Via The Australian:
“We’ve already seen what happens when states pursue different strategies, and it’s obvious we need a single, united approach,” Cement Concrete and Aggregates Australia chief executive Kim Slattery said.
“Having these individual targets in addition to the broader framework will just create duplication, confusion and through that duplication you have additional costs. We need a single national framework.”
The Australian Food and Grocery Council backed the call, arguing that industry members needed certainty, and state-based frameworks compromised that.
“Where energy policy has worked well in the past is when states have come together. Where it has failed is when they pursue their own interests, leading to a lack of co-ordination and certainty, which has driven up energy prices,” grocery council chief executive James Mathews said.
Meat processors represented by the Australian Meat Industry Council said they were particularly concerned about how state-based renewable energy targets could skew investment.
Several processors have invested in their own energy sources, such as cogeneration plants or biofuel capture, but are uncertain about the economics of their investment because of uncertainty about the price of renewables, meat council chief executive Patrick Hutchinson said.
A few points:
- these guys don’t even know what they’re calling for given the NEG has no form, yet they call that certainty;
- if the NEG has a low enough emissions intensity cap then it will trigger renewables and storage that lowers power prices, effectively a carbon price;
- if the NEG has a high enough emissions intensity cap then it will retard renewables while coal still dies given the decarbonisation targets are still far short of long term climate stability goals and nobody wants to invest in that. Plus Labor legislates a lower cap the moment it gets into power.
This is just the same old debate wrapped in Do-nothing Malcolm birthday paper. Backing the NEG is not backing certainty. It’s backing nothing.
So far it appears the NEG will deliver a weak cap and so booming renewables will hit a brick wall, via the AFR:
Projects already under way, contracted or under tender will add 9691 megawatts of new capacity to the National Electricity Market by the early 2020s, the energy consultancy’s Renewable Energy Index for March 2018 shows.
This is more than the 9271MW that the Energy Security Board’s economic modeller Frontier Economics forecasts will be built under the NEG by 2030.
This means that unless the government’s target – a 26 per cent emissions reduction target from electricity by 2030 – is lifted sharply, the NEG will add no meaningful new capacity to investment in new wind and solar energy, Green Energy Markets’ director Tristan Edis said.
Which will rightly put the states off, via The Guardian:
The ACT’s climate change minister, Shane Rattenbury, who has been on the front line of arguments against the scheme, on Tuesday identified five significant concerns about the Neg, including the lowball emissions reduction target and the consequences for action at the state and territory level.
Environment groups have also been active in urging the Labor states not to rubber stamp the Neg, arguing it could compromise the progress underway at state level to rolling out renewable energy projects.
And the AFR:
Queensland Energy Minister Anthony Lynham broke his silence on the NEG saying the state Labor government still had major concerns about the proposed design of the NEG, especially the ability of future governments to amend the emissions target.
“The information to date lacks detail of the legislative mechanics for setting the national emissions target. One of our key concerns is that we want to know that the arrangements will not limit future government’s mandate to change the target,” Dr Lynham said.
“The risk for business, industry and consumers seeking certainty is that a future government may be forced to unwind the entire reform the achieve their mandate. As well, this is a rapidly changing market, particularly as the cost of renewables falls.”
And federal Labor will then strengthen the cap anyway which will be opposed in blood by opposition leader Tony Abbott. Some certainty.
Underneath all of this wasted politicking, the real driver of energy investment, an astronomical gas price engineered by the export cartel, is working nicely as a private carbon tax on households and business pushing a renewables boom so hard that it has overrun the NEG in a matter of months.
Meanwhile, gas itself is engaged by the NT government, via The Australian:
The Victorian and NSW governments are holding out against developing their states’ sizeable gas reserves, despite the Northern Territory yesterday declaring it would open up more than half of its land for fracking to boost jobs and put downward pressure on power bills.
The Gunner government’s decision to lift its two-year blanket moratorium on fracking, following a $5.1 million, 15-month scientific inquiry, was endorsed by Malcolm Turnbull, who said it was a “great day for Territorians” and would open the “door to new opportunities, creating thousands of jobs”.
I doubt this will be cheap enough to make a difference but we shall see.
