What a humiliation for South Australia’s premier, Peter Malinauskas and the almost lunatic federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen
How much have these climate dupes now cost us by believing a huckster’s claim that a miracle gas, green hydrogen, would save the steelworks which prop up Whyalla?
Andrew Bolt
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The catastrophic collapse of Whyalla’s steelworks proves Labor’s climate schemes are ruining the country and must be scrapped.
Instantly.
What a humiliation for South Australia’s premier, Peter Malinauskas and the almost lunatic federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen.
How much have these climate dupes now cost us by believing a huckster’s claim that a miracle gas, green hydrogen, would save the steelworks which prop up Whyalla?
Fourteen years ago Tony Abbott as federal Opposition leader warned that Labor’s climate crusade would jack up the price of electricity and wipe out Whyalla.
He was mocked by Labor and the warmist media, which in 2017 hailed British steel magnate Sanjeev Gupta as the city’s savior for buying the steelworks out of administration, promising to make its one of the “biggest steelworks in the world” by powering it with green hydrogen, made by pumping massive amounts of wind and solar power through water.
Never mind that green hydrogen has not been proven to work at scale anywhere.
It was green!
Bowen was thrilled.
He handed the steelworks $63m for a low carbon furnace.
What’s more, he and Malinauskas were so sure green hydrogen would be needed there that they also promised $100m to help build Australia’s first large-scale export terminal for hydrogen at nearby Port Bonython.
What a joke.
What Australia’s smelters and heavy industry actually needed was cheaper, 24/7 electricity, instead of the unreliable wind and solar that’s given South Australia some of the world’s highest electricity prices.
Meanwhile, Gupta – now renovating his $34m waterside mansion in Sydney – stopped paying his bills in Whyalla.
As Gupta’s debts hurtled towards $300m, Malinauskas finally ran out of patience and trust.
On Wednesday, he put the steelworks into administration and rushed through a law allowing the government to go through the books.
From Bowen there was just silence, but Malinauskas promised a package to keep the steelworks in business under different owners.
A broke steelworks certainly can’t afford green hydrogen, and Malinauskas has already admitted that no green hydrogen at the steelworks probably means no hydrogen plant at Port Bonython.
How can this country be run like this, on wild green dreams?
If we don’t wake up, the Whyalla wipeout won’t be the last.
Originally published as What a humiliation for South Australia’s premier, Peter Malinauskas and the almost lunatic federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen
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