Buying back the energy grid is only option to solve SA’s power crisis, new report says

EXCLUSIVE: Nationalising the energy grid is the only option in the wake of the “comprehensive failure” of reform, a report released today argues.

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NATIONALISING the energy grid is the only option in the wake of the “comprehensive failure” of reform, a report released today argues.

Premier Jay Weatherill has said one option the State Government has on the table is “to completely nationalise the system” even though he simultaneously warned it would cost taxpayers extraordinary amounts of money and expose the government to sovereign risk.

But the Australian Industrial Transformation Institute, based at Flinders University, says even though it appears “unthinkable”, it’s the logical solution to energy woes.

The discussion paper lists a number of system failures, including the SA statewide blackout, to argue for the “deprivatisation.

It says the government should buy crucial interconnectors such as the one between SA and Victoria, as well as any newly built ones. Eventually, it should buy the entire transmission and distribution system.

It argues private firms are earning more than the cost of long-term borrowing would be, so the government could issue bonds to buy the system.

Attacks on renewable energy by the Federal Government make the situation “particularly urgent”, according to the Grid Renationalisation report.

University of Queensland economist Professor John Quiggin said the nation was “past the point of tinkering”.

“Some may say that a publicly-owned national grid is unthinkable,” he said.

“Yet it is the only coherent response to the failure of neoliberal electricity reform. And, in the light of the political upheavals of 2016, the idea that any political possibility should be dismissed as unthinkable appears obsolete.”

Institute director Professor John Spoehr said the private market’s failures had made the system “unreliable and untenable”.

“This is a discussion we have to have, as a catalyst for genuine, nation-building reform,” he said.