How do we survive as a nation with an iMSM that is so suicidally dumb?
Origin Energy boss Frank Calabria says the energy giant’s only power station in Victoria, a gas-fired peaking plant, is running at full capacity to help stabilise the grid as thousands of the company’s customers remain without power.
“We have a lot of customers in that market that are without power, and we hope they get it restored as soon as possible. Everyone will work in the industry for that to occur,” Calabria said. “We are doing whatever we can to help.”
Origin’s gas-fired plant in Mortlake is operating at full capacity under directions from the Australian Energy Market Operator. The company was forced to cut power it usually supplies to customers from the Stockyard Hill Wind Farm west of Ballarat because of the bushfires in the state, Calabria said.
The gormless Age might as well have interviewed Adolf Hitler and thanked him for warming the concentration camp with the heat emanating from the crematorium.
Outside of the storm, the structural reason for the blackouts is that VIC is overly dependent on a few aging coal-fired power stations. This is because the East Coast Gas Cartel, which includes Origin Energy, has stolen our cheapest and cleanest gas reserves and sold them to China.
Origin is not some hero riding to Victorian’s rescue. It is the bloodsucking monopolist running its gas peaker full tilt to suck up the economic rents on offer because its extortionate gas prices have prevented the construction of sufficient firming power.
Australian gas prices are still the richest in the world at $12Gj despite having the cheapest gas reserves and costing under $1Gj to extract.
Yet, in the US, the gas price is $2.43 Gj.
In Asia, the price is $10.50Gj net-back
In Europe, the price is $5.64Gj net-back (this one is hard to believe, but the data is here)
This failure to use gas as the bridging fuel is the ONLY reason for more iMSM rot:
Coalition MPs want nuclear power plants built on the sites of coal-fired power stations to minimise environmental impacts of massive renewable projects and transmission lines, as new research reveals nuclear reactor footprints could match existing coal plant infrastructure.
Queensland Liberal National Party MPs Ted O’Brien, Keith Pitt, Colin Boyce, Llew O’Brien and Phillip Thompson backed a Coalition nuclear approach alongside renewables, with coal and gas maintained as baseload fuels until reactors are built.
Mr Pitt, a former resources minister who commissioned Parliamentary Library research into coal-fired power stations and nuclear reactor costs and waste management, said AUKUS ensured “nuclear reactors will be used in Australia”.
“Nuclear power stations mean tiny amounts of land used, less transmission lines and reliable affordable electricity for Australian consumers and industry when compared with intermittent wind and solar,” Mr Pitt said.
Sure they do. Except they don’t exist, and by the time they might, we could already be at net zero with our world-beating renewable resources, at a fraction of the cost.
That’s before we consider whether the Australian public in every eastern city wants nuclear reactors sitting on their doorstep.
Fix gas, fix everything:
- pull the ADGM lever;
- apply export levies;
- lower the price cap;
- nationalise Origin and/or Santos. or
- import US gas and benchmark local spot prices via a publically owned gas central bank.
I mean, seriously, WTF is the ALP so afraid of?
