The Liberal Party has a terrible history of energy market bumbling, not to mention climate change denial and policy wreckage:
- It destroyed Labor’s carbon price, shifting the cost of transition from polluters to households.
- Tony Abbott’s Direct Action did nothing.
- SocMo’s “gas-led recovery” might have had promise but it was only amied at the Narrabri project. It was domestically reserved but without wider reservation would have been useless to prices. ScoMo also betrayed his promise to Senator Rex Patrick to install gas reservation in return for the Stage 3 tax cuts.
- Malcolm Turnbull crowded out private investment in power storage with the ludicrously expensive Snowy 2.0. The best moment for the Coalition was when Turnbull also created the Australian Domestic Gas Reservation Mechanism in 2017, which crashed gas prices for a few years.
Now, having sabotaged most things good about energy, we are off on Peter Dutton’s nuclear fantasy which is little more than lies:
- It is very likely to be more expensive than renewables, including poles and wires investment. Renewables cost $121bn to 2050, according to AEMO, versus Dutton’s God only knows price tag. CSIRO puts it at $133bn for seven reactors but it is likely a lot more.
- Then the price of power will be much higher to produce at an average of $180Mwh versus $110Mwh for renewables plus storage, again according to CSIRO.
- There will be a lot more waste than one “coke can” per reactor. Tonnes of it.
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As with Labor, the real issue is how to get where we are going without energy production crashing into deficit. That needs gas. And for it to be economically viable, domestically reserved gas.
The LNP is not offering that, either.
As things stand, the lights are going out in Australia under either political party.
The gas export cartel must be addressed head-on but it has bought the parliament.
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