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Santa’s arrived! Australia drops new Renewables Targets, will meet “Paris”, stop blackouts, reduce costs

This is good news but Turnbull still wants to have the Paris cake and power the fridge with the crumbs

Faced with national bill shock, dismal Newspolls, and even leadership rumors, Turnbull is, at last, dropping the deadweight Finkel Clean Energy Target. The biggest poisoned-band-aid will not be plastered on, though mini bandaids will be.

Too much regulation is never enough and the energy market is still being micromanaged.

Cabinet dumps Clean Energy Target for new ‘affordable, reliable’ power plan

[ABC news] A Clean Energy Target recommended by Australia’s chief scientist will not be adopted, with the Federal Government instead proposing a new plan to bring down electricity prices.

The details have not officially been released, but the ABC understands Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will argue his policy will lower electricity bills more than a Clean Energy Target (CET), while meeting Australia’s Paris climate change commitments.

And they wonder why no one wants to build a coal station here, despite finding 1,600 other places to build them in 62 other countries:

Cabinet is also keen to adopt a generator reliability obligation, which requires three years’ notice of closing a power station, in order to prevent a repeat of the sudden closure of Hazelwood power station in Victoria in March.

The answer to pointless overdone, intrusive and clumsy regulation is apparently to do even more of it:

Power Guarantee to Fix Crisis

[The Australian] Energy retailers will be forced to buy a minimum amount of baseload power from coal, gas or hydro for every megawatt of renewable energy under a drastic intervention into the energy market by the Turnbull government to drive energy bills down by $115 a year.

We forced people to buy renewables, and now we force people to buy the antidote too.

The only subsidies we are ending are the ones that haven’t started yet:

Malcolm Turnbull and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg will today announce a “national ­energy guarantee” as the centrepiece of an energy plan that will end new taxpayer subsidies for ­renewable energy from 2020 and ­impose a 0.2 per cent reliability regulation on retailers to inoculate the system from blackouts and give a lifeline to coal power.

The savings (if they happen) are small compared to the increases:

A senior government source confirmed that the policy signed off by cabinet last night and to be taken to the Coalition partyroom today, is estimated to cut ­retail ­energy bills of between $100 and $115 a year.

We are just aiming to wind back a tiny part of the pain.

John Stone — Abbott simply speaks the truth now that he is free to do so:

[The Australian] …It is those untruths Abbott has called out.

And the response from his critics? Personal abuse, distortion…  the Prime Minister snidely refers to “it being Mental Health Day”; a minister (Josh Frydenberg) who resorts to the self-demeaning criticism that, as prime minister, Abbott defended the renewable energy target and signed up to the Paris Agreement, both of which he now criticises.

Of course he did, because, despite his long-held view that this new paganism was “absolute crap”, a Turnbull-led majority of his cabinet, to their eternal discredit, had gone along with it and tied his hands. Being at last free to speak the truth, should he be mocked for doing so?

The fact is, as Terry McCrann said (The Daily Telegraph, October 12), Abbott’s speech was “a seminal event”.

The global bullies are trying to tar Abbott by reminding everyone of what he said as a PM and contrasting it with what he says now. But it’s unlikely to do much harm.  Millions voted for him when he made a “blood oath” to remove the carbon tax. He didn’t win more over when he spoke with the wooden tones, constrained as PM. Indeed, the critics just give Abbott a chance to talk about why our national conversations are so constrained by the politically correct box…

 To pursue the renewable grail,
With Australia’s great coal wealth for sale,
To be burned up abroad,
Is a policy flawed,
And reduce power prices, would fail.

–Ruairi

h/t David B, Scott of the Pacific, Pat.

PS: Headline edited. Was “Christmas already.” (or something like that). Now it’s “Santa’s arrived”.

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