As I predicted a year ago, 2017 was another vicious and bloody-minded year in Australian climate politics. Yet the political bickering belied the fact that it was actually a great year for green energy.
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| Illustration by Andrew Dyson. |
Nowhere was that more in evidence than in South Australia, which got its big battery inside a 100-day deadline, with the world’s biggest solar thermal plant set to begin construction this year. Elsewhere, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull talked up the prospects of the Snowy 2.0 hydro storage project.
Yet the politics remain as rancorous as ever. The federal government unveiled its National Energy Guarantee (NEG) in November, after Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s Clean Energy Target proved too rich for some in the Coalition. Just before Christmas, the long-awaited climate policy review was released, and was immediately branded as weak.
Both issues are unresolved, and are set to loom large on the landscape this year. But what else is on the horizon?
Read Marc Hudson’s comment in today’s Melbourne Age - “Climate action in 2018: expect same, but different.”
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