The Great Renewable Lie: Bowen’s Favourite Line is a Lie

It is hard to know whether to laugh or despair when Australia’s Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen, alongside the PM Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers, repeats the same tired mantra:

“Renewables are the lowest cost form of energy generation.”

This line has become the centrepiece of Labor’s energy strategy — a strategy currently producing the highest electricity prices in Australian history, and now helping push inflation back up to 3.8%, with a staggering 37% rise in electricity prices in just 12 months.

If renewables are “the cheapest,” someone forgot to tell reality.

And as Bjørn Lomborg explained in a devastating interview with Dave Rubin, Bowen’s claim is not just misleading — it is fundamentally dishonest. The trick lies in what they don’t say.

The Insidious Half-Truth

Lomborg puts it bluntly:
People say wind and solar are cheap — and technically that can be true when the sun shines and the wind blows. Under perfect conditions, the cost of generating electricity is low.

But reality is not perfect.
And outside those ideal conditions, Lomborg says, renewables instantly become “the most expensive power on the planet — because you simply can’t get it.”

This is the part Bowen never mentions.

Electricity is not optional. Hospitals, refrigeration, manufacturing, traffic lights, water pumping, telecommunications — the entire modern economy — need power 24 hours a day, not just when the weather cooperates.

So the real question isn’t:
“Is solar cheap at noon on a sunny day?”

It’s:
“What does it cost to run a whole society on energy that only shows up part-time?”

And here the renewable fairytale collapses.

The More Renewables You Have, the Higher Your Bills Go

Lomborg cites global data showing a simple, uncomfortable truth:
Countries with very little wind and solar have cheap electricity.
Countries with lots of wind and solar have expensive electricity.

He explains the pattern clearly:

“You have China and India down here… the US a little higher… the EU all the way up there. There are no countries that have lots of solar and wind and cheap power.”

None.

This is not a coincidence. It is the unavoidable economic reality of intermittent energy:
When sunshine and breezes become the backbone of your grid, reliability disappears and backup becomes the dominant cost.

Which brings us to the heart of the problem.

The Battery Fantasy

Bowen and Albanese constantly talk about “firmed renewables” — wind and solar allegedly backed up by batteries.

But here’s the truth they will never say aloud.

To run the United States on solar alone, you would need batteries capable of storing three months of electricity — enough to get through cloudy weather, seasonal variation and multi-day lulls. Right now, the US has ten minutes of national battery storage.

Lomborg calculates the cost of batteries to fill that gap:
Around one-third of the entire US GDP — every year — just to maintain them.
This does not include the cost of the solar panels themselves, or the grid infrastructure. Just the batteries.

Bowen’s “cheap renewables” claim falls apart on this point alone.

You can have cheap solar at lunchtime.
Or you can have electricity at night.
But you cannot have “cheap renewables 24/7” — not with today’s technology, and not with anything on the horizon.

Anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or dangerous.

Australia’s Crisis: The Results Are Already Here

Labor insists we must replace coal with wind and solar at breakneck speed.
The result?

• 37% increase in electricity costs in a year

• Industries shutting down because energy prices make them uncompetitive

• Predictable blackouts and emergency interventions

• Inflation rising again, driven partly by energy costs

• Households under financial stress while being told to “save the planet”

Meanwhile, Bowen looks straight at the camera and assures us:
“Renewables are the cheapest form of power.”

Only a politician could deliver a line so confidently while the evidence burns behind him.

What Bowen NEVER Tells You

1. Renewables are cheap only when they work.

2. They require massive backup — batteries, gas or coal — that doubles or triples system cost.

3. No country has ever run a reliable grid on wind and solar alone.

4. The more renewables a country installs, the higher electricity prices go.

5. Australia is repeating Europe’s mistakes — on purpose.

This is not “the lowest cost energy system.” 

It is the most expensive experiment ever attempted in Australian history.

What Australia Should Actually Do

Lomborg’s answer is simple and sane:

• Expand gas — cheap, abundant, low-emissions, reliable.

• Fast-track next-generation nuclear, as the advanced economies are doing.

• Keep some coal capacity until genuine alternatives exist.

• Invest modestly in R&D for future breakthroughs.

• Stop pretending batteries can replace baseload power.

Australia once had some of the cheapest electricity on earth.
Under Bowen and Albanese, we now have some of the fastest-rising prices in the developed world.
The cause is not mysterious.
It is not climate.
It is not Putin.
It is not the weather.

It is policy.

And the lie at the centre of that policy — that renewables are “the cheapest form of energy” — has now crippled our economy and hammered our cost of living.

The sooner we reject it, the sooner Australia can get back to being prosperous, competitive and sane.

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Here is the Lomborg interview referred to in the above.