Finally, the Coalition comes to its senses on net zero of bad policy
The lessons were there in the circus of sanctimony that is the UN COP conference, and the rabble of killing season in state Liberal partyrooms. And they were there, too, in new revelations about price rises to come, persistent inflation preventing more interest rate cuts, and even Labor bringing new fossil-fuelled generation on stream.
When the Coalition grasps the facts and summons the conviction to run hard on this stuff, it will eventually humiliate the Labor, Greens and teals net-zero alliance and revive the nation’s hopes of economic security. How any so-called Liberal could align themselves with the idiotic fantasy of net zero by 2050 is beyond me.
The facts on energy and climate, and the reality of what is unfolding, align against the net-zero zealots. Once the Coalition settles into strong and consistent advocacy for an alternative path, it will find all the developments in this space, from bill rises to blackouts, will vindicate its stand and buttress its position.
‘Bills will increase for the next decade’
Take the report from the Australian Energy Council this week, remembering this is an industry grouping that is committed to the renewables transition. It surveyed the anonymous views of 16 industry chief executives and summarised their views as a warning that electricity prices will continue to rise for at least a decade.
“Above all else, members feel that policymakers need to keep their focus on affordability, the ‘achilles heel’ of the energy transition,” the AEC said. This report puts the lie to the argument from Labor, the Greens and the teals that is parroted by the AEC itself, that renewables are the cheapest form of electricity.
Clearly that is true only of direct generation. When transmission, storage and firming are included, the costs escalate way beyond what we have traditionally seen.
“My feel is that bills will increase for at least the next decade, given the scale of capital being deployed in the industry,” one chief executive said.
Another warned: “I think it’s the calm before the storm, and I think the storm is coming around cost and competitiveness and international competitiveness, and industrialisation.”
This would not be a surprise to anyone who follows these issues closely or reads this newspaper regularly, but it is still yet to penetrate the broader public debate to the extent it should. As one of the chief executives said: “The general public haven’t really cottoned on to the fact that there’s a cost to the transition, and power bills will go up for a while before they go down, governments have made promises about bill reduction, but it is not coming anytime soon.”
The perversion of energy policy... from a so-called workers’ party
The report warns that those who can afford it least will be hit the hardest. This applies to small businesses, energy-intensive industries, and families who cannot afford to spend many thousands of dollars to access government-subsidised solar panels and batteries.
Think about the perversion of these policies from a so-called workers party. Some of the taxes paid by low-income workers who struggle to pay steadily rising electricity bills are funnelled into subsidies for wealthier people installing home batteries to reduce their power bills.
At the COP30 virtue-signalling jamboree in Brazil, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen spruiked this policy as proof that “what’s good for the planet is also good for your pocket”. What a snake-oil salesman – he failed to mention he has delivered the nation’s highest electricity prices, turning an energy-rich nation into an energy basket case.
While Labor keeps trying to convince people that renewables can power the nation, the national electricity market is still dominated by fossil fuels, with coal and gas supplying about 60 per cent.
The Albanese government has been very quiet about the new 1000-megawatt gas-fired generator about to come on line at Kurri Kurri in NSW’s Hunter region.
The cost of this project has more than tripled from $600m to $2bn after Labor’s implausible plan to run it on hydrogen was scuttled, making it one of about a dozen major hydrogen projects to fail in the past couple of years. Instead, the plant will burn natural gas stored on site with diesel tanks for back-up fuel, which could create problems for sustained usage.
This is not the sort of generation you would build if you believed your renewables-plus-storage model could work. As the intermittent renewables build-out continues and more coal is retired, we will need much more of this type of gas generation, yet even still, without baseload generation, we will be vulnerable.
This goes to why the renewables-plus-storage plan as outlined by the government will not happen. No comparable country has been able to go close to what we are trying to do as a world first.
None of them is even trying. At least not without substantial levels of emissions-free nuclear power.
Net-zero leaders toppled
This week we also saw two Liberal state leaders toppled. Victoria’s Brad Battin and NSW’s Mark Speakman were both committed to net zero by 2050 (or 2045 in Victoria’s case) and therefore locked in behind the energy folly of their state Labor governments, ignoring the opportunity for policy differentiation. Sadly, their replacements are likely to stick with the net-zero fad, unless and until Sussan Ley can talk them around. It seems astonishing that any sentient beings can watch the current national energy self-harm unfold and not oppose it.
Given the federal government has no constitutional power over energy and the states have no obligation to the Paris Agreement or any other supranational commitments, it is important the two tiers of governance work through this in simpatico. The parlous state of the Liberal Party in both states and federally after going to numerous elections supporting net zero by 2050 provides a clue to the political imperative.
With inflation too high, interest rates holding firm, a cost-of-living crunch, and businesses and industries threatened by electricity costs, the deleterious impact of the emissions-first approach to energy abounds. Electricity is the lifeblood of the economy, so its affordability and reliability must take precedence over nods to global targets that cannot and will not have any effect on the climate.
Besides, for all the rhetoric and costs (subsidies for renewables to force coal out, subsidies for coal to maintain supplies, grants and subsidies for batteries, pumped-hydro and failed hydrogen projects, payments and tax breaks for home solar, batteries and electric vehicles, rebates paid to artificially ease electricity bills, and all the rest of it), Australia’s emissions were higher last year than when the Coalition was in power – 441.9 million tonnes in 2021 compared with 446.4 million tonnes in 2024.
‘An embarrassing frenzy of hypocrisy and indulgence’
In this bizarre climate the Albanese government was prepared to spend at least $1bn and possibly $2bn hosting next year’s COP31 in Adelaide. Imagine what an embarrassing frenzy of hypocrisy and indulgence that would have been – Labor has feigned disappointment, but I think the government, like taxpayers, has dodged a bullet.
Bowen’s compromise plan for Turkey to host the conference and hold a hosting presidency while he gets a presidency for negotiations, and the Pacific Islands get a pre-COP summit is eerily similar to what he is doing to our energy grid – making it increasingly complicated and ineffectual.
The idea that the man who is overseeing our energy masochism should seek to advise other nations on emissions reduction plans is the cherry on the top of a week that has proven what a feast of futility the net-zero obsession has become.
The Adelaide lord mayor and two suburban Adelaide mayors managed to squeeze in trips to Brazil before their city lost the bid – imagine that, publicly funded missions for local councils to save the planet. On her return the mayor of Mitcham, Heather Holmes-Ross, was asked by The Australian’s and FiveAA’s David Penberthy whether she had purchased carbon offsets for her flight.
Holmes-Ross had no clue what Penberthy was talking about. And she said someone else had booked her flights anyway. I bet they did; sadly, they booked return.
So, all things being equal, if Bowen can do to the COP process what he has done to the electricity market, all will be forgiven. We are now into our third decade of emissions reduction fanaticism and we are yet to have a serious public debate about costs and benefits.
Politicians from all sides have let us down badly, prioritising fashion over facts and politicking over policy. The Coalition must grasp this opportunity to right the national debate and reset policy.
Ley keeps asking when electricity prices will come down, which is fair enough. But how about asking who has benefited from the massive upheaval and expenditure of the transition so far? How much has it cost and to what avail?
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If ever the Coalition had a week when its opposition to net zero by 2050 was vindicated, this was it. The trouble is it is still so conflicted on these issues, at state and federal levels, that it is too gun-shy to make its case strongly enough and take full advantage.