As predictable as the dawn. As the northern hemisphere enters it’s off peak seasonal restock of LNG and prices firm up, Australia’s gas price is following north of Albo’s $12Gj price cap joke:
As night follows day, the electricity price is ripping:
Never fear. It won’t hit your bill because Treasurer Jim “Chicken” Chalmers concocted the best disguises in bill subsidies. Of course, you will still pay through your higher taxes, but it won’t be blamed on the new energy shock.
I fear that this is the new energy regime. The taxpayer is going to subsidise the East Coast gas cartel permanently to steal our gas and ship it to China.
This is a complete mockery of ‘Made in Australia, ‘ which can’t compete without the local cheap energy that has only ever enabled Australian industry. Instead, you will pay even higher taxes to make much more expensive solar panels that can be imported from China, providing zero extra energy security to the nation.
It also ensures that we will need to continue doing brown paper bag deals to keep obsolete coal power stations open to keep the lights on at all.
Finally, here is some more on how the US so handsomely surpassed Australia on per capita carbon emissions despite much more fractious politics using its coal-to-gas switching:
From the EIA:
Electricity generation from units that primarily consume coal in the U.S. Lower 48 states decreased for all hours of the day by about 23% between 2021 and 2023, according to our Form EIA-930, Hourly and Daily Balancing Authority Operations Report. Most of the decline occurred between 2022 and 2023, when coal-fired generation fell 19% and the average natural gas spot price at the Henry Hub decreased by more than 60%.
Several factors have accounted for reductions in coal-fired generation since 2021:
- Coal capacity has decreased because operators have retired about 37 gigawatts, or 17% of the coal-fired fleet, since the beginning of 2021.
- Natural gas-fired and solar generating capacity has increased.
- Utilities or grid managers generally select the lowest cost power available at a given point, which in recent years has usually been wind, solar, and natural gas rather than coal.
Off-peak, coal-fired generation fell about 24% between 2021 and 2023, according to our data, due largely to natural gas-fired units displacing coal-fired units as an overnight source of electricity.
We are almost at the point where the US economy, at 13x the size, uses less coal than Australia does.
Yet it is we who have a Green movement demanding no new gas extraction and cartels shipping it offshore, so we can’t use it anyway.
Canberra is a rolled gold moron.
