comes into office who brings a whole new energy strategy and demolishes the trough and slaughters the hogs.
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It’s the reliably delivered price/kW, GJ or BoE.
Nothing else matters.
Never will.
If you invent a lower cost alternative your own government and academia will not be helpful.
Trump exists because the USA has a debt problem.
Victoria will pull down Australia and we will find a Trump. A few years to go yet. Our time is coming.
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Actually there is a lot more than c/kWHr, (slightly amended your quote).
If I were to offer you a cheap taxi service, say 3c/km, you would be impressed, you may even blow up the contracts you had with the limo service and the other taxi brands in the market.
Until you realise that I drive when I’m ready and not before. I may even stop before you get to your destination. And of course, I’ll be billing you whether you are in the cab or not. If I’ve got fuel, I’m driving. And you’re paying.
For grid power, the ability to call on it when required IS the most critical aspect. Cost is a very secondary consideration if you wanted/had to actually get something done.
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Did anybody ask Toyota?
It seems that Toyota expect their newly invented engines will replace all others.
And they run on–wait for it– HYDROGEN AND WATER! .
Or maybe gasoline and water.
When I was a lad the lads read the real life adventure stories of the WW 2.
So I knew that some fighter engines were equipped with water injection. When a pilot desperately needed a few seconds of extra power he could inject water into the engine. It was hard on the motors, but when life or death is the situation it did give more power.
We had a 1983 Toyota HiAce van. It was a very good vehicle, with a very nice 2.4 litre diesel engine.
The engine failed. There was lot of visible damage to the aluminium cylinder head.
The mechanic said: That’s water does that. It makes them too hot.
So we worked out that the water came from the road via the engine air intake being too close to the front wheel arch. A Toyota design fault.
Fast forward to 2027: It seems that Toyota have invented a motor which harnesses some of the waste energy that goes out of the motor in heat by injecting water into the combustion chamber without blowing the motor up. And they expect to be mass producing and marketing them in 2027.
Toyota might save Twiggy and his hydrogen yet. But I imagine that the system would work also with other types of fuel.
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The concept of water injection (mixed with methanol so the water doesn’t become ice at high altitudes) is to cool the intake charge, which is hot because it is compressed by a supercharger or turbocharger, essentially artificially increasing the octane (gasoline engines), and thereby allowing higher cylinder pressure before premature combustion occurs. This allows a bit more boost. Higher cylinder pressure = more power and also is more efficient.
With a diesel engine, however, it is not to be recommended. With diesel, higher combustion temps/pressure can be obtained via propane injection.
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Water has two major states at ambient. Parity with spin moment of O-H bond opposite and ortho with spin moment of O-H bond similar. Voltage difference between states is 0.52-0.53V @ 40 mA/square cm.
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Water_Methanol. Methanol is a fuel which burns very hot at high supercharged compression. The water is a coolant.
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The “Biggest Problem with Green Energy” is that it fails to address grid scale AC power system issues.
1. The Load is whatever is connected to the Grid.
2. The Grid follows the Load and has seconds to minutes to satisfy the Load, or the Grid collapses.
3. Synchronous Generation (thermal) has inertia, is electromagnetically synchronized, and is 1st tier.
4. Wind/Solar are inverter driven, grid synch pulse dependent, have zero inertia, and follow the thermal generation, always 2 steps behind reality.
5. None of the Pollies understand AC power systems, reactive/real/apparent power, or that the entire grid, nationwide, can collapse in less than 15 minutes. Navel gazing idiots with half-wit understanding of actual power systems are in no position to oppose the physics and realities of grid scale power systems. They are simply too ignorant to grasp the concepts and consequences of their ignorance.
6. Allowing these ignorant decisions to happen is tantamount to high treason. This isn’t a game.
7. Anyone gambling a national grid, economy, populace, national security, health/safety, on an unstable grid is very likely guilty of irresponsible mass casualty.
This is not a spectator sport. Your own lives depend on it. Why not treat things seriously, eh?
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The reason the Clean Energy Sector is Dead, is because it cannot, will not, and is incapable of supplying Grid Load in Real Time to avoid grid collapse.
AU needs practical engineering. Not economists, politicians, or ideologically driven nonsense.
If you want a viable economy, that is.
Imagine Sydney without power, food, water, hospitals, fuel, internet, etc, for a month. That’s the risk.
So, yes, the “clean energy sector is dead” because it was always so. Only fools thought otherwise.
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Imagine all those high rise apartment blocks without lifts, no power to the socket, no water, no sewage, eventually no mobile connections, etc. If a person lives ten floors up that is twenty flights of stairs down and twenty flight up. Anything that has to be cold chilled spoils including drugs.
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Good comments. I worked in the Power industry (CEGB/NGC) in the UK for well over a decade before coming to Australia. The privatisation was the first stuff up of the power sector and the Runinables is the second. The former generated masses of non value add costs and the latter is destined to eventually collapse the grid.
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Their so called green/ clean energy couldn’t be more toxic or unsafe and horrible and actually destroys their environments.
Again the so called green investments in mining that destroy the environments and have Muslim slaves in China and child slaves in Africa working in cesspits and in very dangerous situations for a pittance.
How can any sane person call toxic W & S safe or useful or desirable?
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The useless energy from these subsidy-harvesting schemes is neither clean, nor green.
The only reason these schemes exist at all is that they rely on taxpayer-funded subsidies. If not for the subsidies they wouldn’t survive in a free market due to their high cost, intermittency and general uselessness.
The only way these schemes could possibly survive in a free market is if enough “green” people like Labor, Green, Teal and other low information voters were prepared to buy this energy at, say, three times the price of properly generated electricity. But I guarantee they WON’T be prepared to put their money where their loud mouths are.
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Never, ever base your business model on something that depends on a government-granted monopoly, forced use of your good or service or a taxpayer-funded subsidy.
A rational-thinking government night come along at any moment and in an instant your business will be destroyed.
In Australia many businesses, especially “green” (sic) energy businesses, run according to this model and many investment funds and superannuation funds (retirement funds) invest in them and its not going to end well, especially as the rest of the world becomes less woke but Australia becomes even more so.
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A rational thinking govt. in this wide brown land?
I don’t think so.
A thinking government?
Maybe. But only as a hobby.
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Is that investment advice? Got a licence for that?
Elon Musk got very rich by not following your suggestions and Elon knew one thing that many other people get wrong … he knew the right time to get out and sold down his Tesla shares.
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As “green” scams are shut down all over the world, and especially in TRUMP’s America, I am worried that green subsidy harvesters will be looking to “invest” their finds in countries where the Uniparty continues to support these scams, even though they are destroying the country. Like Australia.
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Yep
All the folks who lost their shirts in the USA thanks to Trump will be coming to the UK and Australia looking to make themselves whole while the green lunatics are still in power.
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“Clean” energy is dying, as it should be.
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It didn’t stop the incredible world ending Front Page hype of Cyclone Afred. I watched continually on the BOM and could not find a place where winds exceeded 74km/hr although the media claimed ‘gusts’ up to 100km/hr. It was always on the way. Soon.
For the most part, the winds were moderate. And for Queensland, moderate rain. For most places, at worst a normal storm, certainly for the Tropics. However the front page Climate Porn was End of Days, building up to a crescendo as the final blow was put backward. A single fallen tree was filmed and studied as part of a disaster. Or strong crashing waves at the beach which prevented surfing as if it was a tragedy. Now “Ex-tropical cyclone Alfred has weakened with gales no longer occurring ”
The massive exaggeration of every weather event is politics, not science. Like geneticist Sir Paul Nurse’s Climate Change debate as head of the Royal Society and his devastating ‘precautionary’ principle applied to the weather. He explained with the voice of authority to skeptical journalist James Delingpole that this required starting potentially lethal chemotherapy even if there was no certainty of cancer. I expect this violation of the Hippocratic oath of ‘do not harm’ means you would be struck off as a medical doctor. But Nurse won the debate when Delingpole was understandably struck speechless.
After 37 years of imminent disaster and world ending weather, drought, famine, plague, climate migration, end of days and tens of trillions in preventative destruction of our energy supply and massive carbon taxes, can we please just stick to reality? The cost of ‘Cyclone’ Arthur likely far exceeded the actual danger. And if a hundred thousand homes lost electrical power, look hard at why and fix it, because that’s a failure of a fragile distribution system as in South Australia. Not Climate Change.
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It’s light rain and winds about 10 kts on the Sunshine Coast. Overall it was a bit of a fizzer here as I never saw winds on Windy over 30 kts. Very light rain pre the eye crossing here but likely to be much needed rain in the next day or so. However the community was well organised and prepared for the worst – the correct response.
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Sure, be prepared. Except the entire country was told it was Cyclone Tracey in progress. Pages of disaster. Panic. Sandbags, flight cancellations, trees destroyed, coastline threatened, floods likely, evacuations likely, end of days. Something like the last storm in Florida with winds above 250km/hr.
When in fact it was more than likely a fizzer, a normal summer storm, worn out by the long journey South and dying on reaching land. But then I’m not an employee of the BOM. Now you need the rain? Drought is inevitable.
(That was not my red thumb)
260
Seems like the SEQWater people , who didnt release water prior to the arrival, may have had access to the real forecast. Or maybe they are better at it than the BOM
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Apparently some of SEQWater’s pumps lost power so were inoperable. The article didn’t say where. Sounds like they don’t have backup power sources.
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They did – sort of.
From SMH yeaterday, paywalled:
Cheers
Dave B
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Now that the cyclone was a disappointment for the Lamestream Media in terms of not being disastrous enough, they’ll have to return to their regular programming of climate catastrophism and TEDS (TRUMP and Elon Derangement Syndrome).
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You did not look at the right place. Cape Byron had gusts above 100kph for a few hours yesterday:
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDN60801/IDN60801.94599.shtml
These are certainly damaging winds and I would not want to be offshore in those conditions.
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I meant the BOM average wind reported. “although the media claimed ‘gusts’ up to 100km/hr.” I was not disputing that. But we often get that in stormy conditions anywhere. The gusts in deadly cyclones in the Carribbean can be 250km/hr. In Cyclone Tracey in 1974 it was 200km/hr and I suspect energy transmitted goes as the square of speed, so 4x worse.
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Yes, Byron and Cape Moreton had 100kmh but they are stuck out in the South Pacific and hardly representative of the mainland.
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“And if a hundred thousand homes lost electrical power, look hard at why and fix it.”
I was thinking that our power infrastructure showed its weakness ,it wasn’t that big of a storm, also cell towers have gone dark all over because grid power has failed and their batteries went flat after some hours, I remember the old days when Telecom exchanges had a Lister Autostart and they would charge the batteries so long as there was diesel.
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What are the implications for Australian superannuation (retirement) funds?
Many are heavily invested in these green scams, government even encouraged them to do so.
And it doesn’t matter that both Liberal and Labor Uniparty factions remain committed to the scams. Markets are international and as the scams are shut down overseas, locally based “investment” in the scams will also fail as they won’t be able to “go it alone”.
I thought it was illegal for fund managers to invest in ponzi schemes.
I can’t see an easy way out for this.
Could we be heading for a massive Australia-wide failure of superannuation funds?
Thoughts?
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Does anyone know if there’s an Australian superannuation fund that specialises in non-woke investments like coal, gas, uranium etc.?
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I wonder if any are in talks with Cannon-Brookes delusion about a grand solar plant in NT delivering “cheap” electricity to Singapore by a 4,200 km cable.
It says in The Australian today that Grok (C-B’s) is trying to get funds for investment in it. The world’s longest cable of this type is with the UK to Denmark less than a quarter of this length. Personally I think it would be a sure bet that the 800MW would be down to 600MW when it reaches Singapore.
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Yes.
It’s called a ‘self-managed’ superannuation fund.
The only way to manage one’s retirement savings.
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Every bit of infrastructure is the biggest, tallest, longest etc right up until the moment it isnt any more. As human ingenuity and materials science progress more things are possible, unless you butt into the laws of Physics, then it gets a bit trickier.
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And they are still saying that they want to supply power to Darwin. But I’m not sure that Darwin wants their power. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that there are still two other solar systems that haven’t as yet obtained approval to connect to the grid. Not sure if these are close to Darwin or Alice Springs.
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Graeme4
Closer to Darwin – I think. The problem was the same as the Broken Hill blackouts. Electricity panels tried to synchronise with diesel generators and caused them to drop out because too much coming in. Loss of synchrony, solar panel (connectors) dropped off, diesel started up again – repeating chaos. So simpler for Darwin to refuse connection.
40
Ok thanks Graeme. As Lance and others have said, synchronisation is not easy, and it’s a lot worse with unreliable energy sources. I note that new NT solar farm has a diesel backup system. I’m wondering if their solar systems have to provide some form of backup as well.
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Doubt it. Best strategy is to limit the amount going into your Super to the absolute minimum as required by Law, and if you have extra, invest it outside of your Super where you can have more control.
141
Best for who? Investment advisors? the average person will have little clue what they are doing and will be operating in a fully taxed environment.
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Specialising, no. But you can exercise a fair degree of control down to specific asx200 shares (+ cash, fixed interest etc ) in the large funds. Or just go SMSF
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Jeez I hope not.
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Tragically, because real history is no longer taught in the indoctrination centres which were once known and operated as schools, no younger person seems to know why intermittent energy was rapidly ditched as soon as Thomas Newcomen developed the first commercially viable steam engine in 1712.
260
There is some absolute certainty and predictabilty in ‘renewables’. Solar is guaranteed not to work at night. And in Scotland that is 18 hours of dark a day. And very little when the sun does rise, maybe 2 hours a day. So not working at least 22 hours a day. Predictably, reliably not there.
210
It depends on the season of course. In Scotland there are shorter days in winter and longer days in summer than further south. However, the short days are very short in winter, even down south in Hampshire and Devon, as we were reminded during our visit in early to mid-December. Not to mention virtually no sun during that two weeks in December! I’d forgotten just how cold and dreary it can be. The sun came out as we headed to LGW to go to Spain (which was pretty cold too).
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Annie,
Yes. All – that is 100% – of the island of Great Britain is north of Winnipeg, Canada.
This makes solar a bummer for much of the year.
Auto
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If Dutton wants to win the election, all he has to do is say he’ll abandon the Paris Accords and return Australia’s energy grid to how it was before his predecessor Howard initiated its destruction. Then Australia’s economy will start to improve. But he won’t say it or do it.
360
There’s every chance Dutton believes the whole thing. I know a lot of people, mainly doctors, who believe everything they are told. It’s part of the training.
300
The ENTIRE “green” thing has ALWAYS been a global “wealth-redistribution” scheme. See “Bolshviks vs Kulaks” for a start. At least 30 million starved to death or executed. Mao’s China, well over 50 million dead. Pol Pot’s Cambodian “experiment” in PURE socialism? At least 3.5 million dead, but per national population, worse than even their Chinese “mentors”.
Dead people do not attend food riots. Thus:…….
It is like a real manifestation of a Berthold Brecht story. (Pirate Jenny / The Black Freighter” from Die Dreigroschenoper / (The Threepenny Opera):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEYqGBMDtA0
Excerpt:
“Then just before noon there’ll be hundreds of men
Coming up off that ghostly freighter,
And they’re moving in the shadows where no-one can see,
And they’re chaining up the people and they’re bringing them to me
Asking me, “Kill them now or later?”
Asking me, “Kill them now or later?”
Noon on the clock and so still on the dock,
You could hear a foghorn miles away.
In the quiet of death I’ll say, “Kill ’em now.”
And they’ll pile up the bodies and I’ll say, “Hoopla!”
And the ship the Black Freighter
Sails away out to sea
And on it is me”
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Remember, i was the National Socialists who started concerns about supposed anthropogenic global warming and proposed the use of windmills.
All documented here:
And
The modern day socialists are just following a long socialist totalitarian tradition of interfering with people’s lives, removing freedoms and imposing tyranny.
In the case of the US Democrats, the original party which supported slavery, see:
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Translation …
‘we punked ’em and milked them dry … time to move on’.
100
Other point is contrary to our believe that all of this is supported by shaming the West into footing the bill is wrong. It seems it all revolves around shaming capitalist America to be on board with DSG, DEI and this Green hype (seems they all run together on the same ticket), and the moment America turns, this whole ponzi scheme collapse. So Europe, Australia etc are still the toothless tigers they have always been, and China just harvest the spoils from the dumb money.
All in all this is actually good news.
80
Cyclone Alfred turned out exactly like every reputable cyclone tracker has forecast for a week. Cat 1, a bit of wind for an hour or two in some places, and a day of medium to heavy rain.
So nothing at all like the media was portraying. Surprise surprise.
200
Shirley all those carbon credits and climate actions saved the day Harves? Imagine how worserer it would’ve been if Den!ers had simply continued with their business as usual plan – oh the humanity of the very same outcome.
Hopefully NZ’s media minions will cease using psy-op terms such as bracing, barrelling, hunkered-down, traumatised, triggered… yet I’m sure catastrophic will still be regurgitated ad infinitum up to and beyond the glorious world of next Tuesday.
Might have to print myself a T-shirt with the BoM graph Jo occasionally uploads showing cyclones diminishing from the 1970s to today, as folk I chat with say I’m one of those ‘head in the sand’ people, to wit I reply I’ve never knelt on the beach with my derrière pointing skyward – a very odd cultic religious oblation if ever there was.
At least builders, plumbers, sparkies, and carpet layers, will have guaranteed work until the next silly season rolls around…
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… and don’t call me Shirley.
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Roger Under Over 😃
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Donald Trump, you are my hero.
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Does anyone have our dopey minister for energy and climate’s email address? You know the guy that doesn’t wear his dentures and lives on the Isle de Delusion. He needs to read this and most of this site’s posts for the last month or so. Can we all chip in and buy him some dentures otherwise he may have to wear his old mums. Do dentures contribute to climate change?
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Bowen definitely needs to read Lance’s post at 1.2
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I believe the Isle de Delusion is situated near Fantasy Island. If you can get some hard mail to Tattoo, he may be able to forward it to the minister.
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Australia is now getting serious on its energy transition. The RET is all but dead and will expire in 2030. The consumer theft is near its end. It is now yup to the Australian taxpayers to foot the high costs of transition.
None of this is getting any media coverage but Blackout has already put Australia taxpayers on the hook for 8GWh of new lithium batteries; a 800MW/11.9GWh pumped hydro in addition to SH2 and 4GW of new grid scale wind and solar.
This is the AEMO tender web site:
https://aemoservices.com.au/tenders
The list has from most recent at the top to earliest down the bottom. So scroll down and you will see the bottom three tenders are now all committed. If you “Read More”. you will find the list of projects for each tender. I am guessing at least AUD20bn already committed with government guaranteed returns. I cannot imagine Dutton pulling out of these money spinners for the proponents.
So consumers will be pushed as hard as they can bear while the taxpayers are burdened wth the costs above that. The loss of productivity will drive inflation for decades.
220
So, basically there is no way out for Australia?
“Renewables” madness is locked in for decades or forever, even if we got a rational Government?
So there is no hope? No exit strategy?
40
Of course there is. Cancel everything Climate Cash as a hoax known to all thinking people. And let disgruntled contractors sue for their lost profits from the hoax. The only impediment is that nebulous Sovereign risk, but in a hoax it is crooks and thieves suing for being complicit in a robbery. Ask for a refund on the windmills and solar panels.
80
You only have to look at a letters page in a MSM newspaper every few days to see that many readers have swallowed the green energy scam hook, line and sinker. They use phrases like “renewables are the cheapest and cleanest form of energy” as if they are indisputable truth.
Such people are totally oblivious to a blog such as this. Until some truth bomb explodes in their face and disrupts their reality, they’ll keep lapping up what MSM presents to them.
Unless they recognise the true cost/wastage of renewables, they’ll keep writing their seemingly virtuous letters indefinitely, always believing that our politicians have us on the right course to “save the planet”.
60
Good work if you can get-it was.
100’s of billions in klimate Kash for the taking.
Better than piracy on the high seas.
Even better than the opium trade through Hong Kong was. Better than bootlegging. Better than cocaine smuggling. Maybe better than arms dealing.
Plus all wrapped up, supposedly, in the virtue of saving the planet.
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