This is amusing from Australia’s most treasonous minister:
Resources Minister Madeleine King has warned gas producers they risk damaging their social licence and playing into the hands of the Greens if they fail to provide stable supply and affordable prices to consumers.
The comments came after new data on Wednesday pointed to major gas shortfalls in Western Australia from 2029, and after Greens leader Adam Bandt ramped up attacks on state and federal Labor and the gas sector for dragging down the country’s push to net zero emissions.
“Shortages, or even forecasts of shortages, of Australian gas for Australian customers only play into the hands of those who would seek to close the industry down,” Ms King said in a speech to the Australia-Japan roundtable attended by the Consul-General of Japan, Yasushi Naito.
Why is Mad King warning, cajoling, pretending? She has the power to instruct the East Coast gas cartel to leave more gas here any time she wants via the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism (ADGSM).
Because she would rather play politics than rescue you from inflation and interest rates, preserve what is left of industry, and drop housing costs.
That said, the Mad King is right to the extent that the Greens gas policy is a major drawcard for the polity.
They are the only party that will force the East Coast gas cartel to heal.
I loath Greens economic and social politics but I will vote Green purely on this one issue.
Meanwhile, IEEFA is muddying the waters:
The need for gas power generation is expected to be below historic levels, and very small compared with the expansion of renewable generation and storage. As the role of gas narrows to focus on ‘peaking’ services, generators are expected to operate only 7% of the time on average.
Gas is an expensive form of generation, and low utilisation rates will likely require gas generators to increase their prices even further. Meanwhile, batteries are seeing rapid cost reductions and are outcompeting gas in many jurisdictions.
Quite right. But this rather understates the role. The 7% is the crucial dispatchable back-up without which huge swathes of the grid could go days with blackouts.
There is no reliability at all without gas (or coal or nuclear).
