Paul Starick: Premier Jay Weatherill embarks on a pie-in-the-sky carbon plan amid SA electricity crisis

WHILE South Australians are fretting about power security over summer, Premier Jay Weatherill is embarking upon a foolish ideological adventure, writes Chief Reporter Paul Starick.

Premier Jay Weatherill tours the Murray River at Renmark on Wednesday. Picture: Rick Goodman/AAP

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WHILE South Australians are fretting about power security over summer, Premier Jay Weatherill is embarking upon an ideological adventure.

He will push a carbon scheme for the electricity sector at a meeting in Canberra tomorrow, threatening the states could go it alone because of an “absence of national leadership”.

Rather than ease power prices or supply issues, the impact of Mr Weatherill’s call this morning for a carbon emissions intensity scheme has already been to intensify bickering between state and federal governments.

With three major blackouts in SA this year — including one in September when the whole state’s lights went out — pragmatic, sensible solutions are needed for the short and long-term.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull responded with the obvious retort — that Mr Weatherill’s credentials were dubious because he presides over a state that cannot keep the lights on and has the nation’s most expensive power.

Even if Mr Turnbull really wanted a carbon scheme to transform the electricity market, political reality means Mr Weatherill’s urgings are more pie-in-the-sky than workable solution.

He will win internal points for furthering federal Labor’s agenda of destabilising Mr Turnbull at any cost, particularly over an issue which has already enraged the Liberal Right this week and forced the Prime Minister to throw Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg under a bus.

Mr Weatherill also is furthering his own longstanding tactic of picking a fight with the Feds, which diverts attention from his domestic issues.

Chief among these is SA’s world-leading use of renewables, which has contributed to the closure of Port Augusta’s power station and the mothballing of the gas-fired Pelican Point power station.

They cannot afford to compete with renewables when the wind is blowing and the sun shining. This makes it uneconomic for generators like Pelican Point to operate at full capacity, even though their electricity is needed on windless, cloudy days.

Ideologically, Mr Weatherill is treading the same path on carbon Labor has followed for more than a decade. The Liberal Right believes Australia has a natural price advantage with cheaper coal-generated power that it should cement.

An emissions intensity scheme penalises electricity generators who emit carbon above a set limit. Cleaner generators who pollute below this limit do not pay and can trade free credits.

It is expected to be recommended by chief scientist Alan Finkel but, correctly or not, appears certain to fall victim to Australia’s continuing carbon wars.