You can't read the phrase...'coal is dead and buried' and not see that as fact in every way.
No argument from me there. But diesel is even less sustainable than coal in practically every way.
It's a transition Smurf; I'm reading the hard headed reports from the likes of Origin that wind and solar are the cheapest options of generation going into the future.
And therein lies my point.
There's a transition which ought to be done in an orderly manner which minimises costs and maintains supply reliability.
Instead we've ended up with among the most expensive power anywhere, a system which can't meet actual demands which are known to occur when it's hot, and we're now plonking shipping containers with diesel generators in them outside former power stations as a *partial* workaround that won't avoid blackouts but can be pointed to as "doing something".
It's hard to imagine a more chaotic approach to it all.
22,000 that's twenty two thousand pumped hydro sites identified by the Turdbull govs own inquirey into exactly those pumped hydro possibilities, a tiny fraction of this capacity capable of allowing 100% transition to a non carbon future giving a 100% 'deliverable' capacity.
As first discussed by Smurf on this forum many years before anyone thought Tony Abbott would become PM and long before Turnbull was on the scene in that sense. Nothing new there - the industry knew that back in the 1970's.
Actually building them before shutting too many coal-fired plants would have avoided a lot of pain though that's for sure.
By the way, at the stroke of a nationalistic parlimentry pen those deisel generators could be made to run on Australian natural gas.
Only if they source dual fuel capable units and can get the gas supply connected in time.
Based on the experience in Tas where that idea was looked at I'd say there's no way it could be done. There's a reason why we ended up with big tanks of diesel sitting literally right next to a major gas pipeline - all the gas stuff just couldn't be done quickly enough so diesel was the workaround.
Given that the ones in Vic need to be running immediately after the New Year, so early January, they've barely got enough time to plonk them all on the ground and hook the wiring up so it's too late for gas.
So it's another thing that could have been done but which was left too late. Shut some of the LNG production in Qld, redirect that gas to Moomba and from there to NSW and SA, thus enabling more gas from Longford (Vic) to be retained in Vic. The infrastructure is already there.
Overall I most certainly "get it" so far as where things are going and have done so for a very long time. None of this is a surprise to anyone in the know. Problem is, those who should have worked it out either didn't or took no action and now we're in a huge mess.