Memo to COAG: Australia is already awash with gas

Federal, state and territory energy ministers are gathering today in Brisbane for the tenth meeting of the COAG Energy Council. In the wake of the Finkel Review, and against a backdrop of rising electricity and gas prices, they have much to  electricity and gas prices, they have much to discuss.

The controversial Narrabri coal seam gas project. Australia has plenty
of gas reserves that are cheaper to develop and a safer bet.

Some of the focus will certainly be on gas policy and prices. Earlier this week, the federal energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, argued that state governments should develop their onshore gas reserves to relieve pressure on the gas market.

Victoria and the Northern Territory both have bans on onshore gas development, introduced partly to protect prime farming land.

Controversially, federal Liberal MP Craig Kelly suggested on Thursday that pressure from renewable resources on energy prices meant that “people will die” this winter if they’re afraid to turn on their heating.

Yet it is gas generation, not renewables, that typically sets the price in the electricity market. As Fairfax reported yesterday, electricity prices move up and down with the gas price, almost exactly in tandem.

Read the piece on The Conversation by a Researcher from the Australian German Climate and Energy College at University of Melbourne,  Dylan McConnell -  “Memo to COAG: Australia is already awash with gas.”

Energy sector needs reform - Tony Wood

Over the next few decades Australia, like many countries, faces the prospect of an energy transformation that will challenge every aspect of stationary and transport energy: from production, transmission and distribution to consumption and exports.

The ultimate imperative is to move our economy to a low-carbon footing, while ensuring that consumers don’t pay unnecessarily high costs. The COAG Energy Council, the decision-making body of federal and state energy and resources ministers, formally recognised the critical connection between energy and climate policy last July. Later that year the world’s governments brokered the Paris climate agreement, with Australia promising to cut emissions to 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030.

Yet this need for wholesale transformation has emerged at a time when Australia’s policy structures are already struggling to maintain the delivery of affordable and reliable electricity, after the reforms of the 1990s lost momentum in the 2000s.

Read the thoughts of the Program Director, Energy at the Grattan Institute, Tony Wood, on The Conversation  - “Australia’s energy sector is in critical need of reform.”