Bolt: How Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen are destroying our electricity system

Last week an event took place which confirms a truth that is frightening and extraordinary – and it shows Anthony Albanese can’t tell the difference between facts and green fantasies.

Last week confirmed a truth so frightening and extraordinary that many Australians still can’t believe it. Yes, our electricity system is being destroyed by two politicians – Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen – who can’t tell the difference between their green fantasies and the facts.

The news last week was an announcement missed by most of the media: a NSW solar panels company, Sundrive, was sacking a reported 35 workers and changing direction.

Sundrive is not just significant because the government gave it $11 million.

In late March, Prime Minister Albanese and Energy Minister Bowen also paraded its then-CEO at a joint press conference to persuade voters Sundrive was our future.

Yes! They had a new $1 billion Sunshot fund to get companies like Sundrive to make solar panels in Australia, so we didn’t just import them from China.

Never mind China producing panels so cheaply that economists warn we could never compete. Albanese and Bowen live in an alternative green universe.

So Albanese babbled that his billion dollars would mean Sundrive and other companies would make our own solar panels to give us “a future made right here in Australia”.

Albanese pointed to power workers behind him, saying they could train for this new future and “will never be out of work.”

Bowen chipped in: “Sundrive will be employing PhDs, down the school leavers who will get these skills on the job in manufacturing.”

Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen as they toured Sundrive. Picture: NCA Newswire /Gaye Gerard

How embarrassing. It’s taken just four months to prove Albanese and Bowen have no idea, and their $27 billion “Made In Australia” scheme – a green-energy slush fund – is built on sand.

Sundrive has now replaced its CEO, sacked some of the workers Albanese claimed “will never be out of work” and declared it would now focus on inventing better solar panels, not manufacturing them.

But no comment from Albanese or Bowen, although voters must now wonder whether the lights will still be on if these fantasists aren’t stopped soon.

Their plan is both simple and simply insane. It’s cut our emissions to save us from an imaginary “climate crisis” by destroying almost all our remaining coal-fired power stations within a decade and replacing them with something that either won’t work or hasn’t been invented. This, they claim, will save us money.

As if. Open your eyes!

For instance, Albanese promised his green schemes would cut average household electricity bills by $275 a year. Oops – they’ve risen nearly $450.

Bowen promised to make the new Kurri Kurri gas plant work on green hydrogen, made by pumping massive amounts of wind and solar electricity through water. Oops – the plant operator admitted nine months later it couldn’t work.

Albanese promised to give billions to companies to make green hydrogen so we’d become “a renewable energy superpower”. Oops – our biggest hydrogen investor, billionaire Andrew Forrest, last month walked away from most of his planned investments, admitting green hydrogen was too expensive.

Everywhere you look, the government’s green plans are in strife. Its rollout of new wind and solar plants is way behind schedule. Its Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro scheme is nearly 10 times the original cost, and years behind. Its new transmission lines to hook up all the new renewable projects are also behind time and over budget.

Anthony Albanese is being exposed after Sundrive sacked staff and announced it was changing direction. Picture: NCA Newswire /Gaye Gerard

Australians are now starting to see the price of this madness: higher electricity bills, vandalised landscapes, warnings of blackouts from the Australian Energy Market Operator, and the silent wipe-out of our nickel industry, which uses lots of electricity.

Even the government seems to dimly see we’re in strife, even if won’t change course. Bowen this month was panicked enough to suggest we could stop the lights from going out by hooking up electric cars to the electricity grid to drain their batteries when we were short of power.

What next? Connect exercise bikes to the grid?

What makes this even more maddening is the government is backing nutty or unproven technologies while banning nuclear power, which is safe, efficient, zero emissions and proven.

For instance, Bowen last year mocked the Opposition’s proposal for small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs, as a “pipe dream” and “pie in the sky”.

Yet China has almost finished building its Linglong SMR, a technology it boasts will quickly be sold around the world.

Imagine that: our competitors humming 24/7 on nuclear power while we’re keeping our electric cars in the garage to keep on the flickering wind-powered lights.

It’s a ridiculous. But can Albanese and Bowen be stopped in time to save ourselves from the consequences of their delusions?