The patient's vital signs are not good. Power prices are high, and emissions haemorrhaging. Reliability and security of supply are in doubt. We need a treatment plan, and fast.
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| A Clean Energy Target would help make sure that as ageing coal-fired power plants are retired, there is enough investment in renewables to replace them. |
Such was the diagnosis of the national electricity market on Monday by Australia's chief scientist Alan Finkel, the man whose blueprint to improve the system was supposed to take the politics out of energy policy. So, how's that working out?
The answer is, pretty poorly. In his speech to the National Energy Summit on Monday, Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg gave the strongest hint yet that the prospect of any clean energy target was dead and buried, claiming the falling cost of renewable energy meant the subsidies were no longer necessary.
Cue the cycle of politicking and tail-chasing that has wasted more than a decade of Australian climate policy, frustrating the business community and leaving the public wondering: is any leader capable of stopping the bleeding?
Read Nicole Hasham’s comment in today’s Melbourne Age - “Expert views make way for political expediency in climate debate.”
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