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Peter Robinson's avatar

Hi Chris

Suppliers should only be permitted to bid 24/7 power into the east coast grid. This would require renewables to in effect, arrange their own subsidies, by profit sharing with base load providers. This might require legislation (if does not exist) for "make good" of land, by renewable investors, in the event it was to lead, to abandonment, of much of the existing renewables infrastructure.

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Tony Taylor's avatar

Solar farms should be banned, and solar should only be allowed for businesses and homes prepared to pay for their own systems; that is, without subsidies.

Wind gen should be banned outright.

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Graeme Jorgensen's avatar

Good on you Tony, but why only solar? Wind farms are a far greater eyesore, and a proven threat to bird life (including endangered species), not forgetting the damage done to otherwise extensive areas of arable land and forests. We don't need any of this harmful chaos with our existing base load system.

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Tony Taylor's avatar

Hiya, Graeme. I mentioned that "Wind gen should be banned outright."

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Graeme Jorgensen's avatar

Sorry, Tony, I somehow missed that. Perhaps I was simply overloaded with great content (or just plain simple). I’ll try not to bother you again, but please keep the good stuff coming.

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New Zealand Energy's avatar

Great piece Chris!

The numbers show a stark contrast.

Energy density matters.

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Graeme Jorgensen's avatar

Thank you Chris, this is one of your best efforts to date. We are grateful for the factual information that you always present, as the truth is often otherwise hidden from public view.

Sadly, I cannot foresee any of our politicians and industry leaders actually studying your material. It simply doesn't match their preferred agendas.

The only people who are suffering are the wider public and small businesses, and they will suffer much more before the truth actually becomes clear to everyone.

Like your example, the only thing we can do is to keep singing from the same song sheet, and hope that others will be encouraged to sing along, too.

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Vicki Dunne's avatar

At last someone touching on the hocus pocus of Green Hydrogen. Grifters like Twiggy Forest have been holding it up as the new shiny thing. But now, even Twiggy is chickening out.

The reason is clear, even to my unscientific brain. Green Hydrogen is not energy dense. You get less energy out than you put in. Also it needs either a lot of water for electrolysis, or emits a lot of CO2 if you use methane stripping.

Either way it’s a con on the public.

Chris please write more on this.

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Tuco's Child's avatar

Very nice 👍 article.

More logs to throw on the fire:

Solar and wind contraptions last maybe 20 years before dismantling and a trip to the dump.

There is no such thing as renewables - that would violate the First Law of Thermodynamics

Keep up the good work 💯.

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Andrew Deakin's avatar

Kudos for a thoroughly researched article, lucidly presented. Love the ‘parasites on the grid’ comment and ‘efficient as burning wet wood.’ Comic and absurd as the energy ‘transition’ is, it probably won’t be abandoned until the climate change hypothesis is disproven. That may take decades. In the (long) meantime, unscrupulous politicians will continue the subsidies & mandated consumption to forestall greenies eating their lunch. That seems to be the case with Australia’s Bowen and his state counterparts. He surely can’t really believe his policies are sensible. No one that inept would rise to high office. The most reprehensible action is forcing power bills to rise, making life unnecessarily harder for the 25-30 per cent of the population with little discretionary income.

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Thermocon's avatar

Great article, it's the entropy of wind and solar, it's simply too high. Basis the energy data in the Statistical Review of World Energy 2025 and the ITC and PTC subsidy data from the Congressional Research Service, wind beats solar hands down but either subsidy is of the order of the total cost of natural gas (Henry Hub) in a CCGT. No need to ban anything or tear anything down, just eliminate the subsidies and they'll go away and we'll all be better off for it.

https://thermocon.substack.com/p/the-sun-also-sets

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Simon's avatar

The “fairy tale” is ACC isn’t happening.

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StudentM's avatar

Hey Chris

Just looking at the 2025 publication from EI. Looking at the total energy supplied by fuel it appears that oil, natural gas and coal make up 86% of total energy supply.

Just wondering how you got the 82 per cent figure.

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