Via The Australian:
The Nationals have drawn up a set of demands for Malcolm Turnbull, headlined by the creation of a fund of up to $5 billion that would deliver government money for new baseload generators, including coal-fired power.
Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack was charged with raising a set of “discussion points” directly with the Prime Minister, after the Nationals spent 90 minutes discussing energy policy in their partyroom meeting on Monday.
…Nationals MPs are increasingly concerned the government’s national energy guarantee will not do enough to reduce prices for households and businesses. They also fear that Mr Turnbull’s signature energy policy will fail to drive investment into new baseload power generation.
It does not seem to have occurred to anyone that this will raise prices given by the time that they are built in five or ten years, renewables plus storage will be much cheaper. From Reneweconomy:
The cost of building new large-scale solar energy generation in Australia has fallen to an “extraordinary” new low, the head of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency has said, citing industry reports of numbers down around the $50/MWh mark.
Australia’s PV price plunge has seen the cost of utility-scale solar fall from around $135/MWh when ARENA launched its first auction in 2015, to “somewhere in the $50s” today, or $1/W, ARENA chief Ian Kay said on Wednesday.
“So we’ve gone from $1.60/W …. to, I think you’ll actually find that people are now talking about, by the next round of projects that are being developed, due to be financed in the next 12 months, bidding under $1/W,” Kay told the Large-scale Solar & Storage conference in Sydney, co-hosted by RenewEconomy.
“And that’s then translating into … dollars per megawatt-hour of numbers starting with a five, so somewhere in the 50s, dollars per megawatt-hour for solar.
“Which is just extraordinary… an extraordinary achievement for the industry,” Kay said..
Within a few years it renewable plus storage will be cheaper and it is game over for coal.
But then the Nats are not about anything except politics, via The Guardian:
The Coalition has voted with One Nation in the Senate, backing a motion calling on the government “to facilitate the building of new coal-fired power stations and the retrofitting of existing base-load power stations”.
The Hanson motion was defeated 34-32, but the Coalition backed it in the Senate on Wednesday afternoon – a move reflecting a push within the Turnbull government to ensure that coal is given assistance as the government moves to implement its proposed national energy guarantee.
While proponents are framing ongoing support for coal as the price of internal peace, Labor has warned the government that new subsidies for coal as part of any Coalition settlement on the Neg will scuttle the chances of ending 10 years of partisan warring over climate and energy policy.
Gotta fend off those ON trogs!
At least killing the NEG is an upside. It’s an awful policy of added complexity, cost and the starching of mitigation targets.
Let renewables disruption and state targets reign!
