Published On: 14/09/2015

Trigeneration - Vanished without trace

Having looked into this over the last two weeks my suspicions were confirmed. To make this work we’ve had to invent an artificially high cost of carbon at $52 per ton.

What is the current price of traded carbon in the EU? It’s about 10 euros or 15 dollars per ton if you care to do the conversion. $3.30 in Japan and $15 in South Africa.

Only the City of Sydney could explain this absurd project by telling you carbon is worth $52 a ton, a fictitious price no one pays.

Only at the City of Sydney, when it comes to living out our failed fantasies, is money no object. Not one watt of power has been generated in the process.

This is the Bermuda Triangle of failed policies. Pursued for a decade with ambitions as large as the Bermuda triangle, with the same capacity to make Time and Taxpayers money vanish without trace.

In our proud Cargo Cult tradition, Allan Jones gave us his field of dreams in Trigeneration when he got off the boat. He vanished without trace back to London and doesn’t seem to have found his way onto the payroll of another organisation since.

Originally, we were to trigenerate Green Square and sell hot water down George Street, that ambition vanished without trace, then we were going to trigenerate Town Hall and sell cold water to the QVB, that idea vanished without trace as well.

Let’s not forget about obliterating the City’s garbage and miraculously turning it into electricity. That vanished without trace also.

Along the way we hired a very happy band of consultants who happily pocketed fees to paint the vision splendid. Over 11 million dollars of Taxpayers money has vanished without trace.

Now your ambitions have been whittled down to heating a swimming pool, and to make it work we’ve had to resort to lifting ourselves up by our boot straps with a carbon price of $52 a ton! That is a fantasy at its highest.

All Taxpayers want to know, is the cost of the project to them in money, not carbon. That’s their decision process because we’re spending their Tax dollars.

I’m wondering how many people will now be paying their Rate notices in carbon this year? We might need to get a bigger letterbox.

I’m also wondering now that we have a broad community franchise in the City of Sydney elections, how many of you might vanish without trace at next year’s election.

I’ve yet to have one Constituent come to my office concerned about power generation.

We’re the most efficient users of electricity in the country according to our grid distributor Ausgrid at 10kw per day per household, so there’s no demonstrable need to be doing this, so the reason is simple.

Desperate to make this failed policy work on something, anything, we’re now trying to heat a swimming pool!

I have no doubt this will fail and the next proposal will be to heat an electric kettle.

At a cost of $1.24 million with no return, this is a failure with a thousand fathers. All it has done is orphaned Taxpayers finances.

It’s time to put it to the sword and admit your appalling failure rather than push on with another City of Sydney “fools errand”.