Safeguard mechanism needed for our energy security

As Geoff Chambers reports, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is determined to have Labor’s plan to toughen the safeguard mechanism up and running on July 1 (“Bowen to use special powers against Greens”, 3/3).

Instead of punishing Australia’s 215 biggest-emitting facilities by forcing them to cut emissions faster, how about a safeguard mechanism for consumers against the colossal cost of Mr Bowen’s scheme to have 22,000 solar panels installed every day, 40 wind turbines, standing at 72m, erected every month and 28,000km of transmission lines hooked up, all within seven years?

How about safeguarding our vital manufacturing and heavy industries and workers from having to operate under a regime of weak, intermittent renewables? How about safeguarding the birds killed by the blades of wind turbines, our native animals’ habitats that will be interred beneath the solar farms and the towns that will bear the brunt of the march of industrial-scale renewable energy?

How about a safeguard mechanism against Bowen’s obsession with renewables?

Dale Ellis, Innisfail, Qld

The message in “Act now or miss the green energy boom time” (3/3) sounds very plausible if its hidden assumptions are correct.

It all depends on overcoming the beloved renewables’ massive weakness. Evidence worldwide exposes that they cannot get anywhere near 100 per cent and still provide reliable electricity, not any old energy but that very potent and perishable one called electricity, without breaking the bank.

Being a very large country with a small population to share costs, we are seriously disadvantaged compared with most advanced economies in using unreliable energy sources. This actually removes much of the advantage this sunburnt country is supposed to have. It’s about time renewable devotees rejected faith and explained in engineering, not scientific, terms how their dream might work and cost.

Gordon Thurlow, Launceston, Tas

Our country is increasingly being used as a military base in the Indo-Pacific by the US in preparation for their face-off with China. This, at a time when the fight for our lives must be to ameliorate rapid climate change, which is devastating the world with fires, floods and now “rain bombs”, which recently hit Auckland.

The Paris Agreement’s objective to limit global warming to 1.5C is long gone. We’re in for a very unpleasant time unless we act quickly. Yet the political leadership is not only absent, it is non-existent. Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has given the go-ahead to Santos to frack in Queensland’s Surat Basin, and the ALP’s proposed safeguard mechanism is totally inadequate.

To deal with the climate challenge effectively, all fossil fuel projects need to be stopped and certainly no new ones considered. The proposed safeguard mechanism focuses on the 215 largest emitters – each responsible for 100,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. It allows them to purchase offsets rather than reduce their emissions. Pure greenwashing hogwash. To suggest tree planting as a solution in achieving reduction in emissions is also a sick joke.

Protecting our society from the effects of global warming will be drastic and painful for workers, but especially for our politicians’ popularity, but they are there to govern and must plan and fund for a rapid transition to renewable energy and oversee the inevitable changes to our Western lifestyle. If this isn’t tackled now, future generations have no future. The greed of the fossil fuel companies is killing the planet and they must be contained.

The four oil giants have just reported record profits for 2022 – Shell at nearly $US40bn ($59bn). We need an emissions reduction scheme fit for purpose, not a sham safeguard mechanism.

Eileen Whitehead, Queens Park, WA

The local Nationals MP says it’s about time the “Old Girl” was pulled down and backs the AGL plan for transition once Liddell closes (“Coal jobs on the line, and with them votes”, 3/3).

The only known plan is AGL’s contract for the Old Girl to be blown up and the one-year delay for a gas peaking plant. Is the local MP unaware of the analysis showing that closures in the Upper Hunter could impact 800 jobs and increase unemployment by an estimated 6.7 per cent? As for “Old Girls” – remember they vote, too!

Jennie George, Mollymook, NSW