By Andrew Bolt ~
Judith Sloan has been devastating on Malcolm Turnbull’s mad electricity plan.
If you believe your annual electricity bill will fall by $90 every year for the next decade, you will believe anything. Renewables will go from 28 per cent of electricity generation in 2020 (including rooftop photovoltaics) to 42 per cent in 2030 (and 73 per cent in 2050) — but your electricity bill will fall each year. That’s the Finkel review message.
It flies in the face of what we know about the international experience of renewables: there is an almost perfect positive relationship between the penetration of renewables and the price of electricity…
This politically attractive forecast of falling electricity prices mirrors the equally ridiculous modelling result that emerged from the Warburton review of the renewable energy target released in 2015. We were asked to believe wholesale electricity prices would actually fall if the RET were retained in its then current form, with a target of 41,000 gigawatt hours by 2020. (This was adjusted to 33,000GWh.) That’s right — electricity prices were going to fall between 2015 and 2020.
But take a look at what has happened to wholesale electricity prices… Wholesale electricity prices have soared from $50 a megawatt hour on average to about $150. Retail prices are being raised across a number of states by between 15 per cent and 30 per cent…
The population has risen by more than 10 per cent but the installed capacity in our electricity system has fallen. Is it really any surprise that electricity prices are rising so steeply and reliability is such an issue?
Now Alan Finkel thinks the solution to this is to promote even more renewable energy by setting the emissions benchmark attached to the clean energy target so low that no new coal-fired power station will ever be built here — even the cleanest versions, or ones with carbon capture and storage…
The Finkel answer is to replace the existing RET with a higher RET. The only difference between Labor and the Coalition now is the wafer-thin margin between renewable targets of 50 per cent and 42 per cent in 2030.
It flies in the face of what we know about the international experience of renewables: there is an almost perfect positive relationship between the penetration of renewables and the price of electricity… UPDATE
Terry McCrann points out the madness of believing this plan will cut your power prices:
Did he have a deal for us: we can supposedly cut our annual power bills by around $90 a year by first spending nearly $900 billion on more and more useless wind and solar ‘farms,’ more and more power lines looping crazily around the country, and batteries.
Believe that and I have a wonderful bridge, walked over but never been lived in, with never to be built out views of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour, for sale to you real cheap.
Who could believe Finkel’s plan, other than Turnbull?:
Finkel wants to increase the amount of electricity we get from wind and more so from solar by anywhere between four and six times what we get now — using that word “get” a tad loosely.
And to then avoid the whole of Australia “going South Australian” when, you know, the wind, well, don’t blow (or blow too hard) and the sun don’t shine, we’d switch to getting electricity from all those batteries…
The only way you’ll get cheaper, plentiful and reliable electricity, is the same way we got it for going on for most of the 20th century: from coal-fired power stations backed up by “peak” gas stations that could be fired up very quickly.
The idea that you could replace that combination with utterly erratic wind and solar and batteries should instantly strike anyone with an IQ of more than 100 as laughable — as insanely, suicidally laughable.
Craig Kelly is bravely fighting his own leaders, while other Liberals are acting like lemmings:
The chairman of the Coalition’s backbench energy committee, Liberal MP Craig Kelly, said he feared the price pressures outlined in the Finkel report would hit households despite claims. “At best, it locks in one of the highest household electricity prices in the world,” Mr Kelly said.
“It also locks in subsidies that could lead to a capital spend of $30 billion or $40bn on solar panels from China. I don’t see how that’s going to decrease electricity prices.”
Some politicians are trashing their credibility. The question is: does the Finkel plan effectively amount to a price/tax on carbon?
Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg:
“It is not a tax on coal…”
Labor environment spokesman Mark Butler:
“Of course it’s a price on carbon. It’s not a direct price but there’s clearly a shadow price if Dr Finkel’s recommendations are accepted, a shadow price signal based on carbon would be operating the electricity sector.”
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott:
“…if you are rewarding one type of energy, inevitably that money’s got to come from somewhere, either from consumers or taxpayers, and if it’s from consumers, well it’s effectively a tax on coal, and that’s the last thing we want.”
One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts:
“This is a carbon tax. That’s all it is. It’s a carbon tax levied at the retail level, but who pays? The customer and the user of electricity, businesses and residential users, and we will be exporting jobs and we will be destroying our industrialisation in this country… The Liberal backbenchers that I’ve spoken to are nervous, very nervous.”
Chief Scientist Alan Finkel:
“You’re putting an incentive on low emissions and you can interpret it however you wish…”
Andrew Bolt writes for the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, and The Advertiser and runs Australia’s most-read political blog. On week nights he hosts The Bolt Report on Sky News at 7pm and his Macquarie Radio show at 8pm with Steve Price.
Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/
