That’s because renewables are non-profitable. So they have to be subsidized. Which means the cost of energy goes up. Brilliant.
The Mystery: The most resource rich nation on Earth has the highest electricity prices?!
Ask anyone and get confused: It’s poles and wires, gaming of the system by capitalist pigs, excessive taxes, privatization, and record gas prices. TheCleanEnergy Council tells us that Australia has one of the longest electricity networks in the world — we need lots of poles! And so we do. But once upon a timeAustralia had the cheapest electricity in the worldand westill had lots of poles.Not only were miles of poles and wires, there were also capitalist pigs, excessive taxes, and privatized generators. Therewere wild gas price spikes too, (during which we probably just burned more coal).
Evidently, something else has changed. Something seismic thatwiped out all the bids below $50/MWh.
Perhaps it has something to do with the2,106 turbines in 79 wind farmsthat on random windy days might make 4,325MW that didn’t exist in Australia in 1999 when electricity was cheap and ourtotal national wind power was 2.3 megawatts?
Another clue might be the1.8 million new solar PV installations,which theoretically generate 7 gigawatts of electricity at noon on cloudless days if all the panels have been cleaned. Back in 2007, we had 14MW.
But of course, cause and effect are devilishly difficult. The one thing we know for sure is that even though sunlight and moving air is free,there is no country on Earth with lots of solar and wind power and cheap electricity.
Any day now, renewables are going to make electricity cheap, but when that happens, it’ll be a world first.
Via JoNova