Lives are at risk from renewable energy, says MP
AUSTRALIA: Some Australians will die this winter because renewable energy is driving up power bills, an influential federal government MP says.
Craig Kelly, who chairs the coalition’s climate and energy committee, has said there are households that can’t afford heating.
‘‘People will die,’’ he told ABC radio yesterday.
But a new expert analysis of power prices suggests it is high gas prices, and not the growing market share of renewables, that are pushing up energy costs.
Kelly cited recent reports that showed one in four Australian households would be frightened to turn on their heaters because of the high cost.
Subsidies for renewable energy totalled A$3 billion this year, he said. ’’That pushes up the price of electricity to the consumer.’’
However, Australian National University academic and energy analyst Hugh Saddler said he believed it was the price of gas that was actually driving up electricity prices – and that this was the way the energy market was designed to work.
Saddler examined power prices in South Australia in an update on his regular national energy emissions audit for the Australia Institute. He said he found a ‘‘stunning correlation’’ between the movement of wholesale gas prices and electricity prices in a state with the highest share of renewables.
‘‘The correlation between the two data series is striking.’’
It confirmed that higher wholesale electricity prices, and hence higher retail prices in South Australia, were almost entirely caused by higher gas prices, he said.
When power prices were compared with the share of wind generation, there was no match at all.
Saddler said the national electricity market’s formation in 1998 was followed by a rush of new gasfired power stations in the eastern states.
‘‘So this is not a malfunction of the national electricity market, but precisely how it was expected to operate when set up. What has changed is the price of gas, driven up by export contracts.’’
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce disagreed with Kelly’s warning, but said governments had to be responsible for implementing policies that ensured affordable power.
Opposition energy spokesman Mark Butler accused Kelly of scaremongering.
‘‘This is another appalling intervention,’’ he said, noting Kelly’s position as chair of a coalition policy committee.
However, Butler conceded that households and businesses faced high power costs, blaming ‘‘policy paralysis’’ at the national level.
– AAP