Pekka:
Sorry, I can’t follow your reasoning here – forgive me if I’m being dense.
My point is – $40.9 million is being spent on additional infrastructure (which will then have to be maintained and will depreciate in value) for a tiny community which already has a perfectly adequate electricity supply system. The people who live there already pay for the electricity they use, which I agree is probably subsidised to some extent by the government owned supplier (Hydro Tasmania) because of the cost of transporting fuel and the small population.
But they will still use the existing system, plus somehow the $40.9 million investment has to be paid for. In a user pays system, that means $14,000 for every man, woman and child on the island just to recoup the capital cost, on top of what they already pay in electricity bills. That’s not going to happen, even if they have to send a couple less ships a year carrying diesel to the island as a saving. So it’s a straight redistribution of wealth from other Hydro customers and taxpayers to the people building the windmills and supplying biodiesel.
And the sole rationale for doing it is to reduce CO2 emissions and the use of diesel. It’s economic lunacy and an absurd waste of other people’s money in pursuit of magical thinking about ‘renewable energy’. For a few million, they could upgrade the diesel plant or build something better if that becomes necessary. It just doesn’t make sense to me at all.