On climate, the consumer’s vote will be more important than the party room’s

Chief scientist Alan Finkel got a lot of people very excited when he released his draft report into Australia energy security last December, less than three months after the September blackout put conservatives into a flap over wind and solar.

 Chief scientist Alan Finkel. 

We were in the midst of an unstoppable energy transition, he said, one based on cheap renewables, storage and smart software. And the technologies to address the reliability and security issues were at hand, though they were not being encouraged by the design of the market.

The energy system, Finkel went on, would need to shift dramatically from a centralised model (aka coal plants) to a decentralised model (aka rooftop solar and storage). The power, quite literally would return to the people. It was all rather exciting.

Fast forward to 9 June, and Finkel’s delivery of his final report to Council of Australian Governments leaders in Hobart, and many people are wondering what happened in between. Blame the full moon or Dark MOFO happening in the same city, but Finkel’s view of the energy future didn’t look much different to the one we’ve got now.

Read the story by Giles Parkinson on Inside Story - “On climate, the consumer’s vote will be more important than the party room’s.”