Renewable energy reality has hit and we’re all paying the price with our power bills | Caleb Bond

Brace yourself Australia, your power bills are going up again and not for the reason the man in charge wants you to believe, writes Caleb Bond.

Reality has just hit proponents of renewable energy hard.

I’ve tried to feel sorry for them but, given they’ve jacked my power bill up to high heaven, it’s a little difficult.

That was the first hit – at the end of last week, the Australian Energy Regulator flagged that bills would increase as much as nine per cent on July 1.

Never forget that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Energy Minister Chris Bowen and Treasurer Jim Chalmers all promised your power bill would be $275 cheaper by this year – they repeated that promise nearly 100 times.

Come July, the average South Australian power bill will be about $900-a-year more expensive than Mr Albanese promised when he came to power.

In some parts of New South Wales, it’ll be more than $1000.

Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen during Question Time. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Mr Bowen, of course, blamed it on the unreliability of coal power.

That’s not entirely wrong – but he fails to admit that he’s part of the reason coal has become unreliable.

It’s ostensibly because, following the government’s wishes, power companies are planning to decommission their coal-fired power plants and have instead been investing in renewable energy where subsidies have been directed.

They consequently haven’t spent money maintaining coal generators – they’re about to switch them off, after all – so they keep breaking down.

And because we’ve gone too hard, too fast, we don’t have enough renewable energy to make up for the shortfall.

When you have a scarcity of a product, its value increases.

We are the victims of simple market forces – in a market that the government has unfortunately manipulated against us to apparently save the planet by reducing our 1.3 per cent of global emissions.

Bugger whether you can afford to live, though.

We need that coal power – which brings me to the second hit.

It was revealed this week that the Victorian Labor government is in talks with EnergyAustralia to keep Yallourn – one of the biggest coal power stations in the country – open beyond its 2028 closure date.

And why would that be?

It supplies 8 per cent of the national market’s energy and the Australian Energy Market ­Operator has warned the grid could become unstable without it.

A windfarm in SA’s Upper Spencer Gulf. Picture: Ben Clark

This keeps on happening – Victoria had to do a deal last year to keep Loy Yang A open and NSW agreed to underwrite Eraring.

Isn’t it funny that renewables are apparently the cheapest and most reliable source of energy and yet power prices keep rising and governments keep begging for the coal-fired power stations they wanted shut to stay open?

And the third hit – people realise what’s going on.

A new poll by RedBridge has found the majority of voters blame the Albanese government’s renewable policies for increasing their power bills.

So why can’t the government just admit they ballsed this up?

I know it might be a bit embarrassing but there is no pride in continuing to do something that is clearly not working.

And for what?

Recent modelling by Rystad Energy found there is no way we will meet the federal government’s target of 82 per cent renewables by 2030.

The best case scenario is 65 per cent by the end of the decade.

Reality has hit – it’s time to face up to it.

Originally published as Renewable energy reality has hit and we’re all paying the price with our power bills | Caleb Bond