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Eight million Australians urged to turn off lights (bbc.co.uk)
6 points by zeristor on June 16, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 6 comments



A weird request LED bulbs use far less power, than the previous incandescent bulbs.

“Flooding earlier this year hit some coal mines in New South Wales and Queensland, while technical issues have cut production at two mines that supply the market's biggest coal-fired station in New South Wales.”

I guess there’ll be a lot more this in the coming years.


Yes electric ovens, hobs, kettles, water heaters, evs all use much more power.

It's crazy to me that Australia hasn't gone for renewables though. The amount of land and sun they have, it's also decentralised, so when (climate induced?) Floods happen, they don't take out all the generating capacity. Plus even if they aren't convinced about climate change, that just frees up more fossil fuels to export.


> It's crazy to me that Australia hasn't gone for renewables though.

Coal is a way of life for much of rural Australia, a transition to renewables without some plan to get the coal workers jobs in the renewable industry would be catastrophic to their livelihoods so they typically vote against it.

Recent reports have shown that many coal workers are open to renewables over coal, but they want to insure that they aren't left in the wake during the transition.


But the coal can still be exported even if you aren't convinced by the environmental arguments.

Plus renewables still provide jobs.


You don't have to convince me, I was just talking about the coal workers' POV. I can't vote in Australia, but they can. Even though renewables do provide jobs, Australia would need to make sure some of those jobs are available to these coal workers.


And yet there's a large light festival that was allowed to run whilst telling people to turn off their lights. Granted lights are not the highest usage items, the sheer volume of bright outdoor projectors probably uses a fair amount more than people's house lighting. https://www.news.com.au/finance/money/costs/sydneysiders-sla...




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