Robbing nature to save the planet

Bowen's renewable energy targets ignore the economic problem of scarcity

You may or may not be impressed to learn the electricity powering my laptop right now is 12 per cent carbon-free.

It will be 82 per cent carbon-free in six and a half years in the unlikely event that the federal government meets its target.

Those in the energy sector who have not joined the renewable energy cult say this flies in the face of reality. Energy Minister Chris Bowen will have to defy the laws of physics and economics to get there.

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity,” wrote Thomas Sowell in his essay collection Is Reality Optional? “The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”

Setting aside the engineering challenge of accomplishing Bowen's seven-year plan, overcoming scarcity is probably his biggest hurdle. That might seem odd to those who take the adjective "renewable" too seriously, imagining that the resources is uses are literally inexhaustible.

Yet solar power and wind energy assisted by a combination of gravity and water are just a few of the resources required to build industrial-scale wind and solar factory farms. The scarcities that loom largest are land and capital. We are relearning the lesson that broke the hearts of Australia's pioneering farmers in the late 19th Century. Even in a country as vast and sparsely populated as this one, you eventually run out of space.

Former chief scientist Robin Batterham and his team at Net Zero Australia have provided some helpful modelling on how much land we'll have to surrender to construct the wind, solar and hydro-generation plants and associated transmission lines to meet Bowen's target.

It is 120,179 sq km. That is roughly 15 times more land than we use for mining or half the size of the state of Victoria.

Further scarcity is introduced by constraints on the type and location of land suitable for renewable energy plants (the term "farm" doesn't quite nail it). Wind and solar generators must be close to transmission lines and why new ones can be build, old ones are generally favoured.

Wind turbines must be positioned in windy places, typically the tops of hills. Since ridge lines are difficult to farm, they are frequently located in areas of remnant forest or scrub.

The political solution to the scarcity problem is robbing Peter to pay Paul or in this case robbing nature to satisfy our desire for low-carbon energy. This, of course, is not a genuine solution but a political sleight of hand. As Sowell argues, there are no solutions to the scarcity problem, only trade-offs.

Belatedly this is dawning on the political class and will eventually temper their enthusiasm for renewables. It will ultimately lead to the adoption of nuclear energy, which occupies less space and can be built on brown-field sites such as existing power stations. Nuclear requires some trade-offs, but far fewer than renewable sources of power.

The only question is how much damage renewable zealotry will cause in the meantime. Every solar, wind and hydro generation plant destroys parts to the natural environment to a greater or lesser degree.

The most destructive examples are in Queensland, where the government behaves in its customary manner: letting the developers run wild. The architectural impoverishment of Brisbane under the Bjelke Petersen government in the 1970s and 1980s is being repeated on the land.

A tragic example of the environmental destruction that is sanctioned in the cause of saving the planet is contained in a video embedded in this post. It was shot two weeks ago at the newly opened Kaban turbine complex near Ravenshoe on the Atherton Tableland.

The proposed Chalumbin turbine development on the southern side of Ravenshoe will cause far more damage. The Chalumbin site borders a UNESCO World Heritage-protected forest. Chalumbin has been lightly grazed, but much of the old-growth highland tropical forest and undergrowth canopy is intact.

Dr Tim Nevard, Adjunct Professor at Cairns Institute, James Cook University, told me that the proposal to build wind turbines in such an important area of natural biodiversity was crazy when I spoke to him recently.

It is not just nature that is being stolen by the Korean developer Ark Energy with the full backing of the State Government. The Jirrbal people, who have occupied the land for thousands of years, are distraught.

Fortunately, their battle to save Chalumbin isn't lost. ABC Far North journalist Kristy Sexton-McGrath has taken up their cause. Rainforest Reserves, one of the few environmental advocacy groups prepared to fight to save Chalumbin, has been doing what it can on limited resources.

My recent columns on Chalumbin have also had an impact. Ark Energy put three full-page advertisements in newspapers last weekend disputing my column in The Australian the previous Monday. Ark claims to have the approval of the Traditional owners. It doesn't. It has the permission of the Wabubadda Aboriginal Corporation, a commercial enterprise that stands to profit from the development.

Further evidence that the renewable sector is rattled appeared this week on the pages of Renew Economy, the Pravda of the renewable industrial complex.

When it runs out of solid arguments, which it does very quickly, it falls back on invective and ad-hominem attacks.

This week, Renew Economy reporter Sophie Vorrath described me as a "professional agitator." I should add the role to my next business card.

Please consider contributing to the fighting fund set up by Rainforest Reserves. Their immediate task is to raise $10,000 to fly a delegation of Jirrbal people to Canberra hoping to meet Bowen and Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.