Energy is everything in the modern economy. It is everything in modernity itself. Keeping the lights on at night kills the ghouls that gave rise to voodoo value systems since the species was born.
How any self-respecting modern country can allow its energy supply to be at risk is beyond my understanding. It is an irresponsibility of government so severe that it demands the return of the guillotine.
But that is the Australia we live in today. Puny minds fret about words while the energy supply of the country goes to shit. Ironically, it is beyond words.
Today, various indicators offer clear warning signals that the Australian energy system is degrading at alarming speed.
First up is the wreckage of a single storm in VIC, which has damn near paralysed the grid:
Victorians could be left without power for “days, if not weeks” after hundreds of thousands of homes lost power and large industrial users were ordered to shut down after the state’s largest electricity power station suffered an outage, forcing the country’s energy market operator to execute emergency measures to safeguard the stability of the grid.
AGL Energy’s Loy Yang A coal plant went offline shortly after 2pm (AEDT), with the state government attributing the outage to the physical collapse of six transmission towers due to storm damage.
One storm out of the infinite more storms that will come with increasing frequency as climate change worsens. And we’re caput with prices to match (light blue line):
The AEMO and government want to build more of these intricate and vulnerable long-distance systems when they should be pursuing localised and community battery systems.
Second, gas export cartelier, Origin Energy, has pulled out of its deal with Venice Energy to import LNG:
Origin Energy has decided to not exercise an exclusive agreement to underwrite an LNG import terminal after determining it was unable to bear the risk as large gas users are unwilling to sign multi-year agreements.
It’s a decision which threatens to exacerbate a looming gas shortfall on the nation’s eastern seaboard.
The article does not mention that there is only a shortage because Origin is exporting the locally abundant reserves of gas to our deadliest enemy, China.
What kind of idiot country lets an export cartel leave itself short, then allows the same to become the sole importer of replacement gas, then allows it to pull out, clearly having sabotaged anybody else from importing the gas!
This is not a market or private business. It is a dead-set, straight jacket-wearing lunacy that belongs in a padded cell.
Failure to address the gas export cartel is the only reason – THE ONLY REASON – we have any problems with the energy transition that has added spectacular inflationary volatility to the grid:
The federal government must step in. It can import all the Venice Energy gas itself. It can then sell it at cost to benchmark local gas prices driven crazy by the export gas cartel.
The government can become a kind of gas supplier of last resort—a reserve bank of energy to stop private interests from rorting the nation to death.
Although this solution is also exceedingly stupid given our local cheap gas reserves, and export levies on the same would be far better, it is better that the government imports gas rather than letting the energy grid collapse.
How we let the keystone of our civilisation degrade so severely should give us all pause.
