The Energy Transition Trade-offs | Gerard Holland at ARC Australia
Alliance for Responsible Citizenship 
“Gold is not the most valuable commodity in the world…ENERGY IS”
Australia, like much of the Western world, is set to undergo an energy transition in pursuit of climate goals. Fossil fuel infrastructure is being rapidly replaced by renewable technologies with the promise that this will lead us to a better, cleaner future.
But will it?
In this speech from ARC Australia, Gerard Holland looks in detail at the realities of energy transition, and demonstrates that the current path Australia is on is equivalent to economic self-harm, with sacrifices being made in reliability, security, abundance and density. With the poorest among us likely to be the ones who pay the price for our ‘green’ agenda, Gerard urges that we reconsider the course we are on.
To book your place at ARC 2025 in London, and to hear the latest updates from the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship: https://www.arcforum.com/subscribe
—
Subscribe to our Channel to be the first to catch the latest from ARC:
https://www.youtube.com/@arc_forum
—
Gerard Holland is the CEO of the Page Research Centre.
Previously, Gerard was the Director of Outreach and Strategic
Partnerships at ARC and an electorate officer for the former
Deputy Leader of the National Party The Hon. Fiona Nash.
—
We are delighted to announce that the next ARC Conference will take place between 17-19 February 2025! Subscribe to our mailing list to find out how you can book your place, and follow us on social media as we explore the better story:
ARC Mailing List: https://www.arcforum.com/subscribe
X/Twitter – https://twitter.com/arc_forum
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/arc_forum/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/Alliance.for.Responsible.Citizenship
LinkedIn – https://uk.linkedin.com/company/alliance-for-responsible-citizenship
—
ARC, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, is a global community with a vision of a world where every citizen can prosper, contribute, and flourish.
Join us in shaping this vision, as we draw on the best of our inheritance to build hope-filled future. Let’s seek solutions to the problems we face that tap into humanity’s highest virtues and remarkable capacity for innovation and ingenuity.
Learn more at https://www.arcforum.com
—
source
About The Author
why don't we see intelligent debate about power? I don't have a spare $90M to pay for power
Wrong!
Clean water is!
And then food!
Damn.
Yeah nah. False calculations and scare mongering right there. 😂
Small modular reactors using thorium fluoride salt…………….no safety issues or waste issues……………and cant be used for weapons.
I’d listen to what Elon thinks about your scenario. Happy to have Nuclear backup for renewables. Solar and batteries in a country that has huge solar capacity. We are supposedly going to supply Singapore with electricity. Batteries are improving with better technology and components. 🇦🇺
It is not difficult to debunk the "renewables" debacle that Labor is pursuing. This presentation makes it quite clear what is terrible disaster Labor is taking us towards. Even if Gerard's analysis is not quite right in the detail (as he points out re economic discounting) the difference between "renewables" and nuclear is so very large. Agree – keep the coal/gas on until we can turn on the nuclear plants. A little, maybe 20%, wind and solar would probably be positive in the mix.
This is good viewing, but it talks about a 100% renewable scenario, not a 80% scenario. 🙃👎
And that last 20% is where almost all the over-the-top crazy costs lie. ^^
Not to mention he didn't comment on how technological progress/ inflation will affect costs in his model. 👀 Given his seeming bias, a renewable scenario might be cheaper than he claims. 🤷❤️
It seems a better 20 years goal for Australia is energy coming from 60% nuclear, 30-35% from the renewables & storage technologies, and 5-10% of classical fossil fuel generation, to cover for unusual variability in demand.
Credentials: I studied electrical engineering in my home Slovenia, with emphasis on power generation, transmission & regulation. I follow it with a passion, and also invest in companies connected to it on the stock market.
Greetings & Love 🙏❤️
This is good viewing, but it talks about a 100% renewable scenario, not a 80% scenario. 🙃👎
And that last 20% is where almost all the over-the-top crazy costs lie. ^^
Greetings & Love, from SLovenia 🙏❤️
The intellectuals pushing hard for the "green transition" know the math.
Live liberty and the pursue of happiness, has become death, slavery, and the pursuit of money. Nuclear fusion is coming eventually, get an education. I can only assume that this idiot has some vested interest such as shares in a relevant corporation.
Lies, damned lies and statistics.
Nuclear creates radioactive waste. Not economically viable or soon enough to stop an already catastrophic irreversible climate change that is wrecking countries right now. Witness hurricane Helene and Spain's floods. Nature bats last.
It's a miracle that humans haven't already gone extinct. We only have time to be kind to each other.
Treasonous what our government is doing. Unbelievable. And what happens to these solar / wind farms in a massive destructive storm? They would be knocked out overnight.
Okay, there needs to be at least another starting graph – measuring the speed at which the current rooftop solar adoption rate, which is now somewhere between 30-40%, arrives at the tipping point where solar and battery consumers disconnecting from the grid because of a better product at a much cheaper price render the grid unstable to the point where it becomes a stranded asset.
Let’s get rid of this government before it’s too late
Thanks for having me ARC – it was a privilege to speak on your stage!
Slip of the tongue @11.00 – I should have said 95 thousand- not million!
Wow 95 % truth
not bad. Remaining 5% (reasons for Germany energy collapsedue to switching off Nuclear power houses by green fanatics and sabotage of Nord stream -not invasion of Russia in Ukraine) we understandThere is no such battery capacity in existence to store energy for our grid demand. East Coast baseload afternoon peak is 30+ GW
$2.57 trillion … let's get the socialists and Turnbull Renewables out of the economy. The clincher is that our entire energy grid will depend on China's rare earth minerals. Just follow the money, it's not hard to see why the current government is red hot on this.
It's actually a lot worse than this. He forgot something. While you're getting electricity from wind and solar, you're using it, you can't charge batteries. So you need one full duplicate copy of all solar and wind infrastructure to charge the batteries, and that's just for another day of storage. Every day of extra stored electricity you want, you need a full complement of wind and solar to generate that electricity ahead of time. So if you want to prepare for five days without solar and wind, you need to multiply everything in the left-hand stack by five. And now you need batteries that can hold the charge and run a grid for a week or two, and those don't exist. So the column on the left is many times higher than shown.
A very sound and logical take on this energy debacle that has now been thrust upon us; the common man, by this leftist dispensation. A realistic forward thinking solution as compared to the short term one being peddled to the rest of our citizens, Who has benefitted the most from this, definitely not the future generation of the majority of Australians. Someone should check on who the owners are of the businesses tasked with delivering this renewable exercise. Go woke go broke.
5:14 "Make before break", one of the most important principles in engineering.
Clean nuclear energy apart from the 100000 years of radioactive waste nobody knows what to do with. Is encasing the whole spent nuclear plant in concrete factored into the energy equation. Just keep burning coal and oil if you don't care about future generations.
Nobody is ready yet to here we have to learn to live with less
Why is the maintenance of existing grid network not added into the cost.
Also if the end user stores their own power in car / house batteries isn’t that free?
Absolutely wonderful to highlight that "Energy Security is National Security"
I remember the early 80s and NSW had power rationing where businesses had to shut for 1 day a week in the Sydney basin… The state government then built all the coal plants the ones they want to close now.
Trading reliability and security off for the worst power is madness.
Australia needs Reliable and Secure power for the future and security of a future Australia.
Energy is not a commodity.
Energy is a necessity, but should that necessity cease,, it will go back to necessary😊