Sammi Lane's video: Blown Away

In March 2012, CME, an energy economics consultancy to the Energy Users Association of Australia Australia was reported as having the highest electricity prices, compared to 91 other similar economies, at average 2011 exchange rates and predicts will it will continue to increase to around 20% BY 2014. South Australia's Household electricity prices were the third highest. The Highest were Denmark & Germany. As of October 2010, South Australia's market penetration of 19.4% placed it on par the world's leading nation, Denmark, which provided approximately 19% of its total electricity from wind On Aug 27th, 2013, the ABC published an article in which South Australia's Conservation Council claimed a record amount of wind energy generated in southern Australia demonstrated the need for more investment in renewable technology. Due to recent wild weather, wind turbines produced almost half of South Australia's electricity, while 10 per cent of Victoria's energy was delivered by wind farms. The Clean Energy Council says wind farms powered the equivalent of 2.3 million homes nationwide. Conservation council chief executive Tim Kelly says South Australia is on track to achieve its 2020 renewable energy target of 33 per cent. My question is, why Mr Kelly, when we are producing solar energy in summer and wind energy in winter, is the cost of free renewable energy so expensive? Why are we paying the 3rd highest price for energy internationally? The technology has been developed, the vast majority of the costs associated with wind developments are upfront capital costs. The operating costs are relatively low, with each additional unit of wind power costing very little to produce. By comparison, conventional gas and coal developments have large capital costs, as well as significant operating costs. how long does the physical cost of energy take to be absorbed by the reduced cost to the environment? Australia is the fifth highest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases , ranking first of the industrialized countries, and sixteenth of all countries in total country emissions. It is one of the major exporters of coal, the burning of which releases CO2 into the atmosphere. It is also one of the countries most at risk from climate change according to the Stern report. "Clean coal" technologies may not be commercially available for at least 20 years. Furthermore, to bring down the high cost of nuclear power to a level where it could compete with wind power would require a new generation of nuclear power stations, that is still on the drawing board, and could take at least 15 years. Have we become such narcissistic capitalists that we no longer care about the impact to our society, our planet and the future for our children? In the infamous words of Pauline Hanson -- Please explain! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Australia _and_proposed_capacity_by_state http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-27/wind-energy-generation-record/4914266 http://www.euaa.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FINAL-INTERNATIONAL-PRICE-COMPARISON-FOR-PUBLIC-RELEASE-19-MARCH-2012.pdf