<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/littleprouds-first-comments-as-re-elected-nationals-leader-blackout-disinformation/>
"The first few weeks of the post-election shake-down are useful indicators of
the tone politicians intend to take, and freshly re-installed Nationals leader
David Littleproud kicked off the next term with something grim. When pressed on
the position the party intends to take on emissions target, climate and
renewables, Littleproud said this:
“You cannot run an economy of the industrial scale the size of Australia on an
all-renewables approach, just look at Spain and Portugal … the reality is, even
Anthony Albanese is saying your energy bill is going to up”.
It’s a reference to nuclear power – but as I discovered soon after the
blackout, Spain hasn’t ditched nuclear power at all. In fact, as I wrote in
this post, Spain’s installed capacity of nuclear has barely shifted over the
past thirty years.
And the country’s nuclear power plants had lower than 50% availability at the
time of the blackout, for confusing and contradictory reasons. From what I
could see, Spanish nuclear hadn’t had a lower generation month than April 2025.
We still don’t know what triggered the cascade on Spain’s power grid, or what
made that cascade worse. There’s a good chance solar, wind hydro, nuclear, gas
and coal were all involved in different ways, and we’ll find out soon enough.
But making conclusions about the mix of energy types on power grids from
blackouts is surely something Australian politicians should have learned by now
not to do."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
