Andrew Bolt: Albanese government’s disastrous global warming scheme

The Albanese government is desperately taking a double-or-nothing gamble to save its disastrous global warming scheme, but all its main climate targets are in danger or simply impossible.

The Albanese government – worse than Whitlam’s – is desperately taking a double-or-nothing gamble to save its disastrous global warming scheme.

No, it’s even madder: 500 per cent or nothing.

The government is panicking because all its main climate targets are in danger or simply impossible.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers sounded the alarm a month ago: “We will need to do even more to secure sufficient renewable energy generation, transmission and storage to meet our ambitions.”

Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: Gaye Gerard

Last week even the government’s biggest global warming zealot, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, had to admit he was “far from satisfied”.

No wonder. Look at the government’s 2030 targets.

It said we’d then get 82 per cent of our electricity from renewables such as wind and solar. No expert I’ve heard believes that’s possible. The rollout is way behind, and costs have blown out.

It promised 43 per cent emission cuts, but admits it’s undershooting.

It vowed that 89 per cent of all new car sales in 2030 would be electric vehicles. The government’s transport department now says it won’t make even a third of that.

And the 10,000km of new transmission wires it promised in order to hook up the new renewables is grossly behind schedule, with many projects costing two or three times more than expected.

Climate Change and Energy MP Chris Bowen. Picture: David Swift

Conclusion: total disaster, with retail prices for electricity up 18 per cent in a year and the energy marker operator warning of blackouts if summer is hot.

Yet Bowen’s response is to spend much more, without saying how much.

Let’s guess. Just three months ago Bowen announced he’d “unlock” $10bn of investment to add 6GW of electricity capacity through more wind, solar and even hydrogen plants. Now he says he wants more than five times that.

So at a very rough guess, he must find $50bn of investment, by offering billions of dollars in government subsidies. All to be repaid.

But wait. Bowen could build five times more wind farms, but when the wind stops blowing, it still stops for them all – or many.

There’s another problem. Bowen is also spending billions to develop hydrogen, made from water, as a green fuel which he says “is vital for Australia’s future”.

But hydrogen spruiker Andrew Forrest, the billionaire, has just canned a promised power plant in Port Kembla that was meant to use green hydrogen, and even got a $30m government grant.

Stand by. This will make the Whitlam years seem a triumph.