“Chief scientist Alan Finkel has been trying to explain, as loudly and forcefully as he can, that wind and solar are the cheapest form of new energy. But in the Coalition, they can’t hear you scream that particular message.
It is now more than a week since the Finkel Review was unveiled – to a mix of hope, promise, disappointment and frustration. But judging by the rhetoric of the past few days, it has failed even in its most basic tests: to move the debate forward and to promote acceptance of the obvious, that new renewables are cheaper than new fossil fuels.
So much so that the review, which has been hailed as a “once in a generation” opportunity to bring Australia’s ailing energy market into the 21st Century, is now being used as an excuse to take it back to the 19th.
Despite pleading from business, the Coalition hasn’t changed its stripes at all. They are still calling for new brown coal generators in Victoria, and a new black coal generator in north Queensland.
Queensland LNP leader Tim Nicholls has promised to set the wheels in motion for new coal-fired generation in Queensland’s north “within 100 days” of winning office, and federal energy minister Josh Frydenberg has slipped back into his pre-Finkel rhetoric of blaming the states for all of the NEM’s woes.”
— Giles Parkinson, Coalition’s war on cheap power: When fools design energy policy, RenewEconomy, June 19th (our emphasis)