Higher energy costs to placate green activists & financiers

The trove of emails that Wikileaks is publishing help to explain what drives political decision taking.  This is especially evident in the environmental sphere.  US “charities” linked to Clinton campaign are funding lawfare and other opposition to Australian coal, oil and gas developments.

International finance flows to influence policy on climate change also go from Australia to the US.  Wikileaks reports an email to Hillary campaign chief John Podesta as “Here is the plan to go after WSJ and FOX on climate. I have 500,000 of this pledged if I can raise another million. It’s a real pledge from Graeme Wood in Australia. I sure hope something like this can happen it’s long overdue.”  Podesta has had many green business links to tap into subsidies including with Russian interests he now disowns.

But, according to the propaganda, subsidies for renewables are unnecessary since, as activists have been saying for the past 30 years, ‘clean green’ energy is soon going to be cheaper than the dinosaurian fossil derived stuff!  Recent electricity supply bids in Abu Dhabi with solar at 2.42 cents a kwh (cheaper than coal in Australia) are said to bear this out.

Politicians however are taking no chances and forging ahead with carbon taxes.  Canada is the latest with the Trudeau Government announcing a carbon tax starting at $10 per tonne in 2018 and rising to $50 in 2022.  The Canadians however, as they demonstrated by being the first country to renounce its Kyoto pledge, are often more enthusiastic with commitments than with actions.  For its part, having hosted the Paris Climate agreement, France is now considered unlikely to introduce its foreshadowed 33 euro per tonne carbon tax.

With all the financial flows greasing political campaigns and financing activists it is little wonder that no Australian government has found the resolve to stand against the green tide that is steadily degrading our power networks and raising energy costs.

While the Commonwealth is looking for cheap ways out of green energy imprisonment, having barely paused following renewables causing the South Australian electricity meltdown, state governments are already seeking new means of subsidising renewables.  Queensland is already planning 50 per cent renewables.

The latest move from Victoria foreshadows a “reward” to solar households with a payment for the environmental value their public spirited decisions to install rooftop panels has brought about.   That reward would be on top of the Commonwealth cross subsidy of $40 per MWh (in itself greater than the cost of fossil fuel derived electricity) and existing requirements on retailers to offer uncommercial prices for surplus generation from rooftops.  Almost all these involve hidden regulatory charges that politicians hope will be invisible to those paying them.

Little seems to staunch impetus to subsidising green energy that is making us all poorer.