The Pushback against Net Zero
Today I really wanted to focus on the positive steps many countries are taking with respect to reducing emissions and making their agriculture more resilient in the face of climate change. Agriculture – and hence our food security, is very dependent upon that happening. We have seen the damage which just 1.1 0 C of warming is causing around the world – fish kills, crop failures, flooding, water shortages and huge storms, not to mention trillions of dollars in damage.
If we allow that to continue, we are predicted to reach 30 C by 2100 and even if we make some effort to reduce our emissions, but not meet the targets agreed upon at the Paris Accords in 2015, we will reach 50 C by around mid -century.
What we are seeing is a huge misinformation campaign – largely backed by fossil fuel industries, which are seeing their source of wealth slipping away, and their message has been taken up by several political parties in Australia and elsewhere, especially in the UK, NZ and the USA. Internationally, governments which have stepped back from Net Zero targets are often right‑leaning and using public dissatisfaction over rising power bills for political ends rather than addressing the real causes, so for this reason I want to do a little myth busting first before going on to the next topic. [In case you looked at this earlier, I have now split into three sections -it looked impossibly long when I looked at it on my phone, and have elaborated on a couple of points].
“You will be eating bugs by candlelight….”
Their arguments rest largely on the following claims:
- The transition to renewables is too expensive.
- Renewable energy is to blame for huge power bills and cost of living increases.
- Renewables are unreliable and cause blackouts.
- Renewables damage the environment.
- Renewables will cost jobs and destroy rural communities.
- Climate change is a hoax to keep climate scientists and the renewable energy sector in business.
- It’s a conspiracy by governments, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, George Soros [ insert any others you care to name] to enslave people and take away their freedoms.
- Renewable energy would be uncompetitive without subsidies.
- Net zero is bad for business.
- Trying to reach Net Zero will be disastrous for the national economy.
- Fossil fuels are cheaper
- Australia doesn't need renewable energy. It has coal, gas, and uranium. Why import expensive wind turbines and solar panels?
- Australia's efforts to reduce emissions don't matter because big emitters such as China and the USA are still using coal
- Australia only produces 1-2 % of global emissions. It doesn't make any difference if we reduce ours
The short answer is that none of these claims are supported by the available evidence. Renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels and transitioning to clean energy is economically beneficial — not disastrous — for national economies. A more detailed response to counter each myth follows.
Myth# 1: The Transition to Renewables is too Expensive
FACT: Opposition claims that trying to achieve Net Zero will cost Australians trillions have been thoroughly debunked.
The figure quoted in the media and press releases includes overseas investment and export infrastructure—not domestic costs. The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and energy experts put the price tag closer to $90 billion over 25 years. It says as much about the parlous state of our media to be repeating these claims unquestioningly as it does about the people who utter them.
MORE FACTS: Renewables are now the cheapest source of new electricity generation globally. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) reports that 91% of renewable energy projects in 2025 are cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives.
The Real Cost of Energy (2025)*
The Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) is the average cost to produce each kWh of energy over the entire lifetime of a project, after you factor all expenses in. It is used by policy makers and investment planners to compare different energy sources—like solar, wind, coal, or gas—on an equal footing.They include all of the following:
• Upfront capital costs – Building the plant or installing solar panels.• Operating costs – Maintenance, fuel (if needed), staffing.
• Financing costs – Loans, interest, return on investment.
• Lifetime energy output – Total electricity produced over the system’s life.
LEVELISED COST OF POWER USING DIFFERENT TECHNOLOGIES
|
TECHNOLOGY |
COST (2025) |
|
Solar PV (Utility-scale): |
4.4 cents/kWh (12% decrease from 2022) |
|
Onshore Wind |
3.3 cents/kWh (3% decrease from 2022) |
|
Offshore Wind |
7.8 cents/kWh |
|
Hydropower |
4.7 cents/kWh |
|
Fossil Fuels (Combined |
10.0 cents/kWh |
|
Natural Gas |
8.9 cents/kWh |
Sources: IRENA, Lazard LCOE v15, CSIRO GenCost 2025
It should be noted that these are global averages. In some countries with say, abundant wind or sunshine, the odds will be even better. In the Middle East for example, solar comes in for as low as 2.4 cents per kWh. In Australia and the Pacific, the cost of solar drops to 3.2 cents per kWh and is falling. It is expected to be one third cheaper than fossil fuels by 2030. In 2023 alone, global energy savings from renewables reached $409 billion, and this is projected to grow.
Storage of excess energy is no longer the problem it was. The cost of batteries has fallen by 89% since 2010 and is expected to fall by a further 50 -70% by 2030. Critics often point to grid integration and storage costs as hidden expenses for renewables. However, recent analysis shows these costs are manageable and declining:
Grid Integration: Typically adds 0.5-1.5 cents/kWh to renewable costs
Battery Storage: Now averaging 15 cents/kWh for 4-hour duration systems
System Flexibility: Smart grid technologies even out intermittent supply from wind and solar
Even accounting for these additional costs, renewables plus storage remain competitive with fossil fuels in most markets. Technological innovation, economies of scale, and competitive supply chains are driving costs down.
Myth# 2 Renewables Cause High Power Bills and Cost of Living Crises
"If energy prices are falling, why isn't my power bill going down?"
FACT: According to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) the cost of generating electricity fell by 30% in the September Quarter (2025) largely thanks to the uptake of rooftop solar. However, this refers to the wholesale price, not household bills. While renewables are driving down generation costs, retail prices remain high due to network charges, retail markups and legacy infrastructure. Power bill increases are driven more by fossil fuel volatility and infrastructure bottlenecks than by renewables.
- Fossil fuel prices are highly volatile, especially during geopolitical crises (e.g., Ukraine war, Middle East tensions).
- Countries with higher renewable penetration (like Portugal and Denmark) have seen more stable electricity prices.
- Grid integration and financing challenges do exist, especially in emerging markets, but these are solvable and not inherent to renewables.
- In the long-term, renewables reduce exposure to fuel price shocks and lower operating costs.
Upgrading Australia’s ageing coal plants is also extremely costly and will most likely exceed the inflated costs which have been mentioned by the Opposition parties for switching to renewables.
- People confuse short-term infrastructure upgrades with long-term energy pricing. It’s true up -front costs for renewables are typically higher initially, but fossil fuels demand ongoing input ever after, whereas renewables generate free energy and only require a little maintenance.
- Domestic power supply structure also matters. In Australia for instance, parts of the grid and electricity transmission and distribution networks are privatised, with significant foreign ownership and market concentration. This structure limits consumer control and can amplify price volatility, regardless of net zero policies.
Yes, Energy costs are contributing slightly to the cost of living, but price rises have largely been driven global fuel price shocks, supply chain disruptions, and the debt hangover from the pandemic that all Western economies are grappling with. Renewables are in fact, cushioning households against volatile fossil fuel costs — and once built, they will deliver cheaper electricity for decades.
MYTH# 3 Renewables are Unreliable and Cause Blackouts
The "Bugs by Candlelight ..." comment at the top of the post pops up quite often in my social media feed. It claims two things: namely that renewables are unreliable and prone to blackouts and that striving for Net Zero means giving up meat because cows emit too much methane - a potent greenhouse gas which contributes disproportionately to global emissions.
FACT: Most Outages Are Not Due to Renewables. in fact, they help to prevent them
According to the AEMC and other analysts almost all interruptions to customers (around 96%) in Australia are due to network faults, ageing coal plants, or extreme weather events such as bushfires and cyclones, not generation problems.
IThere have been several failures at coal fired plants which show that coal is not inherently stable or risk – free. For example, the Callide Power Station in Queensland experienced a major outage in May 2021 as a result of an explosion due to ‘insufficient protection.' Almost half a million people lost power and the operator it was fined $9 million. Another failure in in April 2025 raised safety concerns about risk controls and design flaws.
Eraring in New South Wales - Australia’s largest coal-fired plant, has experienced frequent outages with up to 6,000 hours of downtime annually in recent years and is blamed for rising power costs because more expensive fuel has had to be used to keep the lights on.
Internationally, incidents like Spain’s 2023 outage which took much of Europe’s network with it during a heatwave, were largely due to operator and system-management errors, not renewables themselves.
According to the 2024 Texas Reliability Entity report, wind and solar provided 30–40% of power during the peak of a weeklong heatwave and helped to keep the grid stable and avoid blackouts. Despite growth in variable generation, the risk of energy emergencies in Texas has sharply declined — largely because of clean energy and batteries and the price of energy has fallen 24% below the national average.
Engineers critical of renewables because of their lack of ‘inertia’ will be pleased to know there are modern technologies available to provide system strength and stability – synchronous condensers and grid forming batteries, and they are already being deployed in Australia.
Synchronous condensers are relatively cheap to operate (just a few dollars per mWh) and provide robust inertia and fault current, but they come with high upfront capital costs if built new. Grid-forming batteries, while even more expensive to install, offer multi-service value—combining energy storage, fast frequency response, and system strength in one asset, which offsets some of that cost.
"But we need Baseload Power"
The short answer is: Modern renewable-heavy grids, when combined with system-strength solutions like batteries, grid-forming inverters, syncons, and smart management -increasingly using AI, are reliable and stable and can actually be more resilient than legacy fossil-fuel systems. I am not an engineer, but here's how it was explained to me.
Coal and Nuclear power stations must stay on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week because its too expensive to turn them off and turn them on again. Baseload power is about the minimum power demand required to keep turbines going. [That's why we get special night rates for our hot water in Australia].
However, peak demand is during the day - the time when output from solar is greatest, and it can be switched off when there is an excess. This means solar uses much less energy and can adapt quickly and easily to fluctuating demand. When demand exceeds capacity, coal and nuclear must supplement it with more expensive gas, oil or diesel. That isn't the case with renewables. As it stands, Australia has an excess of renewable energy during the day, but until batteries - domestic and grid scale are fully rolled out - which is happening at a cracking pace, we will still need 'baseload.' Below is a much better explanation and you can read more here.
As for eating “eating bugs” we’ll be lucky to find any if we keep depending on fossil fuels. Globally there has been a decline from 27 – 40% depending on location and species. It also far more likely that the choice will be taken from us if we continue with business as usual and farmers cut their herds in anticipation of further droughts.
MYTH #4 Renewable Energy is Bad for the Environment
" A two -megawatt windmill is made up of 260 tons of steel that requires 300 tons of coking coal all mined, transported with ore and 170 tons of coking coal, all mined, transported and produced by hydrocarbons . A windmill could spin until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as it took to build"
FACT: The claim that “renewables are bad for the environment” is misleading and often used to distract from the far greater, ongoing damage caused by fossil fuels. While renewables do have environmental impacts, they are dramatically lower, shorter-lived, and more manageable than those of coal, oil, or gas.
The claim that wind turbines never repay their energy cost is pure spin. In reality, they do so within a year— about 5.4 months now, according to the latest from the UN figures, and then generate clean power for 20 -30 years. Fossil fuels, by contrast, burn energy to extract energy, every single day. The energy return on investment for renewales (EROI) is far higher than for fossil fuels.
“260 tonnes of steel, 300 tonnes of coking coal, mined and transported .. "
- Iron ore and coking coal are use in the manufacture of wind turbines, but this is true for all large-scale infrastructure—including fossil fuel plants, pipelines, and transmission lines.
- The embodied energy in a wind turbine is finite and front-loaded—not ongoing like fossil fuel combustion.
- It is historically true that the inputs are “All mined, transported and produced by hydrocarbons…” but this too is rapidly changing. Increasingly, mining and transport are electrified or powered by renewables.
- Even if hydrocarbons are used in manufacturing, the net energy gain from wind far outweighs the initial input.
Renewable Energy Destroys Farmland and Wildlife Habitat
The Clean Energy Council also acknowledges that while renewables reduce pollution and help combat climate-driven biodiversity loss, they must be carefully planned to avoid localised harm. That’s why the federal government launched the Renewables Environmental Research Initiative (RERI)—to guide developers away from ecologically sensitive areas and improve biodiversity outcomes. This includes not only site choice but thorough assessment beforehand and rigorous monitoring afterwards. There are also technologies which prevent collision with birds. Feral cats, dogs, foxes and traffic do more harm to native animals, as do bushfires and drought.
The Cattle Hill Wind Farm is in raptor country in Tasmania. It has bird detection sensors which automatically shut down turbines if a bird is sighted. When I looked into this, there had been no eagles killed in the two years since the equipment had been installed..
Those who point to the temporary chaos of construction of such facilities have obviously never seen an open -cut coalmine or the devastation an oil spill can cause. Coalmines in the Hunter Valley have swallowed prime farmland and vineyards. Air quality suffers in the surrounding towns leading to health problems among residents and the water demands of these mines and others threaten water security.
Fracking for natural gas brings its own problems. Not only does it use vast quantities of water, but the chemicals used can leak into soils and groundwater. It is also linked to Methane leaks, heavy metal contamination, seismic activity and subsidence. By 2019 approximately 9,000 coal seam gas wells had been built around Australia -many on prime farmland, with more than double that number expected to be built by 2030.
Fossil Fuels = Ongoing, Irreversible Damage
• Fracking contaminates water tables and destabilises farmland
• Combustion pollutes air and water, harming health and biodiversity
• Carbon emissions are the leading driver of climate change
• No ongoing emissions once operational
• Land use can be dual‑purpose (solar + cropping, wind + farming)
• Recyclability of blades and panels improving rapidly
• Hydropower and bioenergy have more complex footprints, but still lower than fossil fuels
[ To be Continued ............. see next post]
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