Turnbull uses South Australian blackout to push for uniformity on renewables

Malcolm Turnbull speaking at the University
of Tasmania's School of  
Architecture and Design on Thursday.

Malcolm Turnbull has seized on the massive South Australian power failure to condemn Labor states for aggressive attitudes to renewables and call for a nationwide target.

This is despite the fact that a spokesman for the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), which is responsible for operating the national electricity market, said “the generation mix [in SA, which has a high proportion of renewables] was not a factor”.

Some politicians, reporters and commentators leapt in to blame renewables, with Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce saying wind power “doesn’t work when there’s no wind and it doesn’t work when it’s excessive wind … it obviously wasn’t working too well last night because they had a blackout”.

Turnbull acknowledged that the “immediate cause of the blackout” was “an extreme weather event” that knocked over more than 20 towers and lines. But he said the SA event was a wake-up call, and has told Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg to call together energy ministers.

Turnbull said there was no doubt that heavy reliance on intermittent renewables “does place very different strains and pressures on a grid than reliance on traditional base load power”.

Read Michelle Grattan’s piece on The Conversation - “Turnbull uses South Australian blackout to push for uniformity on renewables.”