MISINFORMATION AND DISINFORMATION ON CLIMATE AND ENERGY IN AUSTRALIA
SUBMISSION TO THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY SEPTEMBER 2025
KEY POINTS
Australian governments have formulated energy policies without using reliable information on wind droughts and the cost of storage.
The public has not been told about wind droughts, storage problems and the full cost of the net zero program, including deindustrialising the nation, vandalising forests and farmlands, and dividing rural communities.
THE FOCUS OF THIS SUBMISSION
Misinformation and lack of information.
The failure of the appropriate agencies to make good use of information.
The failure to the responsible agencies to collect and disseminate information to plan and evaluate the outcome of energy policies.
It is interesting to note the amount of misinformation in the language of the net zero program.
“The sun and wind are free” and you could say the same about coal gas and oil, you just have to build incredibly energy-intensive machinery to extract the power.
Renewable, clean and green. The turbines and solar panels are not renewable because they have short life compared with conventional power facilities and the end of life disposal is becoming a serious concern.
They are only “clean” if you demonise carbon dioxide, the breath of life on the planet.
They are not green when you take into account the environmental footprint all the way from the exploration for minerals, through the mining required to extract them, the transport, manufacture and construction of the equipment and then the disposal of toxic waste at the end of the road.
Consider the amount of rocks that have to be processed in energy-intensive processes to build an electric vehicle!
THE CHALLENGE
Governments can only formulate and refine effective policies if they use the best available information and revise their policies in the light of new information, including the unexpected and unintended effects of their interventions.
Similarly, voters need to be well-informed to consider the comparative merits of competing policy options when they vote.
Australian governments have not used reliable information on wind droughts and the cost of storage.
The public has not been told about wind droughts, storage problems and the full cost of the net zero program including the deindustrialization of the nation, the destruction of natural resources and the human cost in regional areas.
THE STATE OF PLAY
Trillions of dollars and other currencies have been spent in the west to roll out wind and solar infrastructure.
This expenditure has produced the following results:
Power is more expensive, causing domestic fuel poverty, closure of power-intensive industries and the diversion of investment to the US to take advantage of cheaper energy.
Blackouts are looming.
Massive damage had been inflicted on the environment both at home and in developing countries abroad.
Rural communities have become bitterly divided.
LACK OF COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS
Large claims about the benefits of the net zero program are not backed by cost/benefit studies, while the costs of major projects regularly blow out by factors from two to five and occasionally more.
The cost of the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) has not been disclosed. This is real disinformation:)
The benefits are hard to find unless you count the jobs created in the public sector and subsidised industries.
A FRAMEWORK OF ANALYSIS: THE ABC OF INTERMITTENT ENERGY
ABC is not an acronym; it's just three things that everyone needs to know.
A: The grid has to receive continuous input to match demand, minute by minute.
B: The continuity of wind and solar input is broken at night when there is little or no wind.
C: Storage at the scale required to bridge the gaps is not feasible or affordable with current technology. Further, according to McBratney’s Law, you can build as much storage as you like, but you will never charge it with wind and solar power.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the supply of electricity is only as good as the weakest point of supply. In a grid loaded with RE, windless nights are the weak links.
NEGLECT OF WIND DROUGHTS
We are told that Australia has marvellous wind resources, presumably based on average wind velocities; however, the grid does not run on the average wind velocity, it runs on the wind that is available from minute to minute.
The official meteorologists in the BOM did not issue wind drought warnings and the wind farmers apparently did not check the reliability and continuity of the wind supply. In contrast, prudent dirt farmers very carefully check the reliability of the water supply, including long-term rainfall records.
Over a decade ago, Paul Miskelly and Anton Lang, working independently, used the AEMO records of wind power generation to discover prolonged periods, up to three days and nights, with very little generation across south-eastern Australia (the NEM.) Miskelly warned that the system would need 100% backup from a fleet of fast-acting gas turbines.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1260/0958-305X.23.8.1233
Their work was discussed on Jo Nova’s blog. The Energy Realists of Australia took it up and passed it along to all the state and federal parliamentarians and a list of journalists. So far, the wind drought story has not been clearly explained by commentators and journalists, including those who are generally critical of the net-zero program.
The evidence is publicly available in the AEMO records since 2009, and it can be found on the AEMO site and others, including Aneroid Energy and the NemWatch widget. https://anero.id/energy/wind-energy
People are urged to check the widget at breakfast and dinnertime to see whether they will get a hot meal when there is less coal power on the grid. https://www.nem-watch.info/widgets/reneweconomy/
WHAT ABOUT STORAGE?
Responding to the low-wind problem, the Prime Minister and Chris Bowen routinely refer to water storage, as though storing energy is a no-brainer. However, the comparison is inappropriate because the amount of man-made water storage is a small fraction of 1% of the water stored naturally in the soil, not to mention permanent waterways and lakes.
Imagine plants growing without natural storage. They would need continuous rain or heavy mist to survive, otherwise, a few minutes of sunshine would kill them. That would be the fate of an RE-dependent grid on a night with little or no wind
THE COST OF BATTERY STORAGE AND McBRATNEYS LAW
The cost of batteries and pumped hydro is prohibitive to cover worst-case scenarios of wind failure, like ten low-wind nights in the month of June 2017. In any case, McBratney’s Law dictates that you can build as much storage as you like but you will never fully charge it with a grid dominated by wind and solar power. https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/grid-scale-electricity-storage-why
THE COSTLY FAILURE OF DUE DILIGENCE ON THE WIND SUPPLY
If people in high places had been aware of wind droughts and their full implications, we might have been spared the waste of tens of billions of dollars in Australia and the other costs flowing from the net-zero project. The discovery of wind droughts could have been one of the most important finds of recent times, but it came too late to avert the attempted RE transition which has become one of the worst public policy blunders on record.
THE TIPPING POINT AND THE WIND DROUGHT TRAP
Ten coal stations closed in the NEM between 2012 and 2024, reducing the coal capacity from the vicinity of 29 GW to approach 20GW which is the base load required overnight. When the capacity of reliable power falls below the base load, the grid enters a red zone where RE input is required to keep the lights on, but none is available on windless nights, regardless of the number of windmills and solar panels installed.
The diagram indicates the essential features of the situation, although the numbers change all the time, apart from the base load. That has been stable for years, despite population growth, due to undocumented deindustrialisation, which has delayed the onset of serious blackouts.
The wind drought trap is set as coal plants close one at a time over a period of years with a “frog in the saucepan” because people don’t realise they are in the trap until it closes on dark and stormy night with extreme weather conditions. See Texas in February 2021.
A similar trap can close in the daytime when there is not enough inertia in the grid to handle fluctuations in the wind and solar input. See The Pain in Spain in 2025!
As it is, we cannot afford to lose any more coal capacity and state governments are propping up coal plants in the hope that something will turn up. The grid is vulnerable on nights with low wind whenever coal capacity is down due to scheduled or unscheduled outages.
The bottom line is that subsidised and mandated wind and solar power can displace coal (to a point) but they can’t replace it.
Schernikau and Smith explained that wind and solar will not replace conventional power because they are too inefficient to reproduce themselves. They are “energy thieves” because they are a net drain on the energy economy of the world. https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/wind-and-solar-the-energy-thieves
WORK REQUIRED
Among the outcomes from this enquiry should be a recommendation for an investigation into the failure of the meteorologists to issue wind drought warnings and a parallel inquiry to find why subsidies and mandates for wind power were put in place without due diligence on the supply of wind.
The Commonwealth and state governments are pressing on with ambitious transition plans despite the evidence of wind droughts and the impossibility of providing grid-scale storage to ride through the worst-case scenario of several windless nights in close succession.
The following agencies and institutions have questions to answer - BOM, CSIRO, AEMO, the alphabet soup of regulatory agencies (see the critique by Aidan Morrison.)
All government departments and other QUANGOs, NGOs, think tanks, and university departments that have been promoting net zero.
The ABC, other media agencies and individual journalists and reporters on the energy beat.
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
We urgently need to have a comprehensive register of the pecuniary interests of all the politicians and administrators who have had the opportunity to promote net-zero projects.
CONCLUSION
It seems that the wind and solar power supply is not fit for purpose to support a modern industrial society. Grid managers are working overtime to keep the lighits on, and they have succeeded so far in Australia because deindustrialisation has flattened the demand curve.
Massive amounts of human resources, ingenuity and expensive technology are being applied to make the wind and solar-powered grid workable but it is a lost cause. Consider the steam engine: no doubt it can be made more powerful and efficient, but it will never be fit for purpose for space travel.
Similarly, the wind and solar grid will never be fit for purpose due to the ABC of intermittent energy and the inadequate energy efficiency - the “energy stealers” effect. Sooner or later we will have to pivot from the net-zero program based on unreliable energy, remove wind and solar power from the grid, and build a cheap and reliable conventional power supply for the future.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION.
Other books http://www.the-rathouse.com/pubbooks.html
Personal website http://www.the-rathouse.com/index.html
Energy Realists website https://www.flickerpower.com/index.php/search/categories/general/list-of-briefing-notes
Spectator series https://www.spectator.com.au/author/rafe-champion/
Substack https://substack.com/settings?utm_source=signup§ion=publications
Briefing notes produced by the Energy Realists and circulated to 800+ state and federal politicians and a list of journalists.
https://www.flickerpower.com/index.php/search/categories/general/list-of-briefing-notes
Great article. You have addressed the issues with facts. Such a refreshing change over the usuall rhetoric of propaganda constantly spread by RE Zealots.
Another outstanding article! Thank you