“The problem is not renewables:” Bowen puts Uhlmann back in his coal box

Federal energy minister Chris Bowen has pushed back against suggestions that the only way to overcome the current energy market woes was to keep coal generators operating, saying that a decade of slow investment in renewables and storage had led to the current crisis.

Responding to a proposition by Nine journalist Chris Uhlmann that the only option available to Bowen in the current crisis was to “keep the coal-fired generators going”, Bowen said the current crisis had been caused by a lack of investment in renewables and storage.

“The problem is there is not enough investment in renewable energy. There hasn’t been enough investment in storage,” Bowen said.

“Yes, you can say the wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine. The rain doesn’t always fall either, but we can store the water, and we can store renewable energy if we have the investment.”

“That investment has been lacking for the last decade. That is the problem.”

Bowen said he was currently working with state and territory energy ministers on a proposed design for a capacity mechanism.

While the former Coalition government had openly promoted the creation of a capacity mechanism as a means of delaying the closure of coal fired generators, Bowen has stated a preference for any such mechanism to support energy storage projects.

As a political commentator, Uhlmann has long railed against a transition to renewable energy, having published largely inaccurate claims about renewable energy technologies, including the role of wind energy in events like the South Australian blackout.

He recently published another error-strewn article criticising renewable policies.

Bowen was addressing media alongside prime minister Anthony Albanese after the signing of Australia’s official commitment to a stronger 2030 emissions reduction target – increased to the 43 per cent cut Labor took to the federal election.

It also followed the Australian Energy Market Operator moving to suspend the operation of the National Electricity Market, taking greater control over the dispatch of generators on Wednesday, after many withdrew otherwise available generation capacity from the market in an effort to secure higher prices – creating the appearance of supply shortfalls.

Bowen said that the current problems plaguing the National Electricity Market had in part been triggered by unexpected outages at coal fired generators. In a statement, AEMO indicated that as much as 3,000MW of coal generation capacity was currently out of action due to unplanned outages.

“This is primarily a problem driven, many factors at play, but high amongst the factors is unscheduled outages of ageing coal-fired power stations. Everybody is working to fix that,” Bowen said.

Albanese said his new government was responding to calls from the energy sector for federal policies that can drive the energy transition and that the former Coalition government had ignored these calls.

“The tragedy of this is that the solutions have been identified by the sector itself. What we are doing is listening to the experts, as we have. We announced a policy, and we are putting this in place today. But you can’t fix a decade of inaction in ten days,” Albanese said.

“What you can do is to provide that certainty going forward, whilst dealing with the immediate pressures which are there.”

Clean Energy Council chief executive Kane Thornton said the stronger emissions reduction target would help provide the much-needed market signal to ramp up investment in new wind, solar and storage capacity.

“Today’s formal agreement provides clarity and a positive investment signal to accelerate the decarbonisation of Australia and take advantage of the enormous economic opportunity in play,” Thornton said.

“The current crisis in the National Energy Market has clearly illustrated the perils of dragging our feet on energy policy.”

“A 21st-century economy needs a modern electricity network that supports reliability, security and lower emissions technologies, and delivers low-cost energy to consumers. Today gets us closer to that goal,” Thornton said.