Australia seems to have a group of politicians that are totally anti renewable. Australia is perfectly situated to use renewable resources for all their power. When Keith Pitt was asked if he still believed renewables didn’t work – he gave this ridiculous statement. The junior partner in the government is demanding they work towards zero carbon by 2050.
It should be noted that many Australians are disgusted by the direction and lies that the current administration keeps spouting rubbish. 80% of Australians think it is important that Australia reduce their carbon emissions. Importantly this is still 70% of Conservative voters – the party in power.
Australia is one of the countries that will be hit hardest, with large parts of the country too hot already.
Pitt has continued to laugh off his stupid comments, asking to be shown a solar panel that works in the dark. I presume as he is intelligent enough to be elected, that he knows no one is claiming this. To the contrary, Australia has recognised that solar needs to be linked with batteries, and the “Victorian big battery” is one of the ways to deal with this. At size of 300MW and 450mwh. It has already been shown to be worth a lot more than the cost of its installation, stopping expensive gas Peaker plants being needed.
Australia is blessed with a lot of gas and coal and Pitt is determined that the country continues to make money from these resources.
This is despite the fact that the country is also blessed with lots of sun, making it one of the few countries in the world which could rely simply on solar and batteries. Roughly speaking, 1 square mile of solar produces roughly 1 million kwh per day . As such, Australia would need 200 square miles of solar (there are roughly 10 million houses each using about 20kwh per day -though electric cars would increase this) plus many more large batteries. Given the country is around 3 million square miles, they would need 0.01% of the country to have a healthy margin (and this assumes zero power from wind or anything else). It is also true that if all buildings in Australia had solar panels on the roof, this would deliver most of the power that the country needs.
I hope that if the government continues to work in such a foolish way, the country will chuck them out at the next opportunity (assuming their opposition is any better). Lack of knowledge or intentional misunderstanding of renewables are unacceptable in this day and age. Australia is going to suffer more than many countries in the world from global warming -its government must obviously take action or be thrown out
