,

This is not green

The destruction of renewables outweighs the so called green energy. Countless Years of remnant vegetation destroyed for this dubious short term and expensive energy.
Courtesy of Save Eungella page;
Please take a long, hard look at this. This is not ‘green’. The impact of the industrialization of regional Queensland’s Great Dividing Range’s last wild places for ‘green’ energy is appalling. Multiple communities displaced, tens of thousands of hectares of threatened species and habitat destroyed, a terrible legacy for our children. And Eungella is set to be surrounded by these.
Sadly these things only work when the wind is blowing, when it is not, there is a need for battery storage to kick in (enter the proposed Pioneer Burdekin Pumped Hydro Battery). They are not stand-alone magic energy answers, they rely on an entire network, and these should all be environmentally assessed in their entirety, rather than as an individual project, for their appalling cumulative impact.
National Rally Against Reckless Renewables in Canberra next Tuesday.
/0 Comments/by
, ,

Rally – NO Hydro

Calling all communities…

WE DO NOT NEED THIS HYDRO!

The Government needs to show their commitment to Co-Generation on our Sugar Mills before we touch any of our environment.

Sign the two petitions if you have not already:
/0 Comments/by
, ,

Pipeline blasting

WATCH HOW THE NEW PIPELINE FOR THE ‘PIONEER-BURDEKIN’ HYDRO-PLANT WILL BE BUILT

Here’s a video that shows the sort of blasting that will happen on Eungella Range if the Government’s new Hydropower Plant goes ahead.

And that’s just the pipelines!

It doesn’t show the blasting that will happen when they remove the top of Mt Dalrymple to build the two huge upper storage dams, vast underground tunnels and other site infrastructure!

The wholesale destruction of this majestic, ancient mountain alone, will be devastating.

Just imagine how many wildlife habitats will be decimated by all this blasting, dust, noise, vibration and deforestation.

Not to mention the air quality and noise impacts on the people, businesses and communities who live nearby.

This is the WRONG location for such a massive, industrial-grade project.

It is also completely uneconomic.

Take a look at the Snowy Hydro 2.0 where for every 100 units of electricity purchased to pump the water uphill, only 75 are returned when the water flows back down through the turbine generators.

As the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out earlier this year:

“Not only is the electricity generated not renewable, Snowy 2.0 will be the most inefficient battery on the NEM, losing 25 per cent of energy cycled”.

PLEASE – Sign our e-Petition calling on Parliament to stop this ill-advised and immensely destructive project!

Click link to open the E-Petition: https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/Work-of-the-Assembly/Petitions/Petition-Details?id=3820

/0 Comments/by
, ,

PETITION TO STOP THE PIONEER-BURDEKIN HYDROPOWER PLANT

HANDS OFF OUR PRECIOUS VALLEY!

 

I have now lodged a Parliamentary Petition calling for an end to the Queensland Government’s proposed construction of the world’s largest hydropower Plant here in the Pioneer Valley region.

 

The project involves the building of two high dams in the Burdekin Catchment and a massive lower dam, inundating Netherdale and surrounding valley to the base of the Eungella Range.

This 5GW industrial mega-plant will destroy our precious Pioneer Valley and scar the landscape of the majestic Mount Dalrymple.

It will have a devastating impact on one of the most pristine, luxuriant rainforests in the State, destroy tens of thousands of mature subtropical trees and make hundreds of vulnerable species homeless.

It would also obliterate the lives, livelihood and homes of the many residents, farmers and communities who live there.

Other impacts include fragmenting the river catchment and its depletion due to the unsustainable volume of water needed to fill the new mega-dams and replace evaporation losses.

The proposal also involves the construction of a new ‘super-grid’ of giant transmission towers connecting the plant to “regional centres throughout the state.

No trajectory for this transmission corridor has been provided but will almost certainly slice through many sensitive areas of the state’s forests, national parks, wetlands, streams and rivers, posing a threat to vital wildlife habitats, as well as local tourism and recreational attractions.

Countless rural properties, farms, towns, communities across the whole region will be adversely affected by these gigantic and unsightly transmission towers.

The Government’s plan is completely incomprehensible to many of those who live in the area.

Its impact will be enormous, far outstripping any perceived benefits.

If allowed to proceed, this unique region will be lost forever to the people of Queensland and future generations.

The Government is operating without any social licence from the Pioneer Valley community, farmers or Traditional Land Owners.

We need a country where we live in harmony with nature, not industrialise it.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION AT LINK BELOW AND SHARE WIDELY

NO TO THE PIONEER-BURDEKIN HYDRO-PLANT

/7 Comments/by
,

Pools of methane

HYDRO SCHEMES MAY BE RENEWABLE, BUT THEY DEFINITELY AREN’T GREEN

This plan for building the world’s biggest pumped hydro site in the Pioneer Valley will be a disaster for the region in more ways than one. 

Five years ago, Malcolm Turnbull announced the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project by saying:

“The plan will increase the generation of the Snowy Hydro scheme by 50 per cent, adding 2000 megawatts of renewable energy to the National Electricity Market (NEM).”

Australians were told the Snowy Hydro scheme would be completed at a cost of $2 billion without any taxpayer subsidy.  It would bring electricity prices down and generate renewable energy with virtually nil environmental impact.

None of these claims turned out to be true.

Not only are Australian taxpayers now up for billions of dollars in subsidies but electricity costs have increased in NSW and Kosciuszko’s ecosystem trashed.

Earlier this year, a Victoria Energy Policy Centre Report said ‘Snowy Hydro’ now wants to increase transmission tariffs by more than 50 per cent.

Far from bringing electricity prices down, electricity prices in NSW have risen significantly because of Snowy 2.0.

And far from adding 2000 megawatts of renewable energy to the National Electricity Market, Snowy 2.0 will end up being a net load on the NEM.

For every 100 units of electricity purchased to pump water uphill, only 75 units are returned as the water flows back down through the turbine generators.

Even the Sydney Morning Herald described it as a ‘white elephant’ and the most inefficient battery on the NEM, losing 25 per cent of energy cycled.

The Premier’s ‘revolutionary’ scheme here in Queensland will be no different.

The whole thing seems to have been cobbled together without any consultations held with Traditional Land Owners OR  the residents and farmers whose properties and community are set to be wiped out by the Government’s costly and catastrophic virtue signalling.

The concept of hydropower may seem like a green solution, but it’s actually a dirty one.

Hydropower dams emit a huge amount of methane, endanger fish species, submerge prime agricultural land and uproot communities.

Some existing dams in the lowland Amazon have been shown to be 10 times more carbon intensive than coal fired power plants.

Over time, they can lead to drastically reduced fish populations.   They also change water quality, insect populations, riverside plants, disrupt food production and the entire region’s ecosystem.

These facts alone should eliminate hydro-electricity as either a green OR low carbon energy option.

/0 Comments/by
, ,

8 Power Stations to close early

SNOWY HYDRO 3.0 – MORE ‘GREEN’ INSANITY FROM QUEENSLAND LABOR!

Premier Palaszczuk has unveiled a new $62 billion 10 year energy plan, which will make Queensland home to the world’s biggest pumped hydro scheme and end the state’s reliance on coal-power.

Queensland’s eight coal-fired power stations are to be shut down and transformed into “clean energy hubs” by 2035 – a decade earlier than expected.

New legislation is also to be enacted committing Queenslanders to an 80 percent renewable energy target by 2035.

What neither the Premier or any of her Ministers mentioned, however, is that the proposed area of the project will mean the loss of parts of the Mackay-Eungella Road and the town of Netherdale.

In other words, an entire regional town comprising 121 people, including 35 families, will have to be submerged to make way for the project.

Aside from the devastating human impact this will cause, the project also risks causing irreversible and long-term ecological damage to the region’s ecosystem.

In 2017, scientists at the University of Hong Kong and James Cook University published a study on the environment effects of hydro energy in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

The authors found hydropower the most environmentally damaging of all the renewable energies they looked at, causing harm to wildlife and habitats, especially fish.

William Laurance of James Cook University commented that: “Hydro projects are such a disaster for tropical rainforests that I don’t consider them ‘green’ energy at all”.

The problem is hydro involves diverting rivers through a set of turbines before feeding it back downriver.

This poses a grave risk of the dam producing toxic methyl-mercury across the water system.

Hydro dams form head ponds and can flood the soil and form low-oxygen, toxic environments.

When exposed to these blooms, humans and animals may develop serious health issues including liver damage, rashes and gastrointestinal illness.

The Eungella Honeyeater is just one of many species at risk.  It is one of the last new species of birds discovered in Australia. 

The birds eat underwater insects that can accumulate methyl-mercury and then biomagnify it all the way up the food chain.

In terms of the economy, the $62 billion project will sink Queensland even further into debt.

The Government claims the “modelling” supports the extra debt but as usual failed to provide any details of that modelling or the data it was based on.

The project hasn’t even had any engineering or environmental work done yet.

As industry experts have pointed out, the project will be technically difficult.

And with no engineering assessment, the estimated cost is little more than guesswork.

You only have to look at the Snowy Hydro 2.0 project to know where this game is headed!

/0 Comments/by
,

Life under Net Zero

GERMANY’S GREEN NIGHTMARE

Remember ‘Energiewende’– the green energy transition that globalists held up as a green energy model for the world.

Between 2000 and 2019, renewables in Germany grew from 7 percent to 35 percent of its electricity.

German politicians were so convinced that gas and coal were stranded assets that they closed all their reliable power generators, without building any more to replace them.

Meanwhile, the enormous subsidies paid to the renewables sector helped make German retail power costs the highest in Europe.

No matter.  Energiewende was “Germany’s gift to the world” they told us.

In 2020, the German government allocated a record $38 billion to expand green electricity infrastructure even more.

On 7 March 2022, it earmarked another 200 billion for yet more investments in decarbonisation and “greater independence from imported fossil fuels”.

Germany’s Finance Minister Christian Lindner said the funds would be used to expand e-car charging infrastructure, hydrogen production and the construction of more renewable power sources in Germany.

The Minister called renewables “freedom energies”.

He said it with a straight face.

Energiewende has cost Germany $36 billion annually since 2015.  By 2025, the total amount spent will hit $580 billion.

But things are not looking so good for Germany’s Energiewende today, with gas flows from Russia at just 20 percent capacity.

In fact things are starting to look very grim indeed.

It might still be the height of summer, but Germany has little time to lose.

City officials are dimming or turning off streetlights – even traffic lights – while municipal pools and gyms switch off the hot water in a race to reduce energy consumption before winter.

German brewers have been told to stop making beer and there is talk of Oktoberfest being cancelled.

Landlords have turned down the heating on rental properties and asked tenants to take shorter showers.

Germany’s presidential palace in Berlin is no longer lit at night and the spotlights on public monuments have all been turned off.

Fifteen percent of German industries have already cut production, while a third say they will do so shortly.

One is chemical giant BASF SE, who says it is planning to cut the gas-intensive production of ammonia — a key component of fertilisers – due to skyrocketing energy costs rendering the business unprofitable.

Our economic system is in danger of collapsing,” the Premier of Saxony told Die Zeit newspaper.

“If we aren’t careful, Germany could become deindustrialised” he said.

Welcome to life under Net Zero!

A world where nights are going to be cold and dark, where hot water will be a luxury and sports stadiums prepare to do double duty as warming areas for Germans so they don’t freeze to death.

 

/0 Comments/by

Helicopter Inspections – Central Queensland – July 2022

To maintain a safe and reliable supply of Powerlink Queensland’s high voltage electricity network, low-flying helicopters will carry out routine maintenance inspections of transmission lines across Central Queensland during July through to September (weather permitting).

Inspections will take place in:
  • Alton Downs
  • Blackwater
  • Bouldercombe
  • Bracewell
  • Duaringa
  • Eton
  • Glenella
  • Gogango
  • Gracemere
  • Greenmount (Mackay)
  • Homebush
  • Kabra
  • Koumala
  • Mackenzie River
  • Moranbah
  • Mount Britton
  • Mount Coolon
  • Nebo
  • North Eton
  • Oakenden
  • Pleystowe
  • South Trees
  • Stanage
  • Stanwell
  • Tieri
  • Valkyrie
  • Victoria Plains
  • West Mackay
  • Yarwun
During the aerial inspections, the specialist helicopter pilot and team will seek to maintain the maximum distance practically possible from houses, livestock and crops. Local residents may see the helicopter moving relatively quickly and at a low level along the transmission lines, and in some instances, it may need to pause to enable closer inspection of the lines.
They aim to be as quick and non-disruptive as possible, but there is potential for some noise during the inspections.
They are also aware that low-flying helicopters have the potential to startle livestock. As such, I encourage landholders with an easement on or near their property to register their contact details with them to receive more information about upcoming patrols.
FREECALL 1800 635 369
/0 Comments/by
,

Who owns Australia’s gas?

DOES AUSTRALIA ACTUALLY OWN ANYTHING ANYMORE?

Australia was the world’s biggest exporter of Liquefied Natural Gas in 2021.

So why are we now paying more for our gas than overseas buyers?

More importantly, why are we faced with a crippling gas shortage?

Ask the Queensland Government.

The days of enjoying some of the cheapest gas prices in the world ended when our Government began exporting LNG back in 2015.

Seems LNG exporters have not just been exporting our coal seam gas reserves offshore, but gas from conventional sources as well.

Companies like Esso and BHP Billiton have reaped a windfall from the practice, while domestic households and industry gas users have been left to compete on price with foreign-owned LNG exporters needing to fill their overseas export contracts.

The Queensland Government should have taken a leaf out of the Western Australian Government’s playbook.

It wasn’t stupid.  It passed a law requiring LNG exporters to ensure that 15 percent of liquefied natural gas (LNG) was reserved for domestic use.

This has kept gas prices in WA much lower than those on the East Coast and ensured a secure domestic supply for West Australians.

Over on the East Coast, however, we are hearing of various proposals for building multi-million dollar gas import facilities – presumably to import back what we sent offshore at 100 times the cost.

Just to add insult to injury, a new report shows that virtually all Australia’s gas projects, producers and facilities are now foreign-owned.

The Australian Institute researchers, who had access to the Bloomberg Professional Terminal database, has revealed the extent to which foreign ownership has been grossly under-counted in official figures.

Not only are companies like Shell and Chevron 100 per cent foreign-owned, but so are many supposed Australian companies like BHP, Santos and Woodside.

BHP is actually 94% foreign owned and 82 per cent American owned.

So a more accurate description for BHP, nowadays, would be the “Big American”.

Four LNG Export Projects – Prelude, Ichthys, Gorgon and Queensland Curtis LNG – are 100% foreign owned.

Even the least foreign-owned, Pluto, is 84 percent foreign owned.

The report calculated the average foreign equity share by project capacity is 95.7 percent, with Australia’s share, a measly 4.3 percent.

These foreign-owned gas companies are all funneling their profits to owners overseas, and paying little to no tax on any of it here.

Worse, offshore LNG projects are only subject to a petroleum resource rent tax, not Commonwealth royalties.

Something which analysts say has cost Australians billions of dollars in lost revenue per project.

LNG Export Companies 95.7% Foreign Owned: Research Report

 

/1 Comment/by
, ,

Say goodbye to the Kingswood

THE ELECTRIC VEHICLE SCAM AND OUR CARLESS FUTURE

This whole idea of ‘transitioning’ over to electric vehicles, is starting to look more and more like a huge smokescreen to me.

One masking the true agenda behind Queensland’s ‘zero emissions’ future –getting rid of individual car ownership altogether.

You just have to take a close look at what electrifying the State’s whole transport system would entail, to understand the whole thing is completely impossible.

It means replacing ALL our petrol fuelled cars, trucks, trains, boats, motorcycles, barges and farm transport by 2050.

And probably a lot sooner given the Government’s current roadmap includes a 50% ban on combustion engine sales by 2030, and a 100% ban by 2036.

At that point they will either impose a complete ban or so many pollution taxes no-one will be able to drive them anyway.

People accepted this ‘transition’ largely because they were led to believe they will emerge from the whole process still owning some kind of car, albeit an electric one.

I see three key problems with that idea.

There’s time.

There’s scale.

And there’s cost.

Right now, there are over 1.2 billion motor vehicles in the world.

Just imagine what replacing 1.2 billion motor vehicles is going to mean in terms of energy, labour, cost and resources.

Does the world even have the number of engineers or manufacturing plants needed to build that many EVs, let alone all the new infrastructure and transmission capacity to support them?

In Queensland, we have 4,303,713 million registered motor vehicles, only 8,000 of which are electric.  That leaves 4,295,713 million vehicles to be replaced.

In 2019, Professor Richard Herrington of the Head of Earth Sciences at the British Natural History Museum, told the British Government:

“Converting UK’s vehicles to electricity by 2050 would require two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production.”

That’s just the UK!

“Society needs to understand that there is a raw-material cost of going green”, Herrington wrote.

And that’s the problem.

Governments have not been honest with people about any of this.

Last month, green energy experts admitted that 90-95 percent of the supply chain for EVs simply “DOES NOT EXIST”.

The EV CEO of Ford Motors, RJ Scaringe, spelt it out – “the world simply doesn’t have the resources or supply chain to transition ALL Americans into EVs”.

“All the world’s cell production combined represents well under 10 percent of what we will need in 10 years” he said.

Did you catch that?

90 percent to 95 percent of the EV supply chain does not even exist yet!

Say goodbye to the Kingswood!!
/0 Comments/by