Frank Fisher warns us not to get carried away with the hype around renewables. They will
not allow us to continue our lifestyles without ecological damage and
are not a substitute for conservation.
At the rate industrialised peoples have grown accustomed to using energy,
no energy form can be used, and no energy transformation to electricity
can occur, without environmental problems. ...
I should say at the outset that as the instigator of what is currently
Australia’s largest wind farm (52.5MW, 0.1% of Australia’s installed
electricity capacity, (planned to be twice as big, but local grid
capacity cannot cope), I can hardly be said to be opposed to the use of
renewable energies. Nevertheless, I am seriously concerned with the
cavalier approach to renewable energies apparent in even our most
responsible media. ...
Conservation can be mined just like coal!
If we could see this, it would become exciting as an opportunity for
venture capitalists and be reflected in our economic and regulatory
structures. ...
Renewables are sold as a panacea. Renewables are marketed on the basis that they
will permit us to continue to live in the ways we have grown accustomed
to but with ‘zero emissions’. This is a mischievous and dangerous
illusion. ...
Large scale renewable systems involve mining sunshine via plants or via the
heat and movement the sun gives to the atmosphere and the oceans i.e.
hydro, wind and the various (potential) marine powers. Attempting to
fill the current demand with renewables creates a raft of
environmental, social and even moral concerns.
Energy cropping means ‘growing fuels’ ... there is a real question as to
whether it is moral to use potential food-bearing crop land that
wastefully? ...the Snowy Mountains hydroelectric installations had
implications for the Snowy River and for the social and ecological
systems that lived along it and in it. If all humans were to demand
the same 2kW from the wind say, as we in Australia currently expect
from fossil fuels ... the energetics of the atmosphere will change as
surely as through burning fossil fuels. ... electricity from solar or
photovoltaic cells is not an answer ... because the quantities
available per square metre per day are small, especially after
deducting the energy costs of making and installing them.
What is usually ignored is that all energy infrastructure costs energy to
create, transport, install, maintain, dismantle when its life is done.
...
With nuclear power the radioactive residues will have to be taken care of
over tens of thousands of years, with security, monitoring and social
concerns not yet dreamed of.
The reason that the overall view is not commonly taken is:
• virtually no one thinks that way
• we have not yet created the necessarily international structures that would enable us to act if we did
• the profound vested interests society has in its existing energy
sources militate against even putting questions that imply the
replacement of all that physical, social and personal. ...
A conservation focus means that while definitely the way to go for new
electricity generation, renewables should not be permitted to eclipse
conservation. Many of these activities can be pursued by individuals
with no help from government. ... The effects could be transformative
socially as well as ecologically.