JOHN MONTGOMERY, DUNKELD

RENEWABLE energy is not a new concept, it has been around ever since life began on earth, all that has changed is the means to capture and convert it to some useful form.

The kinetic energy in the wind, the light and thermal energy from the sun, and the potential energy in the flow of water in a stream have always been there but because they are relatively low-density forms of energy they have only allowed mankind through innovation limited success because of the low density required expending much energy input to get limited output in return.

Perhaps with the wooden windmills or waterwheels constructed to grind grain, the structures themselves represented the stored human energy needed to build them.

Light and thermal energy provided the energy for the growth of vegetation that allowed mankind to utilise beasts of burden to achieve more work than a single individual, even if at times those beasts of burden were other human beings.

The vegetation included trees that effectively were the first ‘batteries’ that stored energy that was released when burnt in boilers or furnaces that powered the coming of the industrial age.

However it was only when mankind began to discover other forms of higher density stored energy in the form of fossil fuels that development accelerated, and then with the highest density stored energy fuel of all that has the potential to replace fossil fuels and maintain the trajectory of progress that began with the industrial revolution whilst still utilising abundant natural resources, and that is nuclear energy in the form of uranium.

The whole basis of progress is not that there are technical solutions to most obstacles, but rather whether or not they are economically sustainable in that they provide more value than what they cost, and this is why low-density forms of renewable energy lost favour to those stored resources that could release high-density energy with lower inputs.

Now we sit at the cross roads with the option of putting the future in the hands of those who favour utilising low-density, or low-quality forms of energy by compensating with quantity in the form of technology that is not renewable and will consume an ever increasing quantity of other limited natural resources, in fact nobody is even sure that there are sufficient essential minerals to get to the first stage of the zero emission future.

Taking into account that it is not only the fossil fuel resources that are finite, but also every other natural resource, there is not only an economic, but a moral obligation to ensure that when considering how best to utilise natural resources, that whatever is to be built should be such that the output in energy should be the maximum multiples of inputted energy that technology allows.

It must be quality instead of quantity otherwise the advantages gained by utilising natures stored energy resources will be lost and the future will be more like those societies that still exist today in primitive or falling circumstances because they have not had advantage of the technology the modern world has or have squandered the resources or opportunities offered.

Given the importance of the fossil fuels to the petro-chemical industry, they should be reserved to provide the other non-energy essentials of life.

Whilst an example of a 6.6 KW system was used by Peter Dixon, the advantages he has enjoyed have only come about because of rising electricity prices, if the move to renewables results in lower prices then there will be a lower return on the money invested in the system, perhaps to the point that the system has to be replaced before it has recouped the original investment which was likely subsidised with taxpayers funds anyway to make it viable in the first place.

Has he based his return on investment on a power price of 56, 32 or 20 cents a kilowatt hour?

What return did the taxpayers get on their investment in his system?

At a minimum, the savings should amount to sufficient to not only recoup the initial cost, but to also fund its inevitable replacement otherwise it will have only been a feel-good exercise.

It is not in the interests of those who wish to capture low-density forms of renewables to have lower power prices that extends the payback time on their investment.

Perhaps a nuclear power station costs more but then it can operate continuously over a longer lifespan that sees those installations that produce intermittent output, and store it, replaced several times over.

It is not Dan Tehan or Peter Dutton who have limited vison, but rather those still stalled in a cold-war ideology and refuse to see how the world has moved on, it seems that the question of nuclear is a replay of the time it took Melbourne to move from first considering an underground railway, (wasn’t it the late 1800s?) to accepting the obvious in the 1980s.

There are currently about 440 operational nuclear power reactors operating in 32 countries with the USA having the most with 96 producing about 20 per cent of their electrical generation since first beginning nearly 60 years ago.

It is Peter Dutton who has been able to see beyond the limited ideological confines to a future beyond the three-year election cycle.

It seems our government is more prepared to rely on our main ally to protect our way of life militarily as we slip behind economically rather than follow their example as to how to protect it economically.