Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Australia’s Chief Scientist Alan Finkel has strongly criticised the impact of renewable energy policies on the poor, working class people and migrants.
Renewable energy push to hit Labor’s heartland
The Australian12:00AM December 29, 2016
MICHAEL OWEN SA Bureau Chief Adelaide @mjowen
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Dr Finkel, who is conducting a review of the electricity market for the federal government following the statewide blackout in South Australia in September, said people who rented properties or lived in apartments were limited in their ability to install new technologies.
Migrants with limited English, people with poor financial literacy and those struggling to make ends meet were at risk of paying increased costs to subsidise households or businesses able to invest in new technologies. Passive or loyal consumers who were not engaged in managing their electricity demand and costs were vulnerable too, Dr Finkel added.
The danger was that, as more consumers took greater steps with the aid of technological advancements to rely less on the grid, the cost of building and maintaining the network would be spread over a smaller number of “vulnerable” users.
The Australian Energy Market Commission has warned that electricity prices are set to surge during the next two years, largely driven by the close of coal-fired power stations in South Australia and Victoria and ongoing investment in wind generation.
Australian Stock Exchange data showed yesterday that base future contract prices for March were highest in South Australia, which yesterday had its third major blackout in four months. For companies to buy a megawatt of electricity in March, it would cost South Australian buyers almost $152.91, compared with $100 in Queensland, $63.75 in NSW and $54.50 in Victoria.
South Australia, under Labor Premier Jay Weatherill, has a renewable energy generation mix of more than 40 per cent, the highest of any state. The state’s last coal-fired power station closed in May.
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Climate Institute head of policy Olivia Kember said there was a real risk of large numbers of households leaving the grid, which likely would be the result of ongoing policy failure by federal and state governments. “It’s not just a problem for lower-income households, but also apartment dwellers and large industry that needs grid-based power,” she said. “Currently we are seeing coal stations close with only six months’ notice, and no signals to tell the market what is needed to replace them.”
Australian Energy Council chief executive Matthew Warren said all consumers ultimately would want to be connected to the grid, even as a form of back-up, although there was a risk more would be less reliant on it. “The reality is if we are going to have a decarbonised system that is going to be reliable, it will cost more and we’ve seen that in South Australia — it is living proof,” he said. “There are a lot of inequities in the system and they are difficult to answer. The inequities can get worse.”
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With a major coal plant closure scheduled in Victoria for March 2017, which up until now has been South Australia’s fossil fuel backup buddy, the situation can only get worse.
Victorian consumers, already suffering the cost of their state government’s multi-billion dollar desalination plant fiasco, are likely in the near future to have to pay for South Australian style energy price rises.
Australia is on negative credit watch with international ratings agencies, because of ballooning public debt levels. Forced energy price rises, and the rapid deterioration of Australia’s baseload generation capacity, is unlikely to impress. The financial shock of a downgrade would hit every level of Australian society.
Just get rid of the state and federal ‘renewable’ mandates and the problem goes away — end of story.
If only. All these endless debates about how we can ‘fix’ the issues of renewables by ‘investing’ even larger sums of money in what is frankly a failed initiative are getting boring.
Instead if trying to learn to drive cars with square wheels, or developing expensive suspension to cope with it, perhaps we should just go back to round ones.
The failure of Germany’s “Energiewende” … Australia is NOT learning from this massive failure!
“If today’s German power grid sounds like a horror story of communist state-planned management, it is because it is in fact so. And unsurprisingly the whole industry is well on its way to a Soviet style meltdown.
For this we have former East German communist Angela Merkel to thank, in part, along with her spineless West German CDU cohorts, many of whom eagerly hopped on the gravy train and let the country be taken for a wild ride.”
http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.7ZGxr85C.dpuf
I presume that when he says “For companies to buy a megawatt of electricity “, I presume he means megawatthour.
Phillip, I presume he has no idea. We still see, on a daily basis, pollies, journos and greenies who have no idea what the difference between energy and power is, and the significant implications that difference has on the electricity supply debate.
Nick why not do something crazy and suggest that Sa goes back to the drawing board and works out when the problem first started , when the blackouts began , when the prices skyrocketed and put everything back the way it was before .
Oh sorry can’t do that don’t want that nasty Co2 fertilising plants and greening deserts do we .
Australian politicians aren’t against burning cheap fossil fuels, they’re just against their fellow Australians burning cheap fossil fuels.
Make their lives miserable, just as they wish a diminished life on you.
Aussi pollies won’t be back at “work” until Feb…after their long llllonnnnnng lllllllllllllonnnnnnnnnnnnggggg summer “retreat”.
Is there another linke, the Aussie paper is paywalled.
If we want to get to low emissions’ isn’t the best way to fuck things up so bad that our economies collapse? I think things are looking mighty good if this is the real objective.
It’s no coincidence that your big green energy supporters are at a comfortable six figures or better. They’re perfectly willing to others suffer for the warm fuzzy they get from saving the planet.
For thee, not me…
The left only “cares” about the poor when they attempt to contrast themselves with non-liberals and proclaim that only liberals care. Any other time, the poor don’t exist for liberals. That’s part of the reason charitable contributions by liberals run only a fraction of the amount donated by non-liberals. Oh, and don’t believe me on that. Look it up for yourself. Liberals believe in being very charitable with other people’s money, not their own.
From Kylar Loissikian in The Australian (Jan 4th 2017)-
“Electricity companies have begun hiking consumer prices around the country, blaming the closure of coal-fired generators and the increased cost of renewable energy for higher-than-predicted increases of more than $130 this year.
EnergyAustralia and AGL have increased electricity tariffs in Victoria by $135 and $132 on average for the year respectively — greatly exceeding state government modelling that concluded bills would rise by $27 to $100.
The Victorian price rises will flow from this week but the companies’ customers in other states, including South Australia and NSW, face a yet-to-be announced price rise in June.”
“The Australian Energy Council has warned the impact will be greatest in Victoria and South Australia, which face the biggest wholesale price increases.”
“The Energy Council’s corporate affairs general manager, Sarah McNamara, said the Victorian wholesale price increases were a “byproduct of the reduction in the state’s generation capacity by around 20 per cent, a direct consequence of the upcoming closure of the Hazelwood power station in March”. The Energy Council, which represents major electricity and gas producers, has repeatedly called for a national strategy to deal with supply issues and price volatility as older power stations are retired and an increasing amount of large-scale renewable energy is made available.”
“An EnergyAustralia spokesman said the average $11 a month increase in Victoria reflected “higher generation, general business and government green-scheme costs”. In that state, there was an increase in the cost of buying electricity for 2017 from about $40 a megawatt hour in January to more than $60 a megawatt hour in November, he said.
“The closure of the Northern power station in South Australia, increased demand for gas by large LNG projects in Queensland, reliability issues and … the market’s reaction to the closure of Hazelwood were among the main factors,” he said.
AGL, through a spokesman, said residential electricity prices would rise by $2.59 a week, on average, or a 9.9 per cent increase, while small and medium-size businesses would see costs increase by 13.4 per cent.”
Welcome to Nick Stokes and Co’s cheap Green energy folks.
And power prices are set to “skyrocket” across Aus as conventional coal goes end of life!