Food Firms Revolt Against Net Zero Over Australia’s Energy Crisis

From THE DAILY SCEPTIC

by Sallust

The Australian has a piece that ought to be another ominous portent for Britain’s Labour Government while it sacrifices the population’s well-being on the altar of Net Zero, presided over by its arch-priest of energy policy, Ed Miliband:

Employers supplying food to major supermarkets and thousands of cafes, restaurants and pubs have launched a revolt against Anthony Albanese’s energy policies, urging Labour to dump its 82% renewables target and focus on ramping up more gas and coal production to bring electricity prices down in the short term.

The Independent Food Distributors Australia – whose members use large chillers and freezers to store and supply food for 60,000 retailers – has broken with other peak industry bodies and is calling on the Albanese Government to recalibrate its climate change agenda, with business owners reporting energy price increases of more than 50% since Labour gained power.

Business owners in the sector have told the Australian they want the Government to drop its “ideological” approach to energy and instead support upgrades of existing coal-fired power stations while bringing on new gas peaking plants.

Like Britain, the same story is being peddled in Australia that renewables are the magic solution to cheap energy. In Australia the cost of energy is steadily rising too. The story sounds all too familiar to anyone in Britain where the cost of food has become crippling and only set to get higher:

IFDA chief executive Richard Forbes said there was a “national energy emergency”, arguing the Government’s policies were driving up the price of food for consumers. “Based on the impact of the level of increase in energy pricing for food businesses, and the downstream impact for consumers… there should be a very serious look at the approach towards Net Zero at present because of the damage that is being done,” Mr Forbes said.

“It’s very clear… that the damage is affecting the viability of businesses and is affecting the ability of consumers to purchase the food that they would like.

“I don’t think it ever hurts to have a recalibration when people are hurting.”

Mr Forbes said the “clear message” from IFDA’s 200 ­members, which employ 8,500 people, was that coal-fired power generation was being phased out too quickly and the renewables target of 82% by 2030 was problematic.

Under Labour’s plan, 90% of coal-fired power stations will be retired within the next ­decade and there will be no coal generation by 2038.

“As far as I am concerned, the Government’s energy policy has and continues to increase the price of food,” Mr Forbes said.

“Food businesses are sick and tired of hearing the Government saying they are doing something about the cost of living, when their costs, particularly energy costs, are soaring.”

Australia’s Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, isn’t having any of that. Of course it was all the previous Liberal Government’s fault:

Rejecting the push from food distributors, a spokesman for Mr Bowen said experts had found that “unreliable coal generators are driving price spikes”.

“Extending them further would be a recipe for disaster,” the spokesman said. “After a decade of neglect under the Liberals, ­ energy prices for small businesses are too high and exposed to international shocks.

The Godden Food Group, which distributes food, has seen its latest energy contract soar to 238% more [i.e., more than trebling] in New South Wales and 90% higher in Queensland:

Mr Godden said he would have to pass on about half of the increased costs for food storage which would lead to higher prices at the supermarkets.

“The Government can make a smoke screen out of it all they like, about supermarkets gouging,” Mr Godden said.

“The reality is, they don’t want to talk about the cost of energy and how it’s affecting that supply chain.”

Mr Godden said the Government was “chasing this renewables policy as a political agenda”. He went further than the industry body in calling on the Prime Minister to join Donald Trump in leaving the Paris agreement.

He said it was a “disgrace” that Mr Albanese, Mr Bowen and Jim Chalmers would not admit the Government had failed to deliver on its pre-election commitment to lower electricity prices by $275 on 2022 levels by this year.

“Answer the question,” Mr Godden said. “I think they’re treating the Australian people like idiots, like fools.”

Today’s bonus prize question is: which other government is treating its people like fools when it comes to energy policy?

Brisbane-based Moco Food Services Chief Executive Mike Peberdy said to the Australian in a killer line:

“I think we’re pursuing some ideological sort of outcomes, rather than a focus on actually delivering… cheap energy,” he said.

“There needs to be a focus on shoring up our short-term power requirements using coal and gas in order to reduce the cost to consumers and business.

“We used to be a low-cost power country, and now we’re high. It seems like a crazy destruction of wealth across the Australian population.”

The interesting question is going to be how many of these ideology-based Net Zero administrations will still be in power in five years? Given that the Telegraph today has a piece about Labour’s extraordinary loss of support to the SNP thanks to its litany of broken promises, it rather looks at the moment as if Labour might already be heading for the same oblivion as the Tories. Appropriately enough, the Telegraph has a piece by Brian Monteith declaring that Miliband poses a grave threat to every family in Britain:

Unfortunately for British industries enduring the world’s highest energy costs, Miliband is allowing no concessions to his tablets of stone that say we must be willing for all our carbon energy-based industries to either abandon Britain for foreign shores or stay and face being priced out of business altogether.

The greater tragedy is that for all the higher energy costs we face – at home and at work – the fact is that Miliband’s supercharged rush to Net Zero is not solving climate change.

If man’s carbon emissions cause the earth to warm and the seas to rise, then Miliband’s policies do not alter that equation. All that is happening is our industrial production (and the jobs and investment) are being exported to China, India and other countries where energy is allowed to be much cheaper and is usually dirtier.

In its place, Miliband is helping to import hardship and poverty that adds to the problems created by Reeves.

The Australian’s piece is worth reading in full as is the Telegraph’s about the threat posed by Ed  Miliband.