There really is not much more Tony Wood of the Grattan Institute can do to destroy Australia’s energy transition.
He helped create the gas cartel by arguing against domestic reservation in 2013, aided by the sponsorship from his former employer and gas cartelier Origin Energy.
He is currently arguing that LNG imports are our only option, even though they will double the price of gas overnight and add 4% to the CPI.
It was also Wood who introduced Aussie policymakers to the grand gesture of getting households off the gas, even though the impact on emissions is nearly invisible and price effects will be worse.
This incredible waste of resources on symbolism over substance will cost households tens of thousands for almost no net benefit.
The electricity that households use will still come from coal for decades, boosting emissions for the foreseeable future.
The price of that electricity will continue to skyrocket owing to, you guessed it, Tony Wood and his East Coast gas cartel mates.
It is hard to imagine a more destructive waste of energy than this policy, in terms of exhausting support for emissions reduction, lowering living standards, and letting the real polluters and profiteers gallop off into the sunset with your money.
But don’t tell the fake left that, for it will cancel you.
Suburb-wide electrification trials are set to be rolled out across the country under an intervention designed to help spark the household transition from gas.
The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, has formally directed the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) to consider funding more pilots like Electrify 2515, a community-led initiative to electrify 500 homes in one postcode in Wollongong, NSW.
The pilot, the brainchild of local resident and Rewiring Australia co-founder Saul Griffith, offers subsidies to lower the upfront costs for households to install solar batteries and replace gas heaters, cooktops and hot water systems with electric alternatives.
…The federal government has already allocated $800m to upgrade more than 100,000 social housing properties with energy-efficient appliances.
That is $8000 per household. Or roughly $90bn equivalent to convert all Aussie houses to energy-efficient appliances.
Money well spent! Not.
Consider the alternative, which is to domestically reserve QLD gas and ship it south for domestic use in support of the renewables rollout.
If you also apply an export levy on all revenue above $7Gj, it will still deliver huge profits to the cartel plus about $10bn per annum to the owner of the gas, you.
It will collapse local gas and electricity prices, restoring living standards, and unfetter renewables from insecurity of supply as gas peakers flourish, as well as reversing the regressive nature of rising energy costs for poorer households while making money for everybody (except Tony Wood’s gas cartel).
Instead of this simple, legitimate, and efficient solution, Tony Wood and the Grattan Institute now have you subsidising via higher taxes the gas cartel, the coal generators, the renewables rollout, the remaining industry transition, business and household energy bills, degas solutions, decentralisation, and the list goes on and on, while emissions reduction is failing and living standards are collapsing, with much worse to come when LNG imports start.
We are literally pissing hundreds of billions down the drain, plus the Aussie way of life, to protect one Grattan Institute sponsor and kill the planet.
