Green Ideology and the Failed Energy Experiment

At a February 2000 press conference, the first man to walk on the moon announced the National Academy of Engineering’s twenty most significant engineering achievements of the twentieth century. The aeroplane took third place; the automobile second; in first place were the vast networks of electricity that power the developed world. None of the other nineteen would have been possible without electricity, Neil Armstrong declared. “If anything shines as an example of how engineering changed the world during the twentieth century, it is certainly the power we use in our homes and businesses.”[1]

The twentieth century’s bequest of cheap, reliable electrical energy is now being undone. For the past decade or so, Australia and other industrialised countries have been conducting a vast experiment on the electrical grid. Tried, tested and refined technologies—predominantly based on coal-fired generation—are being replaced by weather-dependent wind and solar farms. Western societies…