Gas lobby seizes Covid moment, and declares war on Australia’s future: RenewEconomy

Green Deal

'The history of war tells us that such events are usually launched on doubtful and fabricated pretexts: The US war in Iraq, the German invasion in Europe at the start of WWII, all the way back to Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain, and just about every war in between.

And so it is with the extraordinary attack launched on Australia’s future by its incumbent fossil fuel industry, and the gas lobby in particular. Its casus belli is the Covid-19 pandemic, and the fossil fuel industry has been enabled to do this after being invited by the Morrison regime to do more or less at it pleases and design its own future.

The reach and sheer audacity of the proposals unveiled over the past week is extraordinary, and the lasting impact on Australia’s future may dwarf anything that Tony Abbott and his Far Right cheerleaders may have done; notwithstanding his white-anting of the Carbon Pollution Reductions Scheme more than a decade ago, the scrapping of the carbon price in 2014 and the unceasing campaign against science and engineering.

This is the critical decade. Scientists tell us, repeatedly and with a near unanimous voice, that serious emissions reductions must be achieved in the next 10 years if the world is to flatten the emissions curve and give itself half a chance of capping average global warming at less than 2°C. A target of 1.5°C may already be out of reach.

Australia finds itself at a critical juncture. It benefits from the stunning cost reductions in solar, wind and battery storage, and key institutions have mapped out a path to a high renewable energy grid. Experts are shining the light on a future of green manufacturing and “green energy exports” that could enhance the position of the country as a significant energy superpower.
But the fossil fuel industry and its backers, with their focus almost entirely on short-term profits and ideological claptrap, have other ideas. They have decided to throw a live grenade into Australia’s own economic bunker, and its environment, and put the future of the current and emerging generation at risk.

Consider the list of what has emerged from the government-appointed gas-industry led reviews in the past week, including the King Review, the Covid Commission, the technology investment roadmap, and from the intense pressure being put on energy regulators.


– Bastardising the remit of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency in an attempt to to force them to invest away from renewable and smart and enabling technologies and into gas and carbon capture and storage

– Polluting the already controversial and ineffective Climate Solutions Fund by creating a “base-line” that industry experts suggest will allow big polluters to increase their emissions and get paid for doing so.'

– Delaying critical energy market rule changes and reforms that might have encouraged smart new technologies such as battery storage and demand management, and end the rorting of the current system by incumbent coal, gas and hydro generators.

– Pushing the case for gas and CCS in a “technology investment roadmap” that otherwise clearly identifies wind, solar, storage and other technologies such as EVs, heat pumps, energy efficiency and demand management as the cheapest and most reliable options.

However, none of these quite reaches the breadth, depth and cynicism of the so-called Covid-Commission, which appears entirely possessed with the narrow interests of the gas industry, from where many of these commissioners have emerged.


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