Blackouts aren't a new problem in Australia, and nor is our latest energy "crisis". Back in the 1980s, blackouts were so common in the 100 per cent-coal-fired NSW network that small businesses bought generators and everyone knew where the torches and candles were stored.
"Blackouts aren't a new problem in Australia"
Of course, it's not just coal that's let us down in the past. When the Longford natural-gas plant exploded in Victoria in 1998, the state was without gas for nearly two weeks. Ten years later, when a corroded gas pipe exploded on Western Australia's Varanus Island, the state lost about a third of its gas supply; the economic disruption lasted months.
Accidents happen, mistakes happen and, as the oil and gas industry knows, explosions that kill people and devastate whole states happen. But when a cyclone knocked over 20 electricity transmission towers and caused a state-wide blackout, the fossil fuel industry and Turnbull government mounted a full frontal attack on the "reliability" of renewable energy. And all of a sudden, we apparently needed to subsidise not just the enormous Adani coal mine but a new coal-fired power station in North Queensland as well. As the saying goes, never let a crisis go to waste.
Read the story by Richard Denniss in The Canberra Times - “The perils of promising a 'perfect' energy market.”
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