Extraordinary.
The stunning irony is that Bowen has been willing more coal out of the system since he became Climate Change Minister.
It is this sort of political sophistry that is at the heart of the Albanese government’s political problems when it comes to the energy question.
Bowen is not only talking about this issue the wrong way. He uses the condescending tone of an obscurantist to imply that anyone that doesn’t agree with him is stupid.
It’s little wonder that community support for the energy transition has fallen by double digits in the past couple of months.
Anthony Albanese has no chance of taking the community with him on his journey when people are being told not to wash their clothes or dishes because an energy spike had been triggered by a heatwave.
A heatwave? 34C, no less. What was the Australian Energy Market Operator expecting might happen with the weather during the transition from spring to summer?
According to Bowen, the reason for this Third World shortfall of electricity in NSW on Wednesday was not because there wasn’t enough wind or solar, but because there wasn’t enough coal.
According to NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns, there were two problems with this apparent unexpected heatwave – beyond the obvious failure of the market operator to seasonably manage the grid – and beyond the fact that if this qualifies for a heatwave, God help NSW for the rest of summer.
The first was that solar power began to run out at 3pm, just before people were getting home from school and work, and when they might want to turn on their air conditioners.
The second was that there were four of a dozen coal generators offline – some for scheduled maintenance (approved by AMEO) and others for unspecified shutdowns.
NSW Climate Change and Energy Minister Penny Sharpe suggested households could stay cool by closing their windows and pulling down the blinds.
Sharpe then appeared to rejoice in the fact that consumers could revel in as much energy as they wanted before that point because the grid would be overflowing with solar.
Bowen’s supposition that coal could no longer be relied on to perform its function is an apocryphal interpretation, largely because it has been Labor’s political demonisation, as well as the economics, that have led to the decline of coal-fired generation.
His claim that this simply re-enforced the need for renewables ignores the reality Minns had articulated. Without storage capacity or gas, adding more renewables would not have solved Wednesday’s problem. As Minns’ pointed out, after 3pm, renewables had already gone to bed.
In a statement to be delivered in parliament on Thursday, timely considering what happened on Wednesday, Bowen will claim this week has offered a “reminder of why decarbonising matters”.
There is a highly nuanced debate around energy supply that most people don’t understand. It is complex. For Albanese, Bowen will become more of a political liability the longer he is given rein to peddle language that is completely inaccessible to consumers whose priority has become price and reliability.
He has clearly learned nothing from his menacing entreaty to voters in 2019 that if they didn’t like Labor’s policies then they shouldn’t vote for the party.
The failure of the political class to reach a consensus on climate change and energy is coming home to roost.
More Coverage
Regulators need to follow the commission trail to protect Australians
Politicians have conceived bodies and acts of Parliament to minimise consumer investment losses. All contributed to a better investment community, but none of them were able to stop consumers being defrauded.
Sorry, votes for the kids won’t help democracy
Adding 16-year-olds to the electoral roll speeds up the transfer of political legitimacy from those with judgment tempered by experience to those still untouched by let-downs and contradiction.
In Chris Bowen’s muddled world, coal is not only the villain of climate change but also the cause of power shortages because apparently on Wednesday we didn’t have enough of it.