Give the Coalition points for chutzpah, if nothing else. In a press release on Wednesday, first given to the Australian for a not exactly hard-won “exclusive”, it declared “Australians need cheaper power, not more ideology”.
You don’t have to get far beyond that headline to find its position comes from a worldview that is ideology on steroids. That worldview says climate breakdown is not real, or at least not a real concern, and Australia should abolish nearly all plans to respond to or prepare the economy – and people’s lives – for the changes under way.
As one campaigner put it, it is a plan to let climate change rip. Greenhouse gas emissions would be much higher than on the current trajectory.
From a here-and-now consumer point of view, it is a plan that is based on the fallacy that the big jump in power bills in recent years is due to renewable energy and a legislated net zero emissions target. Evidence and most experts clearly say otherwise. But both are disregarded.
Most of what the Coalition announced wasn’t actually new. The fresh bit is that it has promised to package up eight commitments in a new bill that would be introduced within 30 days if it was elected. Remarkably, at least half of those commitments are to abolish policies that were introduced under Coalition governments led by Scott Morrison, Tony Abbott and John Howard.
Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan say they would tear up the safeguard mechanism, introduced under Abbott, ostensibly to put a limit on pollution from major industrial sites. They would abolish the mid-century net zero emissions goal brought in by Morrison and Barnaby Joyce and legislated under Labor. They would repeal the Howard-era ban on nuclear energy.
They say they would scrap Labor’s capacity investment scheme, which is meant to underwrite solar, wind and energy storage developments, and replace it with a scheme that could also use public money to encourage fossil fuels and nuclear generation.
And they would abolish the vehicle efficiency standard that requires auto companies to lower the average emissions of their new car fleets – a policy that has belatedly seen a substantial increase in electric vehicle models available, including at the more affordable end, ending the farce in which Australians had far less opportunity to buy clean cars than any similar country.
Bizarrely, the Coalition claims the latter policy has somehow reduced vehicle choice. Tell that to the 25% of new car buyers who chose an EV last month – a higher percentage than bought a petrol or diesel car – and who are now enjoying much lower running costs.
Many of these policies are transparently Trumpian. They otherwise mostly fly in the face of global trends.
For the first time, renewable energy – solar, wind and hydro – last year overtook coal-fired power as the leading source of electricity. Solar energy capacity expanded by 30% in one year. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, 85% of new power capacity built last year was renewable, and 90% of the renewables built were cheaper than the lowest fossil fuel alternative. Global EV sales are up more than 10% this year and expected to account for nearly 30% of the global total, with China leading the way.
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Clean solutions are rising due to governments taking some action to reduce emissions and limit an accelerating climate crisis that is killing thousands of people. But cost is at least as big a factor, particularly in electricity generation.
In Australia, that argument has been muddied by events. As we have pointed out before, power bills increased dramatically after Russia’s attack on Ukraine sent global gas prices skyrocketing four years ago.
About the same time, coal power prices were pushed up by flooding at east coast mines and outages at ageing generators. Combined, these issues pushed up the wholesale cost of electricity by about 20% not long after Labor had overconfidently suggested that bills would come down by $275.
Despite claims to the contrary, renewable energy was not a major issue. Correlation is not causation. In fact, wholesale prices have fallen in some cases due to the influx of batteries that have allowed cheap excess solar power to be stored and used at night.
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That’s the good news. The more complicated news is that replacing an old coal-fired system is expensive, however you do it. A renewables-dominated power system may not bring prices down much, if at all. But there is clear evidence that it will be cheaper than other options.
It will also cut heat-trapping pollution that is doing escalating damage and could allow an industrial shift that sets up Australians for a potential economic future as demand for fossil fuels falls.
This is not to say the Albanese government is doing enough. The renewables transition is at risk of slowing and new coal and gas export developments are still being approved. The prime minister gave a keynote speech at climate week in New York in which he avoided saying fossil fuels are the problem.
But Taylor goes further. On Wednesday, he implicitly dismissed climate change as a threat. He suggested all types of energy, dirty and clean, should be equally available. He claimed this would lower bills.
Evidence? That’s not how this ideology works.
