Climate change closes in
On the day Mr Turnbull met with nine major east coast gas company leaders in response to a future gas shortage alarm by the market operator AEMO, Ian McFarlane described the looming gas shortage as a “political failure”, and a long drawn-out political failure it has been!
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Energy Australia, one of the country’s largest operators of coal-fired power stations, has added their voice calling for an end to Canberra’s blame-game over renewables, as it is renewables that will ultimately provide the solution to rising power prices.
Mr Turnbull says, “We must put energy stability above ideology”. Well, ideology is a system of ideas and ideals, or in this case a science of visionary ideas by eminent climate scientists warning us decades ago that extreme weather events driven by climate change will continually increase in intensity and frequency, threatening our food security and the stability of our very existence.
Carbon dioxide has always been the primary culprit of global warming and yet still we have a government wasting time and taxpayer money in talking up additional clean-coal power plants, carbon capture and storage, even nuclear energy, and other schemes which are not realistic or just fanciful.
Clearly, the main game has always been to rapidly phase out coal plants, substituting them with far more efficient gas-fired power plants where base-load power demands are critical and to progressively increase solar and wind power generation as the best way to abate inevitable climate change.
Now with latest technology battery storage there is little to impede a rapid transition away from coal. This just happens to be the approach adopted by the South Australian government, an approach that is both visionary, futuristic and efficient and one that will ultimately drive down power prices.
Meanwhile, the federal government tries to drum-up excitement over their latest plans to expand the hydro scheme to include pumped-hydro, but already this proposal has been described as another “thought bubble” and a chaotic approach as it provides no answer to our immediate power shortages.
Further, both feasibility and environmental impact studies are yet to be done, costs are unknown (but well in excess of $2 billion), and with much underground tunnelling, project time could be at least 15 years.
Mr McFarlane is right, we have witnessed decades of political failure in the management of climate change in this country with industry groups screaming for a long-overdue bipartisan energy policy; a policy that surely must be ideologically based as climate change is closing in on us.
I Cooper, Bendigo
Where is the government’s proper analysis?
Our PM has appeared to be addressing the claimed power crisis facing parts of Australia. However, it does appear to be another political show in the continuing saga concerning the lack of any rational power policy.
First, we have the PM calling gas suppliers together and getting their agreement on sufficient supply. Really, what else were they going to do?
The latest announcement is the extension of the Snowy Mountain power generation at an estimated cost of $2 billion. Again we have a political show as there is no analysis presented to say that this is the best way to proceed for the powering of eastern Australia. A proposal that will not eventuate for about seven years from the first turning of earth.
Surely if the PM is presenting such large infrastructure proposals they should only be presented to the public after a proper analysis demonstrates it is the preferred solution to meet the public’s need.
The public is growing tired of political shows in a vacuum of real policy.
