One. Point. Five. Trillion. Dollars.

That is the nose-bleeding cost of changing most of our electricity supply from cheap and reliable coal to expensive and unreliable renewables by 2030.

But that’s not all. We’re looking at another $7 to $9 trillion by 2060 to fully decarbonise the Australian economy.

This is according to a report released last week by Net Zero Australia.

Who knew that’s what we signed up for?

It’s why only the rich suburbs can afford to vote Green and Teal, not the people raising families in the burbs.

Remember it was the Coalition under Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce who signed Australia up to net-zero ahead of the Glasgow climate summit with world leaders in October 2021.

Morrison wanted to be one of the cool kids and Barnaby had to get the Nats over the line before he got on the plane.

Since coming to office Labor has been more gung-ho, accelerating the rush to renewables as if the cost of electricity and reliability of supply did not matter.

Net Zero Australia says its cost projections for achieving net zero include carpeting 120,000 square kilometres, or an area half the size of Victoria, with windmills, solar panels and transmission lines.

Landholders are already rebelling. In contrast, environmental activists are silent about the loss of biodiversity, such is the hypocrisy surrounding climate politics.

It’s clear the government physically cannot build the 20,000 solar panels per day required to make net zero happen, let alone afford to pay for it.

Electricity bills are already through the roof thanks to subsidies for wind and solar and the closure of coal.

Households simply can’t afford to pay more for the net zero dream.

But that doesn’t worry Net Zero Australia. It is only interested in “how to make it happen”.

The report is subtitled “mobilisation report”.

It says households will have to shoulder some of the costs but business will also pay. That is naïve of course because business always passes on costs the consumers.

Taxpayers, that’s us, always pay for the subsidies to the companies building the windmills and solar panels.

If we break down the numbers, $1.5 trillion equals $60,000 per person in a population of 25 million.

Over the six years left to 2030, that’s $10,000 extra per person per year – or $40,000 a year per family of four.

In the next 37 years to 2060, the economic impact of $9 trillion is $360,000 per person or  $1.4m for a family of four.

These numbers are insane when we have perfectly good energy options available now which we are squandering for negligible environmental benefit.

Remember, Australia is just 1.3 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Punishing our nation will make no difference to the temperature of the planet.

But Net Zero Australia is caught up in its grandiose vision which says its mission is comparable to the Marshall Plan which rebuilt Europe after the destruction of the Second World War.

“It would seem that if you just leave it to little initiatives here and there, they might get you there, and they might not. It’s one thing to wave our arms and say we need a moonshot, we need a Marshall Plan, or what have you – I don’t resile from that,” said Robin Batterham – emeritus professor of engineering at the University of Melbourne and Australia’s former chief scientist – who chaired the Net Zero Australia’s steering committee.

The case has not been made to the average Australian living in the suburbs that the nation faces a crisis anywhere near warranting such a moonshot or Marshall Plan effort to fix it.

People just want affordable and reliable power. They want their cost of living to come down, not go up.

Elite news outlets like the Guardian Australia didn’t even report the cost. It led with assertions that nuclear power is too expensive.

It would be interesting to see a cost comparison, something too difficult for the Guardian’s reporters to research.

Nuclear plants certainly wouldn’t need new poles and wires strewn across the countryside because they could be located in proximity to existing infrastructure.

But as Nick Cater unearthed in the Australian, Net Zero Australia concedes in the fine print that the costs it released last week are only based on modelling.

“The inherent and significant uncertainty in key modelling inputs means there is also significant uncertainty in the associated assumptions, modelling and results.”

Even Net Zero Australia seems to know how unreliable modelling is.

$1.5 trillion is likely to be on the low side.

The science, engineering and economics behind the net zero dream is dodgy.

Until this is sorted, we should stop this folly before we all go broke.