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Transition must support economic, energy security

Emissions reduction targets, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said on Tuesday, are easier set than met. That truism restored a sense of realism to the debate over Australia’s transition to a low carbon economy after UN climate chief Simon Stiell’s warning on Monday that mega droughts would make fresh fruit and vegetables a once-a-year treat. Mr Stiell’s elitist disconnect from reality continued on Tuesday when he told ABC breakfast radio that Australia’s “exporting carbon emissions needs to be addressed’’ by limiting exploration and export of coal and natural gas because the world needed to transition away from fossil fuels as rapidly as possible. He should take his lecture to the world’s biggest emitters in China, India and the US, as Geoff Chambers wrote in Tuesday’s paper. Australia’s energy transition needs to happen while strengthening economic and energy security; resources exports are the lifeblood of our productive economy.

In ignoring that reality, too many in the media, such as the ABC and The Guardian, are doing Australians no favours. On Monday, Mr Stiell’s urging the government to be ambitious in its emissions reductions targets because the alternative was “missing the opportunity and letting the world overheat’’ was widely reported; his outlandish hyperbole on fruit and vegetables becoming a rare luxury was not mentioned, presumably because it would detract from his credibility.

In the same vein, Mr Stiell’s claim that Australia is on track to suffer a loss of $6.8 trillion by 2050, based on climate impacts, stretches credulity. So do some of his solutions. Green hydrogen, Mr Stiell told the ABC, had “potential’’. To date, however, it has failed to fire in Australia and around the world, despite being a high priority of governments eager to reduce emissions. Energy policies need to be cost-effective, achievable, provide new investment and job opportunities and affordable power for industry and domestic use. Like emissions targets, this too can be easier said than done.

As Perry Williams reports, Australia will fail to hit its goal of 82 per cent renewables by 2030 “by a big margin” even with an expanded commonwealth underwriting scheme for solar and wind supplies, according to economist and long-time adviser to the Labor government Ross Garnaut. “The big gap on the current trajectory is growing wider now that demand for power through the grid is ­growing again with electrification and data centres,’’ he said. The government, in a bid to reach the ambitious 82 per cent renewables target by 2030, will double down on its flagship Capacity Investment Scheme, by a further eight gigawatts to 40GW amid fears not enough renewables will be built before big coal plants exit the grid. As Williams and Paul Garvey report, the building of wind farms, crucial to Anthony Albanese’s clean energy ambitions, came to a complete halt in the first half of the year. Soaring costs for wind turbines, combined with uncertainty around wind farm policy at the federal election and a sharp rise in the frequency of negative energy prices around the country, meant no new wind farms began construction in the first six months of the year, according to Rystad Energy.

Amid rising power prices and pressure from the international community for Australia to adopt more onerous climate targets, and with the Coalition debating its support for net zero by 2050, energy policy is becoming even more problematic. What is beyond debate is that the transition must be informed by economics and energy security, not driven by the emotive rhetoric of UN elites.

Read related topics:China TiesClimate Change

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/editorials/transition-must-support-economic-energy-security/news-story/a8a0465db1705cc68cc99df1d215e908