A farmer in Central Queensland, Greg Bennett, faces an uncertain future thanks to the rapacious march of industrial scale renewable energy projects.
Greg’s farm is near Calliope. If the 2700 hectare Upper Calliope Solar Farm goes ahead, his home will be surrounded by solar panels. Greg has only one road to his house. The solar farm would mean that the last 9 kilometres of his drive home would be through an endless vista of solar panels.
Valuers have advised Greg that his property’s value could fall by 30 per cent but he would get no compensation from the solar farm investors.
Under Queensland Government regulations, this massive solar farm only needs the approval of the local council. Councils are fine to approve an extension to your house, but when it comes to approving a project the size of 4000 football fields, 70 kilometres from the Great Barrier Reef, I think we need a more substantial process.
That is why the Nationals Conference this week called for a pause on all industrial scale wind, solar and transmission line projects until we get better regulations in place.
The Upper Calliope solar farm is just one of hundreds of renewable energy projects proposed. There are wind farms that want to chop off the tops of mountains and destroy koala habitats in the process. We seem so madly obsessed with one environmental issue, carbon emissions, that we are willing to destroy our natural environment for the cause.
We cannot save the planet by destroying it.
The plans to convert our natural landscapes into industrial zones have escaped with little scrutiny thus far. But a new report by a group, Net Zero Australia, shows how frightening the plans are.
Net Zero Australia are in favour of net zero emissions, but they are one of the few that are somewhat honest about the cost of the radical net zero agenda.
Based on their sums, getting to net zero would cost us all $7 to $9 trillion dollars. That is four times Australia’s annual economic output. Take your annual income and times it by four. That is the cost of net zero.
Their report goes on to estimate that the land that would be needed for new solar, wind and transmission lines would be 120,179 square kilometres, which as their report says is “equivalent to over half the area of Victoria.”
This is insane. Why would we convert an area half the size of Victoria to an industrial waste zone? How many birds will die? How many natural landscapes will be ruined? And, who is going to pay for all this to be cleaned up given that solar panels and wind turbines have a use-by date of less than 30 years?
In comparison, just 7200 square kilometres of Australia is taken up by mines. An area 94 per cent smaller than what solar and wind are predicted to take up.
The Green political movement is up in arms about the environmental impact of mining but, with few exceptions, says almost nothing about the massive environmental destruction that is set to come from renewable energy.
Why is this? Well, there is a lot of foreign money flooding our country to build renewables.
Yet unlike our mining industry, renewable energy does not increase the wealth of our nation. The electricity from wind or solar is no better than the electricity from a coal plant. In fact, in many aspects it is inferior because you cannot use renewable energy on demand.
It is time for a pause on the mad rush to renewables before more people, koalas, farmers
and communities are destroyed in its path.
