Push for green energy clashes with reality

Viv Forbes:

Two green-dream fantasies are heading for a massive and costly collision.

Firstly, they dream of generating all grid power from wind and solar propped up by battery storage (such as lots of giant Tesla batteries and pumped hydro).

Secondly, they dream of replacing all petrol, diesel, and gas cars, trucks, and buses with electric vehicles, powered by more batteries.

But wind farms do well if they can average about 35% of their rated capacity, with low predictability, while solar panels average just 25% of their capacity, produced intermittently. To generate zero emissions energy for Australia, we would need hills covered with turbines, flats covered with solar panels, the countryside spider-webbed with access roads and transmission lines, and much more hydro.

To stabilize a green energy system without using hydrocarbons will require an eye-watering quantity of batteries, costing as much as 200 times the cost of any wind or solar facility needing backup. Every home will need a battery in the basement (and sensible ones will also have a diesel in the shed).

Add to this battery bonanza: millions of batteries will be needed to electrify and replace our fleet of gas and diesel vehicles.

No wonder cynical mining companies like BHP are going green — they smell a jackpot from the coming green boom in demand for steel, aluminum, lithium, copper, nickel, graphite, cobalt, rare earths, and nuclear fuels. And no wonder Tesla supports green energy — the total annual output of the world's biggest battery factory in Nevada would store less than five minutes of annual U.S. electricity demand. They also see booming demand for electric vehicle batteries. No wonder Tesla shares have gone ballistic (the boom before the crash?).

The carbon dioxide emitted by all the extra mining, transport, manufacture, and disposal of green energy generators and batteries would far exceed the CO2 allegedly saved by the threatened green upheaval.

All Australians rely on trucks to deliver their daily food to towns and cities — in road trains, semi-trailers, refrigerated trucks, and electric trains, almost all powered by diesel, coal, or gas. If they are all-electric and powered by batteries, where will the electricity come from to recharge all of these batteries? In tomorrow's Australia, it must come from an unreliable wind and solar grid, hydro power, or diesel generators.
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There is more.

Really, the only realistic way to deal with CO2 emissions is carbon capture technology.  Making it affordable and reasonable is the only realistic alternative to alternative energy.