Angry Scots burn their energy bills in a recent protest.
Victoria’s massive gasfields shown in pink and yellow.

By TONY MOBILIFONITIS
VICTORIA’S green-left and the dizzy-headed disciples of the World Economic Forum are pushing for the total electrification of the state while unlawfully abandoning the massive gas resources they sit on and are duty-bound by law to use for the state’s benefit.

Andrews and the corporate clones around Melbourne Mayor Sally Capp, a WEF disciple, want some 2 million Victorian homes to ditch gas appliances and switch to unreliable wind and solar-fed grids and battery banks in suburbs that go flat after a few hours. The government has costed the so-called Gas Substitution Roadmap $14,500 per household, which would cost the state an astronomical $30 billion. But the gas industry says it’s more like $21,500 to $40,000 per household or roughly $60 billion.

In the UK, the energy crisis caused by the insane Russia gas boycott, is pushing household energy bills up tenfold. In Scotland, people are burning their power bills in public protests. It’s all part of the current stupidity of western political and corporate decision-making.

Meanwhile there is no shortage of gas in Victoria. The state’s first developed offshore gas and oilfield, the Gippsland Basin, contains reserves of 2.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and ethane, and there is so much excess gas in the more recent Otway Basin in the west of the state, they are storing it underground when it is not being sold out of Queensland to foreign buyers.

Andrews’ Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning is refusing to release modelling for its so-called Roadmap, which is hardly surprising when one realises there is no sound reasoning behind it. It is little more than blind obedience to the World Economic Forum that has arbitrarily announced a global “transition to net zero carbon emissions” to stop the alleged “climate emergency”.

The Roadmap is also a treacherous and unlawful sell-out of the longstanding principle that states own mineral resources under the ground and that the state as a whole shares in the benefits of those resources.  

The general rule under mining law in Australia is that the Crown (in right of the State) owns all minerals. This has been implemented by statute, initially by enacting that all future grants of land must contain a reservation to the Crown of all minerals. Now, all new grants of freehold titles in Australia have provided that all minerals were reserved to the Crown.

The Victorian Government’s own Earth Resources division states that it “encourages a commercially viable mining industry which makes the best use of mineral resources in a way that is compatible with the economic growth, social wellbeing, cultural wellbeing and environmental health of the State”.

But Andrews, Mayor Capp and the legions of virtue-signallers actually believe they are “saving the planet” by turning off the domestic gas supply in the state and forcing people on to “unreliables” based on intermittent sun and wind and part-time batteries. The people of the UK and Germany are learning the hard lesson already with their astronomical energy bills based on increasing use of wind and solar and dwindling gas supplies.

Gas has long been a convenient, efficient and inexpensive form of energy for 2 million-plus residential users in Victoria. It is also an important energy source for industry. But the hare-brained elite of the state are prepared to spend $30 to $60 billion to virtue signal the end of fossil fuel energy for homes in order to give Klaus Schwab and his Davos crowd a warm inner glow.

Andrews, his socialist left faction, the Greens and the ranks of corporate WEF shills led by Mayor Capp all think the world will end if we continue using fossil fuels, Victoria is being led down a path where only the elites of society will be able to afford the energy the has given Australia one of the highest living standards in the world.

So-called electrification is in fact WEF policy: “Achieving net-zero carbon targets will require clean electrification of energy uses, especially for buildings, transport and industry… The Global Future Council on Clean Electrification will bring together subject matter experts from industry, academia and civil society to amplify the value and role of clean electrification in the energy transition,” the WEF states.

Capp and her corporate cabal on the Committee for Melbourne, think of themselves as paragons of virtue by blindly pushing WEF energy idiocy i.e. total reliance on wind, solar and other so-called renewables such as the extremely expensive hydrogen option. The only energy source in the WEF’s approved stable that makes sense (but is expensive) is nuclear, because without that their renewable mix simply would not work, as Germany has been discovering.

Victoria’s current political leadership however, is unlikely to embrace nuclear, because they have such a long history opposition to it. So, if Dan and his political cabal can rig another election win, the future for Victoria looks grim indeed.

The reality of energy supply is very clearly described by a Scottish academic Robert Wilson in his essay titled “The Future of Energy: Why Power Density Matters”. Essentially, it is fossil fuels like coal and oil that provide the required “horsepower” to drive the power supply for the typical modern city or nation state.

Wind and solar, unlike coal and oil, have a serious lack of power density, that is, the amount of energy (Watts) generated per square metre. Wilson provides the simple example of a cheap propane powered generator that provides in excess of 1000 W/m2, which is far in excess of the power density of any conceivable new method of generating renewable energy such as the massive wind towers that only generate 2 to 5W/m2 because of their intermittent and unreliable operation. Solar is not much better, and at very best achieves 20W/m2 in desert solar farms but only 5W/m2 in Germany or other nations with low sunshine hours.

In reality, the best energy supply is some sort of mixture of renewables, nuclear and fossil fuels, but the latter is what drives the productive capacity of a nation, and it is no accident that modern nation states adopted coal-fired and nuclear electricity as their primary energy supply. It is also no accident that China built more than 3000 coal-fired power stations to drive their massive manufacturing capacity and heat and cool their huge population.

These basic facts appear to have escaped the starry-eyed corporates like Mayor Capp, who had executive roles at WEF partner KPMG and is involved in the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. One thing we learn in the world of power and politics is that high status often has more to do with driven ambition and self-preservation and less to do with intelligence or wisdom.