Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova – News has emerged that a high level delegation from Pennsylvania quietly visited Australia this month, offering hard pressed Aussie businesses relocation packages and asylum from Australia’s insane green energy policies.
US state of Pennsylvania spruiks power to entice Aussie firms
The state of Pennsylvania has sought to poach Australian companies with a promise of “abundant’’ energy, sparking renewed warnings from Australian business leaders that the nation risks losing jobs to offshore rivals unless it tackles its energy problems. A high-powered delegation from the Pennsylvanian government, headed by Dennis Davin, the state’s Secretary for Community and Economic Development, visited Australia seeking out large and medium Australian businesses and plugging his state’s energy advantages.
The week-long trip early this month, with stops in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth,…
The Pennsylvanian delegation has fanned fears that Australian firms are considered “ripe for targeting’’ by offshore rivals with offers of low-cost, reliable power.
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Read more (paywalled): http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/us-state-of-pennsylvania-spruiks-power-to-entice-aussie-firms/news-story/e874806a92c931a5ed9fa855a5b46f73
Unfortunately the article in The Australian is paywalled, but the Minerals Council of Australia confirms the visit.
HIGH AUSTRALIAN POWER PRICES THREATEN JOBS, HURT GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS
DEC 29 2017 DAVID BYERS, INTERIM CHIEF EXECUTIVE
Revelations in The Australian today that the US state of Pennsylvania has sought to poach Australian companies with a promise of “abundant’’ energy show that power price rises here are hurting the international competitiveness of Australian businesses.
It’s little wonder that overseas countries are trying to entice Australian manufacturers to relocate by promising low-cost, reliable energy.
Over the past decade, Australia has moved from having some of the lowest to some of the highest energy prices in the developed world.
Goldman Sachs also recently noted that wholesale electricity prices are expected to increase by another 20-30% in the medium term.
Australia has already dropped from 10th to 21st on the Global Competitiveness Index.
Unless serious efforts are made to reduce Australia’s energy costs, we should expect more global attempts to persuade our businesses to relocate, which will be bad news for economic growth and jobs.
ends
JoNova points out that while gas is likely a lot cheaper in the USA, the price of electricity is not that different in Pennsylvania compared to Australia
This is likely to change.
Given planned closures of old coal plants, an utterly toxic investment environment for anything resembling dispatchable energy, and the track record of energy prices to date (see the top of the page), it is a fair bet Aussie power price rises will continue.
Or worse, heavy industry consumers might be repeatedly forced without notice to switch off their plant and equipment to help maintain the air-conditioned comfort of the urban greens who voted for this mess.
Even if renewables do work out in the end, which I doubt, somebody will have to pay for the switch, the replacement of existing infrastructure with expensive new renewable installations. It will be far easier to push the construction costs onto industry than spike voters with even more politically unpopular electricity price rises.
I doubt the Pennsylvania delegation to Australia was the only such delegation. Throughout the world countries with affordable energy policies are quietly hoovering up expertise and capital from high cost countries. The Europeans even have a name for this relocation of economic activity to lower cost countries, they call it carbon leakage. The winners of this quiet game of corporate migration and jobs growth will be countries which place affordability ahead of politics.
As an Australian I’ll be sorry to see the money, economic activity and jobs provided by heavy industry leave our shores – but I can’t blame business people for choosing survival over the train wreck which our politicians are busy creating out of the Australian economy.
” but I can’t blame business people for choosing survival over the train wreck which our politicians are busy creating”
I wish more people were this understanding. I’ve lost track of the number of populists who scream about “unpatriotic” companies who ship “our jobs” overseas, just to save a few bucks.
Who also demand import tariffs to punish companies that move to get away from insane taxes and regulations.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just can’t seem to get tired of winning.
Perhaps I need to seek out the nearest chapter of winaholics anonymous.
Maybe this time the US will understand the importance of industry in a Capitalistic economy and not listen to the false prophecies of Globalism. Trump may be a bombast but I beleive he sees through the propaganda designed to promote Socialism at the peoples’ expense. If there is a god I hope he/she/it yblesses him.
And to satisfy the interests of the IMF, World Bank and the UN at the expense of the people who will have to pay for all of this.
How I laughed when Barry Obozo was whining about Trump saying he was going to bring jobs back and saying something along the lines of “What’s he going to do? Wave a magic wand?” with his trademark dumb heavy dripping irony. Old Barry was firmly of the opinion that those jobs were gone and weren’t ever coming back and no wonder he thought that since he was committed to the wholesale destruction of the US energy sector.
Trump’s ‘magic wand’ was so trivially simple a child could see it. Mobilise the immense fossil reserves of the US using advanced new recovery technology providing reliable, abundant, cheap energy and rendering the country as a huge net energy exporter. So now while the rest of the Western world plays virtue-signalling games over junk climate science, Trump gets on with turning the US back into an industrial powerhouse and American business interests can virtually take their pick of what industries they want to import.
If global temperatures stay flat or heaven forbid take a dip then Trump will have revealed the whole ‘leadership’ of the Western world for the demented lying fools they are. And they know it. They must be absolutely terrified of this man who won’t join in with their psychotic globalist games.
“If global temperatures stay flat or heaven forbid take a dip then Trump will have revealed the whole ‘leadership’ of the Western world for the demented lying fools they are. And they know it. They must be absolutely terrified of this man who won’t join in with their psychotic globalist games.”
Excellent point.
One way or another high costs move the economic activity. It can be all at once in the form of corporations moving or it can be slowly in the form of businesses in high cost jurisdictions withering while those in low cost jurisdictions flourishing. If the business moves you blame the evil corporation for seeking profit. If the business withers then you blame the evil consumer for seeking low cost goods and services.
OT; Another fire in a 12 storey hi-rise in Manchester, UK. Wonder if the building is “council managed” and was retrofitted (Yes I say this as the images show a circa 1960’s pre-fab concrete building – the “solution” to inner-city housing density) with “cladding”?