Here is a great example of the media idiocy I am talking about.
Ross Gittins has clout. He can put an issue on the agenda. Instead of that, he is busy stroking fantasy.
If you’ve ever been tempted by the thought that Australia forging our future by becoming a global “superpower” is a nice idea but probably not a realistic one, I have big news. New evidence shows it’s the smart way to fund our future.
Last week, while we were engaged in a stupid argument over whether the Future Fund should continue growing forever and earning top dollar by being invested in other countries’ futures rather than our own, few people noticed a report much more germane to our future.
…It employed Dr Reuben Finighan to test and extend Garnaut’s argument with a detailed analysis of the future energy supply and demand in five potential importing countries, which together account for more than half of global greenhouse gas emissions: China, Japan, South Korea, India and Germany.
Finighan’s report, The New Energy Trade, provides world-first analysis of likely international trade in clean energy and finds Australia could contribute up to 10 per cent of the world’s emissions reductions while generating six to eight times larger revenues than those typical from our fossil fuel exports.
He demonstrates that, though Australia’s present comparative advantage in producing fossil fuels – coal and natural gas – for export will lose its value as the world moves to net zero carbon emissions, it can be replaced by a new and much more valuable comparative advantage in exporting energy-intensive iron and steel, aluminium and urea, plus green fuels for shipping, aviation and road freight, with our renewable energy from solar and wind embedded in them.
Sure, this might happen. Some of it should.
But what is the point of waxing about this vision when our energy transition is dramatically impoverishing Australia before our very eyes?
The East Coast gas cartel is delivering another energy price shock because Europe has gotten a bit cold.
This will translate into more utility bill price rises in 2025, which will trigger even larger energy rebates, draining billions from the budget to subsidise a gas cartel already operating at extortionate margins.
It will mean even less confidence in gas as the transition fuel, meaning coal will last longer but only because it, too, is subsidised, draining budgets.
Next up, we will be subsidising the cartel to produce the gas in the first place, as well as peaking power plants, as the cartel exploits capacity mechanisms designed for renewables.
Bizarrely, as I noted yesterday, Ross Gittins has a vested interest in pushing the energy debate towards much more hard-nosed outcomes, given the inflation it has produced, which is smashing the media sector.
Yet still, he prefers to waffle about grandiose superpower visions instead of gas domestic reservation or export levies.
Meanwhile, VIC is also run by card-carrying energy superidiots.
The Australian Restaurant & Cafe Association chief executive Wes Lambert said the industry “supports sustainability” but warned tens of thousands of businesses would suffer if the state rushed the move to phase out gas.
…“If they plan to ban gas by 2030 we believe it will be nearly impossible for businesses to convert to electric, it will require lengthy council approvals and in addition could lead to clashes between landlords and businesses about who will bear the cost of converting.”
The plea comes at the same time that new data shows just how much upgrading homes to electric will cost Victorians.
Data based on quotes from plumbers shows that a two-bedroom unit with gas cooking, gas heating and water would cost $39,000 before rebates were deducted.
Smaller houses may cop higher costs due to space constraints, making them more difficult to retrofit.
A three-bedroom house that already had an electric heater but needed hot water and gas cooking would cost $18,439 upfront. A five-bedroom home with all appliances replaced would cost $36,800.
Let us recall that they are not converting to clean electricity. They are converting to brown coal electricity from much cleaner gas cooktops because the gas cartel has made any build-out of gas peakers to backstop the grid impossible.
This has forced the government to subsidise brown coal electricity to keep it open much longer as we transition away from…brown coal.
If coal eventually closes, the grid will then become more reliant upon gas as the backup source of firming power, and power prices will rise even more as the gas export cartel chokehold tightens.
Let us not forget, either, that the original suggestion to cut households off gas came from the number one energy superidiot in the country, the Grattan Institute.
Though perhaps it is not so much superidiot as it is super corrupt, given it is sponsored by the very same gas export cartel.
Presumably, this is why it prefers to recommend symbolic policy non-solutions while leaving the cartel itself to pollute like a drunken sailor.
Australia is the energy superidiot, not superpower.
