Coalition will be out of job if it keeps head in sand on renewables

Queensland Energy
Minister Mark Bailey.

Queensland energy minister Mark Bailey has accused the federal Coalition government of scare-mongering about renewable energy, and warned that it would find itself out of a job unless it took climate change and emission reduction targets seriously.

Bailey was speaking after the release of a report from a government-appointed panel that suggested the cost of taking Queensland to a 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030 would be around $6 billion in extra large-scale generation.

This compares to the $27 billion that federal energy minister Josh Frydenberg released to News Ltd on the morning of last week’s CoAG energy minister’s meeting, which was enthusiastically quoted by numerous Murdoch journalists and commentators.

RenewEconomy asked Frydenberg’s office for the calculations and modelling supporting that claim, but was not given it. According to Bailey, the state energy ministers asked for it to at the Melbourne meeting, but were also refused.

“I think it is a bit embarrassing for the federal government, given that they have been running around for weeks …solar scare mongering, effectively,” he told RenewEconomy in an interview.

Read Giles Parkinson’s story on the RenewEconomy website - “Coalition will be out of job if it keeps head in sand on renewables.”