The renewable energy certificates are not the only green energy fraud . There has also been a fraudulent non-disclosure of the real costs of green power, which include the full life-cycle cost of converting green energy to electricity and distributing it.
The fraud is that the cost of green power is not just setting up wind farms and solar power stations - it is also the additional, hidden costs of distributing that power at stable levels to the user. This includes the cost of back-up to the power grid when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining.
Those hidden costs, amounting to substantially more than the costs of wind farms and solar power stations, are a much more serious fraud, and one of the reasons for the substantial increases in electricity bills.
There are only two reasonably satisfactory means of providing back-up power with a response time quick enough to prevent instability in the power grid. These are hydro power (which provides the best response time but, because of our lack of water, is not really a tenable option) or gas turbines (which give a good response time but use a fossil fuel that produces carbon dioxide).
Because the Government has decreed that renewable energy sources be given priority over coal, the power networks are forced to install extra infrastructure such as gas turbine power stations and expanded networks to provide the necessary power for when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining - about 80 per cent of the time.
Many of these gas turbine stations are being planned or built, each costing about $300 million, such as those at Marulan and Sutton Forest that tap into the pipelines feeding gas between Canberra and Sydney.
Frank Moore former senior scientist, Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Mittagong