The Smart Energy Council on Tuesday opened its Queensland Smart Energy Summit with a pointed attack at the state’s LNP government, accusing it of having a deliberate strategy to kill large scale renewables, and protect the fossil fuel industry.
The Queensland state LNP has not sought to hide its distaste for green energy, despite insisting it has a “neutral stance”, and has trashed the state renewable energy targets, invested $1.8 billion to delay coal plant closures by up to nearly two decades, and more recently dumped the mandate for electric buses and put out a call for 630 diesel ones.
“The overall strategy of the LNP government is clear,” SEC chief executive David McElrea said in his opening speech at Tuesday’s summit in Brisbane.
“Remove targets, erase closure dates, protect coal, make renewable investment harder and let the project pipeline thin – then point to the shortage you created as proof renewables cannot do the job. That is a self-fulfilling strategy to make renewable energy uninvestable. It is ideology, not economics or engineering.”
The SEC sent out invitations to the government ministers – the premier, the energy minister and the environmental minister – to attend the summit and all three declined. Renew Economy understands that the Clean Energy Council, which holds its state energy summit on Wednesday, also saw its invitations to ministers rejected.
“There is a contradiction at the heart of energy policy in this state,” McElrea said.
“Queensland households and businesses are moving rapidly towards solar, batteries and smarter energy. The Queensland Government is moving in the opposite direction.
“The Crisafulli Government has repealed the legislated renewable energy targets, abandoned a firm coal timetable, committed to running state-owned stations to their technical lives and left open further extensions.
“It is backing that choice with a $1.8 billion maintenance guarantee across the state-owned generation fleet. That is not a neutral or balanced policy. It puts the public balance sheet behind ageing coal while transferring risk to clean-energy investors and consumers.”
What has been particularly galling for the renewables industry, and advocates in general, has been the obvious pleasure that the LNP state government has taken in trashing clean energy programs and climate efforts.
Planning minister Jarrod Bleijie (pictured above in the Elvis outfit) has repeatedly boasted on social media of his efforts to “call in” already approved renewable projects. Transport minister Brent Mickelberg was last week shown laughing uproariously over his decision to scrap electric buses and seek bids for 630 new diesel buses instead.
It has broader impacts on the rest of the country too. Queensland has some of the biggest, best, and most valuable, large scale wind projects, as well as solar and battery storage.
Its go slow on renewables makes the nation’s 2030 targets almost impossible to achieve, and deprives the national grid of valuable additions – the wind in Queensland does not usually blow at the same time as winds further south.
“It’s not just about the strength of the wind, its the contribution to reliability … and the resilient and diverse energy system we need to create as part of the transition,” Windlab’s Nathan Blundell said at the conference.
Blundell pointed to the sale and financial close of the $2 billion Gawara Baya wind and battery project in north Queensland – the largest wind and grid forming hybrid to reach that stage Australia, which has offtake agreements with Stanwell and SmartestEnergy.
“There should be more,” Blundell said. “But it shows that it can be done, and it can be done in Queensland.”
Nearly all the wind and solar projects that are going ahead in Queensland – including Windlab’s own 1.4 GW Bungaban wind project – are designed to help the state’s biggest electricity consumer Rio Tinto’s Boyne Island smelter and refineries in Gladstone shift from coal power to renewables by the end of the decade.
Rio Tinto pounced quickly when the Crisafulli government threatened to stop some of those projects – underlying the power of corporate influence, and begging the question about why more don’t follow suit.
Millions of other consumers are also embracing the transition. McElrea notes that Queensland has more small scale solar systems than any other state – 1.2 million and a total of 8 gigawatts – about the same as its remaining coal capacity.
More than 100,000 home batteries have been installed in the past year since the launch of the federal government’s Cheaper Home Battery rebates, and businesses and businesses, schools, factories and shopping centres are expected to follow suit after the rebate for commercial scale solar systems was also lifted to one megawatt installations.
State opposition leader Steven Miles noted the LNP’s cancellation and stop orders of a number of projects, including the Moonlight Range and Forrest wind project, and the Pleystone, Gin Gin, Bouldercombe, Marmadua and Middle Creek projects.
He said billions of dollars of projects were at risk – not just those already proposed, but those still in the pipeline, and this put at risk other industries that might not be built.
“Investment will go where there is certainty,” he told the conference. “It will go where infrastructure is available. It will go where energy is reliable and affordable, and it will go where governments understand that the transition underway isn’t a threat to be resisted; it is an economic opportunity to be seized.
“We can’t afford to look back and wonder how a state with some of the best resources in the world managed to miss out on one of the biggest investment opportunities of our generation,” he said. “Queensland should lead the charge.”
