When we work out how to manage power we can work out how we manage power.
It’s something I’ve contemplated a lot. In a world dependent on us being plugged in, what we plug into matters. Not just literally but philosophically. To me it makes sense of why government is so long lingering at the coal and gas bar. They know it’s last drinks, but they’re not moving on. They’re not moving on because the big players haven’t worked out how to use renewables to capture us. There’s too much potential for self-reliance. And no one at the top of the trickle-down wants that.
Renewables have the potential to show us that life exists off the grid. That small and sustainable is possible. We can generate our own energy and share it. We can do trickle-across! That’s contrary to the core ethos of trickle-down economics that insists we just wait at the bottom and eventually someone will get to us.
We’ve accepted, and been dependent on, a system that makes us quite literally powerless. When we ask why it’s taken so long for a country full of wind and solar and all the natural resources to make batteries, I sometimes think it’s this: capitalists need to capture the cash. Sure there’s expenditure on solar panels and installation, and batteries certainly aren’t cheap, but they continue to improve and decrease in cost, making it possible to generate our own supply. What happens when we are no longer power junkies waiting on our dealer? What happens when we localise our power supply?
In theory, small communities should be able to power share. I think it’s why. in essence. lots of powerful people seem to hate renewables. Power sharing isn’t their thing. They like to own power and dole it out. They like us dependent on them. Power goes in, money goes out. We are plugged into their machine. Micro-grids, and in particular community micro-grids, are the way forward. But the systems are expensive and they have to be licensed. Fees are between $430k and $600k. There is some movement on micro-grids for regional and remote communities, but it’s difficult to do and I can’t just share power with my neighbour because apparently that’s not legal.
Nuclear power is loved by those who love controlling the power. There’s no inter-dependence in nuclear. You can’t put one in your backyard and hook in. It’s trickle-down until you die. And you probably will. It’s a 5-7 year build with a massive infrastructure spend, and then it’s operational for at best 40 years (if it doesn’t leak, malfunction, blow up or be impacted by outside forces). Because thanks to climate change we can look forward to bigger floods, fires, hurricanes and all things biblical. And then when the nuclear plant is finished it has to be de-commissioned. Hmm, lovely, maybe it could be remodelled as apartments? Put the CEO’s in there.
The thought of a landscape filled with reactors fills me with fear. It’s the stuff of dystopian nightmares. I can’t unsee the footage from Fukishima and the subsequent devastating radiation and poisoning. The land there is uninhabitable for 100 years. Apparently. Some say 30. I just don’t trust anything I read around radiation and its long-term effects because of who controls the data. And it’s still leaking into the sea. I don’t know if anyone remembers that the sea is made of liquid which travels around the world? Small detail. Oh, and remember Chernobyl, the nuclear plant where a reactor went out of control and exploded? It was back in 1986 and it’s gone. That area is uninhabitable for 20,000 years. That doesn’t feel like ‘safe green’ power to me. When a malfunction can wipe out safe habitation for that long it’s insane it continues. The risk profile is too big. I can’t think 20,000 years into the future but I can go backwards. 20,000 years would be the time from the end of the Stone Age, or Upper Paleolithic until now. We weren’t even wearing pants for another 18 000 years.
The solution to our power struggles? Stop using infrastructure-dense systems that have ‘power over’ and use renewable systems that ‘power share’.
Mandy, excellent call.
The days of being completely lorded over by centralised power system is changing, all thanks to the rise and rise, of rooftop home solar, home solar batteries and bidirectional EV charging.
Lot’s of employment opportunities in the
Renewable industries Joachim !
Although …might be a couple of jobs
Like a snake catcher..or Jim mowing 🤣
Barrow, I see you parroting the silly talking points of Rupert Murdoch and his media empire.
Its all too complex for you and your handlers at Rupert Inc to get your head around the Green Economy and the jobs that are coming with it.
Barrow, stay the course, the future is the Fossil Fuel Economy, yeah. Lol
At the rate you lot are going, the future will be cutting down all the tree to heat our homes.
Really Mandy, I reckon you need to have some credible credentials and technical expertise to pontificate in this way. Otherwise it reads like instant “experts” sounding off over a few drinks.
“To me it makes sense of why government is so long lingering at the coal and gas bar. They know it’s last drinks, but they’re not moving on.”
Did you do any research on the state and federal cooperation on the transformation to renewables that is taking place as you wrote this?
“They’re not moving on because the big players haven’t worked out how to use renewables to capture us. There’s too much potential for self-reliance. And no one at the top of the trickle-down wants that.”
Did you think to mention that Australia has the highest uptake of rooftop solar in the world that continues to rise as a percentage of total energy percentage? There are many reasons behind this proud achievement but I’d think one of them would have to be generous subsidies offered by mainly state governments for many years now.
It’s unlikely that we will supply total energy needs from rooftop solar and renewable energy communities any time soon enough so system wide infrastructure will be needed to produce renewable energy at scale and transmit it to where it’s needed. So sorry about the “trickle down”. It’s all hands on deck here.
Sure we don’t want to have all this progress put on halt by the massive distraction of nuclear into the mix – mysteriously after a decade of no one thinking to raise it in the last coalition government. So we don’t want another decade of stagnation on energy policy IE the return of the coalition government.
This would seem like common sense but it doesn’t seem to stop the Greens working to bring down Labor at any opportunity. Worth thinking about?
No we don’t
Perhaps the good readership of the Echo should Google the thoughts of Prof Angus Dalgleish on climate change. He got a bit of a plug in the last “backlash”.
Lizardbreath the Prime Minister resently
Suggested that Australia and the world was in
a climate emergency ! Well i guess Ablo means
We are all in imminent danger ! sounds
about right Lizardbreath ?
Apart from not knowing how your question relates to my comment here Barrow, I can’t speak for Albo. I’d suggest you ask him.
Lizardbreath you have never implied that
Australia or the world is in a climate emergency 🤔 ?
Ah, now that’s a different question. You’re asking what I think not what ALBO thinks.
Unlike your good self, I try to avoid clichéd phrases. What I think is that the Industrial Revolution has been changing our environment at an exponential pace. I find it well within the realms of possibility that the outcomes that smarter people than me predict, are highly feasible. That the relevant changes hang about for some time and can’t just be switched off when we see their unfortunate consequences.
I think that, globally we needed to start taking urgent action decades ago.
Now what do you think? Your have previously shown a rather confused position on all this.
They are smarter than you. That is how they are getting billions of your dollar to study a ‘problem’. To solve a ‘problem’. Yet, their ‘solutions’ seem to be causing actual problems that you will then have to pay them even more to fix. Sex sells cars and cloths. Existential angst sells research proposals and windmills.
Barrow, its gotten worse, we in a Climate Collapse.
Joachim, no one is doubting that you are having a climate collapse, and that it is getting worse.
We can’t all be as smart as you Christian. But some of us may be superior in the humility stakes.
Agree Mandy, all the recent nonsense about nuclear is just to delay action on phasing out fossil fuels and as you say because renewables are cheap and widely accessible to most. A capitalists nightmare..
Capitalists are making the windmills to sell you. They will then sell you replacement coal plants when you wake up.
The planet is heading into a wonderful future lead by science and technology. The future energy will be Nuclear Fusion ( joining atoms as aposed to spliting atoms…Fision currently used) Fusion is clean,safe and cheap. We will all have a small Fusion device at home for all our power needs.
Sally Spinner