Time power costs cut
THEY say the only things certain in life are death and taxes. Most Australians can now add ever- increasing power bills to the list.
As a federal Member of Parliament, I’m certain that mums and dads, farmers and small business owners want government to do something to bring those power bills down.
I am certain they are not interested in the Paris agreement.
They are concerned about how they are going to pay their power bill and their concerns are my concerns.
The supporters of the National Energy Guarantee ( NEG) say it will lower prices because it represents certainty.
But as long as the Labor Party goes after the extreme green vote with renewable energy targets double those set by the rest of the world, there can be no investment certainty.
As long as the Labor Party continues to drink the “renewables are cheaper” KoolAid, the only certainty we have is that power costs will be higher and jobs will be fewer.
My greatest concern with the NEG is that modelling shows there will be no serious new base- load power brought online, with all new power coming from intermittent and unreliable wind and solar.
Meanwhile, around the world, hundreds of clean coalfired power stations are being built, including 44 in Japan, where I was only weeks ago.
Energy companies in Japan said it was clear to them that coal was the cheapest form of energy by far, even with new state- of- the art technology achieving emissions reduction of almost 20 per cent and with the added cost of transporting the coal halfway around the world ( from Australia).
It’s good that the Federal Government has sought to introduce a scheme that potential investors said would lead them to invest in coal- fired power. But more is needed. Unlike Japan, investors and financiers in Australia require a greater rate of return to counter the extreme level of risk caused by politics.
Politics in Australia has failed householders, farmers, businesses and the industries that rely on cheap power.
The push from Labor to create a fake price through different ways of taxing a naturally occurring gas, carbon dioxide, has spooked every potential investor and the result is no investment.
Politics has caused the problem of power unaffordability and politics needs to fix it.
If the Federal Government’s energy generation company, Snowy Hydro, can build hydro power plants, why can’t it build a coal- fired power plant?
Why can’t it acquire Liddell Power Station, upgrade it and keep it open?
Those are clear ways politics could fix the problem that politics created.
A solution offering certainty around power price reductions is something I, and all politicians, should support.