Beardy
Thank you for your kind words. I do have a slight advantage being directly involved in the business. However, I have to tell you that there is still a large range of views regarding climate change among my colleagues, many of whom I regard as friends. I am based in QLD after all and it is arguably the most conservative (think fearful and frightened here) state there is, although WA may rival it, but I have never even visited WA so I am even more unqualified than normal to comment.
Yes, Australia is in the invidious position of a small population and a vast land. Simple things become difficult. I think it was in another thread that the subject of transmission was dismissed as not being an issue. It is of course an issue in the same way roads are an issue. We are a relatively wealthy country so we get away with it, but every long road or transmission line has fewer people to pay for it than in most other countries. It is ironic that we have all this sun and all this space and still it is difficult to position solar farms economically. It is also ironic that back in the 70s and 80s Australia was a leader in solar development. The old story. There was just not the interest here for research and other counties where the sun hardly shone romped ahead. Even if we did not use it ourselves (because of our abundance of coal and other resources) we should have pursued it to sell onto other countries less fortunate than us with resources.
nother potential export lost. Oh, the benefit of 20/20 hindsight!
I think in some ways you have hit on the key to the problem. It is that we need a replacement base load system to the current coal fired stations (and the gas fired stations, except they tend to be more expensive to run, but are more flexible). None of the renewables for the moment (note please "for the moment") or unless there is a significant breakthrough, are in a position to reliably produce base load power. Base load power has nothing to do with size, although in the past it was indeed the larger stations that did this, but more to do with the ability to produce reliable power at any time. That is the crucial criteria: at any time.
Sure, we should be moving towards alternatives and if we don't life is going to become very difficult and much less attractive than it has been in recent times. I will still trot out my mantra that the alternative has to be economic or it will not gain traction, because of the competitive market.
What are the alternative base load options? Really? Sweet Fanny Adams your honour! :( Currently we have coal but the only alternative is nuclear. In Australia in particular I doubt nuclear will fly for these reasons.
Nuclear plants are expensive to build and expensive to maintain. When they are built they tend to be larger installations to maximise the economy of scale (I have heard that there are some "pocket" sized plants being considered, but I know nothing about them to the extent they may not even have been built). Large plants do not suit Australia because of our relatively small grid (Megawatt wise, not distance). What do we do with the waste? Still no solution to that. What about safety if something goes wrong? Are they more susceptible to terrorist attack? No, but more of a disaster if they are "hit." And which one of you wants one in his back yard? No, no, no, we are not going to stick them out in the desert because there aren't any power lines and it is too costly to put them up and the government won't give them to us for free: This of course is the chant of the private owners. On top of that, the pay back period is going to be long (remember it has to be economically viable) and in the meantime a renewable might get sufficient traction that it becomes both cheaper and more reliable all around the clock!
There is one nuclear alternative that dispenses with some of the concerns above. It is Thorium powered nuclear, but nobody seems to be terribly interested primarily because you can't make bombs with thorium. If Chernobyl and Fukushima had been powered by thorium there would not have been the catastrophic disasters experienced in those two locations. However, that it a bit glib of me as thorium is a very different product. It's big advantages are that the half life of the spent fuel rods are nowhere near as long as the isotopes of Uranium and Plutonium and the reaction can be shut down at the flick of a switch thus eliminating the melt down potential.
However, no bombs and the initial reaction is quite a lot more difficult to establish. Incidentally, Australia just happens to have one of the largest thorium resources in the world.
I am starting to ramble, but on your last point we do need to know where we are going before we build roads just on the off chance.
Regards
Paul