NEW ENERGY MINISTER CONFIRMS WAR ON RENEWABLES

The New Energy Minister, Angus Taylor, has today confirmed that his approach to ‘solving’ the Liberal’s energy crisis remains based on anti-renewables ideology and is bound to drive prices and pollution up.

 

Speaking for the first time as Energy Minister, Mr Taylor has confirmed he has already given up on addressing the national energy policy vacuum that lies at the heart of the Liberal’s energy crisis, saying “I think there is some naivety in the idea that governments can largely eliminate uncertainty, or should even try,”.

 

The Liberal government’s inability to implement a national energy investment framework, that supports renewable investment post 2020 is creating the uncertainty the minister refuses to address. This is a recipe for more chaos, higher prices, higher pollution and more confirmation that the Liberals simply aren’t up to the job.

 

The new Minister’s approach flies in the face of all the experts, business leaders, and energy agencies, who have for years made the case that policy uncertainty is stifling investment and driving prices and pollution up. This advice couldn’t be any clearer than when AEMC said “The result of this uncertainty has been delays in investment and consequent increasing electricity prices”.

 

We have a “Minister for lowering power prices” who refuses to acknowledge or address why power prices are as high as they are in the fist place.

 

He won’t accept the simple fact that increased renewable energy investment, backed by firming technologies like batteries and pumped hydro, is not only crucial to drive down pollution, and deliver the lowest cost replacement for aging coal fired power plants, but is key to driving down power prices for households and industry.

 

Just today we have seen another report pointing out that the rush of renewable energy investment to meet Labor’s 2020 Renewable Energy Target is forecast to halve wholesale electricity prices in the next few years.

 

But all this progress is now under threat as a new Morrison government double down on their ideological war on renewables.