The PM's plan will deliver more expensive, dirtier power

The problem with our energy politics is, they have not caught up with energy economics.The price of renewables is plummeting and the investors are rushing. But our discourse remains stuck around clean energy targets being "too expensive”.

Liddell power station in Musewellbrook
did not perform last  February.

The new reality is that the cost of building new renewable energy is far cheaper than the cost of building new coal-fired power plants. If left to the market, no new coal-power station would be built again in Australia. Gas prices, as predicted, have gone through the roof – so that is no longer a cheaper option, either.

Rather than use the falling cost of renewable energy as an opportunity to roll out renewable energy and reduce our energy pollution more rapidly, in the topsy-turvy world of Australian policy debate it is being used as an explanation for why we should prop up uneconomic and unnecessary coal- and gas-fired power stations.

And while renewables are cheaper, energy infrastructure is very-long-term investment. This is where the renewable energy target has worked, by enabling long-term power purchase agreements to underpin investment. And it's how a clean energy target or similar scheme could also work into the future.

Read Ben Quist’s story in The Sydney Morning Herald - “The PM's plan will deliver more expensive, dirtier power.”