WHILE the enormous financial cost of turning green dreams into engineered reality has presumably been apparent to at least some in the electricity industry, the enormity of the exercise - and some of the more difficult technical issues to be solved in the push to decarbonise - are only now, it seems, coming to the surface.
In yesterday's Newcastle Herald, Matthew Kelly exposed some mixed messaging around the Kurri Kurri gas turbines, with the Labor government promising 30 per cent hydrogen "from the start" and Snowy Hydro predicting 15 per cent and then only some years down the track.
Looking more broadly, Ian Kirkwood's analysis of the hoped-for "hydrogen economy" focused on some lesser-known characteristics of the material - including its tendency to react with and weaken a number of metals - that must surely be overcome before there can be any real progress on this otherwise enticing prospect from a greenhouse gas perspective.
Today, Kelly examines a new report that predicts an $8 billion bill to turn Tomago Aluminium green, while the corresponding cost for Orica's Kooragang Island is another $2 billion.
Although rows of zeroes might fall easily enough from the tongues of commentators, these are huge amounts of money for businesses - even if they are some of the Hunter's biggest and heaviest industries - that employ just over 1000 people in Tomago's case, and 210 in Orica's.
Start compiling these sorts of costs for the entire region - then for the state, and then nationwide - and the expenditure becomes extremely large indeed.
Add in the considerable amounts being tipped into renewables industry subsidies by governments - ultimately funded by taxpayers - and it is difficult to see how any responsible politician can promise that power bills are going to fall.
Even without the onset of inflation pushing prices up everywhere, the sheer scale of the capital expenditure needed to build a more comprehensively green grid must ultimately be recouped from the pockets of power consumers.
Australia is not alone in this.
Minimising our reliance on fossil fuels - and not only in the electricity sector - is an epoch-changing endeavour.
Even with popular support, it will test the political skills of those governments charged with managing such changes in the name of saving the planet.
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