Dutton goes full Trump on climate, energy as Albanese sets election date
With a Federal election called, Peter Dutton has promised to tear up the Rewiring the Nation program, disrupt the roll out of large-scale renewables, and bet the whole economy on gas and nuclear power.
Dutton justified this plan by reference to heavy industry, in particular aluminium, which he said would need "secure, 24/7, permanent baseload power".
Of course, if those smelters are to close, it's precisely because the Coalition wants to force feed them fossil fuels which are both too costly, and too dirty.
Rio Tinto, owner of two giant aluminium smelters in Queensland and NSW, has said that dependence on fossil fuels will kill the industry - not wind and solar.
Rio Tinto has signed the country’s three biggest power purchase agreements for wind and solar, including a landmark solar and battery deal just this month.
The company says it will lower costs and improve reliability for the smelter and refineries in Queensland.
The closure of Australia's giant smelters – our biggest energy users – is built into the assumptions that justify the Coalition’s misleading and nonsensical gas and nuclear plan.
But the modelling that it relies upon, based on AEMO scenarios, assumes a dramatic fall in electricity demand in Australia, driven by the shutting of those very same smelters in 2030.
But with no one calling this out, the Coalition – like the Trump administration in the US – will continue to serve it up for daily consumption as the election looms.
Dutton has made many other patently false claims - that nuclear can be delivered within 10 years, that it will save $260Bn, that Labor’s plan requires 28,000 km of new transmission, and that having more gas will reduce electricity prices.