Australia’s living standards will go backwards if we bungle the energy transition and abandon gas | Alexander Downer

Australia’s small emissions footprint will make no measurable change to climate, but energy prices will change our living standards, writes Alexander Downer.

Policy debates don’t change gradually. They change suddenly. There has been a sudden change in Australia in public attitudes to energy policy.

Anyone who has studied Australia’s energy production and consumption has realised that if we continue on our current path of eliminating all fossil fuels and rejecting the option of nuclear power, we will be on a road to ruin.

Already we’ve experienced six consecutive quarters of negative per capita GDP. For a year and a half we’ve been getting poorer.

There will be three consequences for Australia.

First, energy will become less reliable and more expensive for households.

Secondly, those industries that are left in Australia will flee the country because of high prices and unreliable supply. And thirdly, Australia has been a major supplier of energy – including LNG – to successful economies like Japan, South Korea and even China over quite some years.

That gives us foreign policy heft and leverage.

By abandoning LNG and coal exports we would not only blow a huge hole in our national income but disengage from an important aspect of the security architecture of our region.

The argument put by climate zealots and feckless politicians that wind and solar power will become much cheaper than coal, gas and nuclear have finally been exposed to be nonsense.

Adding up the cost of building transmission lines over thousands of kilometres and realising that wind and solar power is only intermittent has been a very harsh reality check.

What is more, the argument that if we consumed less gas in Australia somehow we would end up with fewer bushfires, floods and other extreme weather events is just childish.

Anybody who is interested in the science knows climate change is a global phenomenon, not a local phenomenon.

And what is more, Australia contributes 1.3% of global admissions. So no matter how much we spend on renewables and closing down fossil fuel energy production, it will not make any measurable difference to the climate.

So, let’s face it. If we want to maintain anything close to our current living standards and address issues of healthcare and child poverty we’re going to have to continue to use gas.

To fix climate change without tanking our own and indeed the global economy will require substantial breakthroughs in energy related technology.

That will require investment in R & D. That’s where the effort should be going, not forcing up energy prices with intermittent renewable power.

That’s not going to solve the problem. That’s obvious. Fossil fuel consumption worldwide is continuing to grow because no one wants to plunge their economy into penury. That is, if it is solvable at all.

Alexander Downer was foreign affairs minister from 1996-2007, and high commissioner to the United Kingdom from 2014-18. He is chairman of natural hydrogen and helium gas firm Gold Hydrogen.