I’m getting a lot of comments on Facebook at the moment along the lines of: “Solar needs to stand on its own two feet without subsidies of any kind”.
What these commenters (and our government) seem to miss is that fossil fuels in Australia – and around the world – are massively more subsidised than renewables.
This cartoon fresh from First Dog on the Moon, first posted on treealerts.org, sums up the situation nicely:
About Finn PeacockI'm a Chartered Electrical Engineer, Solar and Energy Efficiency nut, dad, and the founder and CEO of SolarQuotes.com.au. I started SolarQuotes in 2009 and the SolarQuotes blog in 2013 with the belief that it’s more important to be truthful and objective than popular. My last "real job" was working for the CSIRO in their renewable energy division. Since 2009, I’ve helped over 700,000 Aussies get quotes for solar from installers I trust. Read my full bio.
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No, not “a joke” but short-sighted, irresponsible, homicidal , mortgaging the health of future generations to disability, morbidity and inevitably to “The Reaper” ! Taxpayers should not have to condemn their offspring to these for ephemeral short-term gains by subsidizing the mining of coal, oil, gas, peat etc.They should invest instead in their Children’s and Children by subsidizing the most abundant poorly tapped Australian resource, Solar Energy as well as other renewables !
I agree removing subsidies for fossil fuels, and all renewables as well. Let the market decide. It’s perplexing that government will gladly subsidise a rooftop PV system but not a micro Kaplan turbine on a run of river stream.
Talk’s cheap. I note that virtually all the proponents of alternative energy drive their cars to work, to the shops and to collect their kids from school instead of walking.
….and no doubt even the redoubtable Finn relies on the grid to post his comments after the sun goes down.
Fossil fuels will be with us until we run out of them; they’re too convenient to do without voluntarily.
But the industry subsidies are something that SHOULD be challenged; in short, Nationalised.
All our national resources (including offshore ones) BELONG to the nation and the benefits of exploiting them should be publicly retained for the public good…..and that includes financing better ways of finding and using fossil and renewable energy sources on a mix-and-match basis for the greatest efficiencies.
Privatised mining and other exploitative should be outlawed, and the likes of BHP, RIO, Mineralogy and the rest should be made to tender for the contract to do the EXTRACTION only. ALL profits should go towards ‘public-good’ projects…including such things as effective scrubbing of coal-generator pollution.
Other examples include harnessing more of the Murray river’s 3000-foot head and the tidal flows in and out of major ‘dams’ like Port Phillip Bay.
Possibilities abound; all that’s required is the Will and the cash.
Why DO you all continue to elect endless herds of cloned politicians ~ and pay taxes to feed the bastards?