Federal energy minister Chris Bowen has warned that a Coalition government led by Peter Dutton would be worse for climate and renewables than it was under either Scott Morrison or Tony Abbott, who both used their time in office to take a wrecking ball to Australia’s energy transition and decarbonisation progress.
Speaking at the Smart Energy Conference in Sydney on Wednesday morning, Bowen recapped some of the key energy policies the Albanese Labor government has introduced over its first term, including the freshly unveiled $2.3 billion plan for a nationwide home and small business battery discount.
“I’m reasonably satisfied with the progress we’ve made across the board, but we are just getting started,” Bowen told the conference, clad in a red t-shirt touting the party’s new Cheaper Home Batteries scheme.
“[But] the work we have done over the last few years, as important as it is… is, by and large, all reversible, stoppable and reversible on May the 4th, if the new government chooses to do so.
“Or [if Labor is re-elected] we can keep going and build on the progress we’ve made and finish the job.”
Energy, and more specifically the cost of energy to consumers, continues to dominate political messaging and debate in the election campaign, as one of the key inputs to the rising cost of living.
Labor is promising to continue its push to get Australia’s electricity supply to 82 per cent renewables by 2030, including through its Capacity Investment Scheme, for large-scale wind, solar and battery storage, while also helping to cut the cost of electricity behind the meter through its home battery policy.
The Coalition is promising a shift to nuclear power, but has more recently turned its attention to gas, with the newly released modelling claiming that a domestic gas reservation for the east coast would drive down household gas bills by 7% and industrial gas bills by 15%.
The gas modelling, from Frontier Economics – the same outfit behind the LNP’s modelling on nuclear power, was slammed by Bowen on Wednesday as a “scamplet.”
“I’ve seen longer menus in a restaurant than this,” the minister told reporters on the sidelines of the conference.
“James Patterson told the Australian people they’ve been working on this for a year… If this is a year’s work, this is a nonsense document filled with holes, and I’ll be having more to say about that tomorrow at the debate.
“But the biggest problem with this document is that it doesn’t mention the word nuclear. Nuclear is the signature of the opposition’s energy policy.
“They released their nuclear modeling last year which showed a massive reduction… in the usage of gas …in the energy grid, in coming years, almost immediate reduction in the usage of gas.
“Now they’re scrambling to say what we need is more gas, and they’ve retrofitted this document, which was clearly prepared after the budget reply when you read it, which shows that they this is policy on the run,” Bowen said.
“So I’m looking forward to debating [opposition energy minister Ted] O’Brien tomorrow at the National Press Club, where no doubt we’ll be having plenty more to say about our competing visions, nuclear costs, solar savings.”
Bowen argues that the Coalition’s energy plan is also strongly linked with the fortunes of coal, with Australia’s remaining coal plants likely to be expected to work longer and harder in the long wait for nuclear power to come online and to pick up the slack in supply as the share of renewables is effectively capped at just over 50 per cent.
“Somehow, some people argue that the answer to expensive energy today is more expensive energy in decades time. I say the answer is cheaper energy, now.
“That’s the choice and what’s even worse … is the opportunity cost as we wait, sweating those coal-fired assets for longer, making them work harder as a deliberate policy choice – not as an unavoidable decision, but as a deliberate policy choice.
“That is the biggest threat of blackouts in our country – not the misinformation and smear campaign against renewable energy; that fundamental fact that coal-fired powered stations in Australia are aged and aging and increasingly unreliable, as well as being very high emissions.
“So they would stop all this while they wait for the most expensive form of energy. We’ll keep going with the plan for consumer owned energy to step forward and play a much bigger role through batteries.”
