Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Aussie Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is celebrating passing the National Energy Guarantee, a policy which attempts to please everyone by demanding energy retailers source a portion of their supply from dispatchable sources, while at the same time attempting to encourage investment in renewables to meet Australia’s Paris Agreement commitments.
The green response;
Coalition votes to kill renewables, encourage new coal generation
Giles Parkinson 14 August 2018
ShareFederal Coalition MPs voted on Tuesday to support the National Energy Guarantee that proposes to ensure no new investment in large-scale wind, solar or battery storage for nearly a decade, and also expressed their support for a new government initiative they hope will support new coal-fired generation.
A two-and-a-half hour meeting of Coalition MPs in Canberra produced the result that prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and energy and environment minister Josh Frydenberg had been hoping for: support for the NEG, despite opposition from former PM Tony Abbott and former deputy PM Barnaby Joyce.
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That meeting and the meeting of Coalition MPs on Tuesday embraced the promise by the Energy Security Board that the NEG – at its current emission reduction target – would ensure there would be zero investment in new large-scale wind, large-scale solar or large-scale battery storage from 2022 to 2030.
That unprecedented investment drought will take Australia from one of the leading countries in the adoption of renewable energy to bottom of the pile, according to analysis from ANU researchers.
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Read more: https://reneweconomy.com.au/coalition-votes-to-kill-renewables-encourage-new-coal-generation-16304/
Australia’s former Primer Minister Tony Abbott pretty much sums up the climate skeptic response;
Tony Abbott defends CO2, attacks his own Paris targets
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Mr Abbott reaffirmed on Monday his view Australia should walk away from the Paris commitment and continued to insist the target was an aspiration, not a commitment – a claim which is disputed by everyone else involved at the time with setting the target.
Mr Abbott said it was a “very dangerous move” to use legislation to bind the power sector to what he claimed were only “voluntary guidelines”.
“There is a world of difference between a non-binding target and a mandatory legislative commitment,” he said.
“I have enormous concerns about anything that smacks of our country being dictated to, surrendering our sovereignty really, to the green bureaucrats of Paris.”
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Read more: https://www.afr.com/news/tony-abbott-defends-co2-attacks-his-own-paris-targets-20180812-h13vlg
Clearly not a lot of joy in either camp. The reason is simple – in my opinion Australia has just been served with a “dog poop yoghurt” energy policy.
The dog poop yoghurt fallacy is a demonstration of why compromise is not always a solution. In the words of James Delingpole;
It goes like this: one side of this debate thinks that the best thing to put in yoghurt is fruit; the other side is of the view that what really needs to be added to yoghurt is a nice bit of dog poo. Now suppose we were to compromise. Suppose the latter faction were to concede sufficient ground to agree that only a tiny quantity of dog poo should go into the mainly fruit-rich yoghurt, would this constitute a victory for commonsense?
Of course it wouldn’t. Even if just the smallest, smidgen of a fraction of dog poo were to go into that yoghurt it would still be irredeemably tainted.
What problem does the NEG energy supply compromise solve?
The NEG’s guaranteed presence of coal in the mix ensures CO2 emissions remain high – which is why the greens are upset.
The guaranteed presence of renewables in the mix ensures end user prices remain artificially high – which is why people who support free markets are upset.
Of course these guarantees aren’t really fixed, the actual percentages could be fiddled anytime by government fiat – so the NEG is unlikely to encourage the kind of long term energy infrastructure investment Australia desperately needs.
The only people who stand to gain from the NEG are electricity suppliers, owners of near end of life coal plants and subsidy funded renewables plants. The NEG effectively gives everyone who supplies electricity an opportunity to be a rent seeker, to demand their government mandated slice of the income of Australia’s long suffering electricity consumers.
“meet Australia’s Paris Agreement commitments.”
that’s nice
except that the paris agreement has no commitments.
only Intended Nationally Determined Contributions
it hasnt passed yet
has to go to the house?
as i see it it also does nothing to prevent the outrageous rising service/supply charges which are a massive 1/3 of my bill
and if we dont keep mining n using OUR coal then a hell of a lot of small towns /workers/biz suppliers will stay broke/bankrupt ready/suicidal
but then Mal n termite queen dont give a rats about that.
No it requires the agreement of the States, we are a union of States, they have to give up rights to the Fed. Control of energy has not been handed over because Western Australia and Northern Territory blocked it when it was originally planned by COAG. Western Australia also stopped the handing over of hospitals to the federal government.
The same problem has hit the NEG with other States refusing to ratify it. There is nothing the federal government can do about it unless it gets every state to agree.
Home is Melbourne Australia.
For many months I have been writing letters addressed tot he CEO of the supplier company of our domestic, home electricity, named AGL. I have graphed changes in electricity bills and components of them against time and have calculated compound growth rates. The usual non-response can be summarized as “We are sorry that you do not agree with climate change science” or “We are sorry that you do not like renewables.” That is, they completely miss the point that I continually stress, that AGL has made some terrible decisions to get into renewables, without proper due diligence – and we the consumers have to pay for their horrible, wrong decisions.
Then I look at our domestic water consumption and supply costs and I see much the same pattern of unapologetic price increases, well ahead of increases in the consumer price index.
The question for Aussie readers here is – Have water bills risen like electricity bills because there have been real increases in water supply costs, or because an expensive level of government meddling is common to both electricity and water supply?
(we Victorians already know that gas prices are high in part because the State government has banned fracking and land-based gas supplies are inadequate.)
Any takers? Geoff.
Turdbull, you crooked Labor-Green stooge. And the same goes for all the LINO’s in parliament. You are all useful idiots for the Greens.
Sadly just like Greece we her in Southern and Eastern Australia will have to wit until the lights do go out.
Ironically while the ALP appears frifgtened of where the Green vote will go, its the Unions who drive the Labour political machine, who will finally decide the matter. When what manufacturing jobs that we still have start to suffer the effects of brown outs, long before a total collapse of industrry, ther Unions will suddenly remember that their er one reason for existing is to look after their meembers, will they use theiir conssiderable political power tof force the next Federal government, that of the ALP , to put the interests of the whole country before paandering to the fashionable support of the Green myth.But it may be too late to save this country from a Greek like situation.
MJE.
Only when the lights do start to go out will we see something like the Viet Nam demonserations in the strteets. But before that when we start to get brown outs and that effects employment, will the union movement suddenly rememberv that they are soposed to look after the workers rather that the present fashionable Green myth.
As the next Federal Govt. will be that of Labour who are scared of th potential Green vote, it will be the Unions who aret the power behind the ALP who will decide things.
PM Turnbull seems to think that Paris agreeemenet is “Binding”which it clearly it is not. But he Turnbull is clearly a Greenie, way back in 2007, when he and Rudd were all for Green things. Of course like so many, Turnbull is rich enough to be able to support fashionable “Causes”, but we “The lesser folk, cannot so afford.
As for the Save the Planet mob, its has never been about the Plaanet, its al abot money from the once rich Western countries going to the dictators and chiefs of mostly Africa, wwhile the likes of India and China, the so called Third World Countries continue to put vast amounts of the good gs CO2 into the atmosphere. . And hiding behind the Green curtain are the hard left so called Greenies, ie Communists, who want World Government.
MJE
Mr Turnbull is clearly a traitor. He parachuted himself in to what is probably one of the safest Conservative seats in the country by way of a large branch stack of Republicans-outright traitors to the Constitutional monarchy system. The rules have since changed, so it is simply not possible to get 2,000 + new branch members out of an electorate of 80,000 people. Australians are way too apathetic for one in 40 , which is closer to one in 20 Liberal voters to join the party to flush the traitor out.
There is nothing Turnbull or any other Federal Government figure can do, Power generation is a State controlled power having never been ceeded to the federation. If you put it in reverse and all the States agreed to something and Turnbull didn’t like it there isn’t a thing he could do about it. So even if Abbott got back to the job and wanted to build 100 coal fired power stations he can’t because the States won’t allow it.
There is a lot of time and talking being done over something they have little control over and no final say.
Whilst it is true that the States control the building and closing down of power stations its my understanding that its the federal government t who decide what subsidies are paid to the power generaters including the windmills and solar panel users.
By simply saying no more subsidies right now as the UK has done, the utilities to survive will have to suddenly find the money to build or upgrade coal fired power stations. After all the real ” fuel coal is far cheaper..
Right now the financial world knows that renewables means rent money from the government, but to quote a old saying, “Take the sugar off the table” problem is solved.
Of course while PM Turnbull talks about ideologies not playing a part in in the discussion, his obsession with the good gas CO2 and his doing what the IPCC, UN and Paris say is of course and not scienc but idologye.
MJE