Renewable energy: powering Australia in more ways than one
James Wright
A jobs boom is sweeping across regional Australia and there’s one industry to thank – the renewable energy sector. From places like Gordon in southern Tasmania to Pindari in north-east NSW, new solar installations, windfarms, battery arrays, solar towers and pumped hydro facilities are springing life into regional towns. How are they doing this? By injecting desperately needed investment and job opportunities into remote locations.
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This is great news! But despite the steady stream of new developments in regional areas, we’re actually being short-changed. Policy uncertainty due to ongoing internal squabbles in the Federal Government is strangling the growth of this sector and costing regional Australia the true jobs boom it deserves.
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If politicians could simply commit to a modest and achievable 50 per cent renewable energy target, this would create 28,000 new jobs. The vast majority would be in regional Australia where they are greatly needed to breathe new life into struggling local economies.
NO one would deny that job creation is a good thing especially in regional centres and remote locations in Australia. Areas with often high rates of unemployment and limited opportunity.
BUT, where the ‘green energy jobs’ argument falls down is not only in the longevity of the full-time jobs available after installation, but in the fact that these jobs are a direct result of green central planning. Green jobs are like ‘Fiat money’ – a currency without intrinsic value established as money, often by government regulation.
WITHOUT massive government subsidies, estimated at $60 BILLION by 2030 under the Australian government’s RET (Renewable Energy Target), their would be no ‘green’ jobs as advertised by The Daily Advertiser. The private sector simply will not invest in weather-dependent ‘energy’ sources when in competition with cheap, efficient, reliable base-load sources like coal and gas on a dollar-for-dollar or subsidy-equalised basis.
“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” – Warren Buffett
TELLINGLY, the piece by James Wright (chief executive officer of the Future Business Council)in The Daily Advertiser not once mentions the private sector as a direct player in the ‘green jobs boom’. His argument relies solely on government and politicians:
“Policy uncertainty due to ongoing internal squabbles in the Federal Government is strangling the growth of this sector…”
“If politicians could simply commit to a modest and achievable 50 per cent renewable energy target, this would create 28,000 new jobs…”
“we can’t let backwards politics spoil this once in a generation opportunity…”
GREEN central planning like economic planning of failed socialist regimes gone by is doomed for failure. Market distorting policies that pick winners only work until the money runs out.
THIS is the intrinsic problem faced when big government and statist green central planning displaces the commercial sector. Market mechanisms are eliminated, the very mechanisms that promote checks and balances and ensure accountability to make sure stuff works.
THE “green” energy revolution with its touted “green jobs” is largely survived by rent-seeking corporations entering the “save the planet” sector in pursuit of the lucrative government funds, grants and subsidies on offer, supported pro bono by the virtue-signalling, “save the planet” mainstream media.
GREEN JOBS?
WHAT is set to be Australia’s largest wind farm will provide only 20 full-time jobs once it goes into operation next year…
Australia’s biggest wind farm to generate just 20 full-time jobs
“Renewables are a welcome part of the energy mix but they don’t sustain long-term jobs or provide baseload power,” said Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington.
What is set to be Australia’s largest wind farm will provide only 20 full-time jobs once it goes into operation next year.
Construction started yesterday on AGL’s $850 million Coopers Gap wind farm at Cooranga North, 250km west of Brisbane, 10 years after it was proposed. The state government, which is committed to a 50-50 split between renewable energy and fossil fuel energy production by 2030, has endorsed the project, with Energy Minister Anthony Lynham turning the first sod.
Two hundred jobs will be created during construction of the 123-turbine, 453 megawatt facility, which will provide enough power for 260,000 homes.
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During the election campaign in November, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk spruiked her clean energy policy at the under-construction Clare Valley Solar Farm in north Queensland — a project that will employ up to 350 people during construction, but offer only five to 10 jobs once operational.
ADVICE to marketers of the unreliable-energy jobs ‘revolution’. May I suggest lobbying the private sector and extolling the virtues of so-called “cheap, clean and green” energy to them, rather than writing propaganda, puff pieces in the daily rags and insulting the intelligence of your audience…the ones who now have to pay the highest power prices in the world thanks to the unreliable energy ‘revolution’!
DO let me know if any private sector orgs will take up an investment opportunity in the unreliabels sector without access to the $60 Billion taxpayer-funded RET…
EVER noticed how global warming climate change fear-media usually always contains auxiliary verbs; could, should, might? Essential caveats in the climate alarmists’ lexicon that deny long-range predictions the opportunity to be falsified by any conceivable observation.
THE climate cult are masters at shamelessly cobbling together an explanation which blames any and every climatic event on your wicked existence. Al Gore recently weighed in on the current record cold and snow in the U.S. noting that the “Bitter cold in parts of the US…is exactly what we should expect from the climate crisis.”
It’s bitter cold in parts of the US, but climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann explains that’s exactly what we should expect from the climate crisis. https://t.co/6UfJ9Xxpq6
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