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Victorians to pay $2300 each, Queenslanders $5600 to make “renewables” target

Did anyone ask the voters if they wanted to spend $10 – $20k per family on a program to change the weather?

Renewables are all over the media in Oz. Suddenly free energy has a cost. Before SA knocked itself out, mainstream pundits talked of “ambitious”  targets, now the term is “aggressive”.

We nationally have an obscene 23% “renewables” target — burning billions so our great grandchildren might be a millionth of a degree cooler. But some of our states are even crazier (SA, Victoria, and Queensland) and the Federal Minister for Energy is telling the nuttier ones off, pointing out the cosmic cost of achieving their even higher goals.

Josh Frydenberg sounds halfway sensible:

“Victorians for years have enjoyed some of the lowest energy prices across the country, which has created jobs, investment and growth. But now Victorians, like other Labor states, are being threatened with higher prices to fund ill-­considered renewable energy targets where there is no practical and realistic road map to get there.”  — The Australian

The preliminary estimate from Mr Frydenberg’s department:

The capital cost of the extra ­renewable capacity would be least $14bn in Victoria and $27bn in Queensland, making up a total of $41bn, according to the pre­liminary estimate prepared in ­Canberra.

Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio said in June that ­consumers would pay only “cents per week” for that state’s ­additional target.

That’s $2300 per man woman and child in Victoria and $5600 per Queenslander.

Did anyone ask the voters if they wanted to spend $10 – $20k per family on a program to change the weather?

Let’s give that a go and find out what percentage of Australian families would prefer to buy something else, like a bathroom, a new hip, a holiday, or a boat?  Can we have a plebiscite on that?

But Frydenberg also says  the states “should accept the national target instead”. Bollockspeak, says Jo. States should do their own thing and let the free market figure it out. They should do something radical like a cost-benefit analysis on using solar panels to stop the sea rising.  The first state to dump renewables and offer cheap continuous coal or nukes will reap the rewards as businesses pull up stakes and move. That state will grow rich, be fully employed and be able to afford bigger, better national parks and grand indulgences like saving spotted toads, rare anemone, and whatever they fancy.

 

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