Vikki Campion: Labor need coal and gas to overcome energy crisis

Anthony Albanese is going to quickly discover that the solution to the energy crisis relies on the same industries his party has spent the last six years denigrating, writes Vikki Campion.

It’s only taken a full-blown energy crisis for Labor’s left and their ABC cheerleaders to admit the obvious. That Australia needs reliable coal and gas to keep the lights and heaters on.

It’s a message LNP MPs tried earnestly to hammer through to Labor but were rewarded with ridicule over their support for a High-Efficiency Low Emission (HELE) coal-fired power station at Collinsville. Labor even laughed at – and initially opposed the new gas plant at Kurri Kurri.

Philosophy has long trumped physics, but now physics is winning the argument.

And the proof is in your power bill.

An energy bill from a country motel, smack bang in the middle of a Renewable Energy Zone, between some of the biggest wind factories and solar farms in NSW, has soared from $80,000 to $311,000 per year just for electricity.

While we were spending billions on renewables to abate record emissions and appease teal voters, there was little in the way of baseload generation added to the national market. As a result, volatility will continue.

Australia needs coal to keep the lights on, writes Vikki Campion.

Energy buyers blame soaring prices on the closures of coal-fired generators and a global upsurge in natural gas and coal prices. With further closures of coal-fired generation next year, wholesale energy prices will surge 200 per cent.

Green energy philosophy ignores complex realities. Unfortunately, politicians follow polling of those philosophies like birds do seeds.

Renewable energy in the electricity market nationally doubled from 2017 levels of 15.8 per cent to more than a third in 2021 – and it cost $45 billion of federal, state and private money.

Australia leads the world in household solar per person and has the most wind and solar per person of any country outside Europe.

Still the teal, Green and Labor left are now blaming high power prices on not enough renewables.

It’s like a political movement arguing against gravity. They can carry anti-gravity placards in protest and win Wentworth, but apples will still fall from trees.

Vikki Campion. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

If the $45 billion spent on renewables from 2017 to April this year had instead gone on nuclear and HELE coal, we wouldn’t have this crisis.

A new low-emission coal-fired power station such as Collinsville would cost just $2 billion.

But that’s not what the Zeitgeist wants, and you don’t have to wait long for the sophistry to explain why you are poorer.

Labor’s Energy Minister Chris Bowen, in a posse with the teals and Greens, blames the Coalition for the grid – even while Hansard shows Labor and the Greens voted down instruments that would have taken renewable energy from Tasmania to the mainland.

And the Coalition was ridiculed for securing domestic gas supplies, and now they are ridiculed for not having enough.

“There actually isn’t a shortage of domestic gas. There’s plenty of gas,” Greens Senator Sarah Hanson Young told Estimates in March, arguing against such investment, by which time reports warned of domestic shortages emerging on the east coast.

Renewable energy makes up almost a third of the electricity marker.

Even now, the Greens are campaigning against the Scarborough gas field, Beetaloo Basin and Browse Basin, all of which would play a critical role in exports, manufacturing, big energy users such as abattoirs, and of course, the precious transition to the net-zero future they so desire.

Labor Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones refuses to consider nuclear because “there is no way that we can have a nuclear generation in this country that cannot operate with our generous government subsidies for decades to come.”

Not like the more than $8.5 billion that flowed from the government up to 2019 for renewables? Or the $22 billion of public money slated for low emissions technologies by 2030? Or the environmental levies passed on by retailers to force consumers to pay for wind and solar energy and the networks that needed to be built to bring that energy to market?

Early modelling found these levies would add just 1 per cent to the power bill but energy buyers are now pointing to state levies, and the federal Renewable Energy Targets as responsible for additional costs as retailers pass on the burden.

Anthony Albanese will discover that the solution to the energy relies on the same industries his party has been denigrating. Picture: Christian Gilles – Pool/Getty Images

The crunch is the soaring price, but the disaster will be if the grid fails, and it may, then it’s not just a matter of flicking a switch to get it back on – it could take days to get it started again.

As former resources Minister Keith Pitt says, Labor excluding coal and gas from support is economic treason in losses to productivity and potential jobs.

Labor Resources Minister Madeline King understands how electricity works, but unfortunately, her commonsense will be diluted by her party room, including her leader, who refused to buy in on the crisis while overseas, effectively hanging an “out-of-office” reply on his press conference.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took the “I don’t hold a hose mate” approach to economic management by refusing to answer ‘domestic’ policy questions while off Australian soil.

When he switches off his “out-of-office” alerts, the Prime Minister will quickly discover that the solution to the energy crisis relies on the same industries his party has spent the last six years denigrating.