JoNova » Turnbull to consider new Coal power in Australia (ten years too late)

Last week only fringe loonies who were clinging to a dead technology were calling for a coal revival (mock mock mock). But now that the ACCC has spent months investigating and 400 pages reporting, they discovered that Tony Abbott and Craig Kelly and the Monash group were, hey, all right all along.

This is Turnbulls get-out-of-jail card, if he used it as an excuse to be sensible. He has in the past taken those cards and set fire to them. In a best case, he might, with arm twisted in a one-spare-seat-government, “build new coal” sometime in the far distant future, but whatever he does he won’t do anything other than minor hand waving about the Crony Green-Theft runaway train profits.

Turnbull weighs coal fix for energy wars

Simon Benson and Ben Packham, The Australian

A proposal for the federal government to financially guarantee the construction and operation of new dispatchable power generation, which could include clean coal-fired plants, is expected to be taken to cabinet with the backing of the Prime Minister.

Malcolm Turnbull yesterday confirmed he would seriously consider the key recommendation of a report by the competition watchdog to underwrite and potentially subsidise new “firm” and cheap power generation for industrial and commercial users.

Signalling a possible end to the energy wars within the Coalition partyroom, the recommendation was immediately endorsed by Nationals MPs, who have interpreted it as a green light for government to intervene in supporting the future of coal generation.

h/t RobK

The government wouldn’t need to buy new coal plants if our market wasn’t so screwed in the first place. But it is screwed, so “OK”. Better would be for the government to get out of the market, stop trying to use our electricity grid as a Global Climate Controller, stop forcing consumers to buy green electrons, stop trying to pick-the-winners in the tech game, stop big energy groups from owning every kind of generator and game the bidding system, stop building transmission lines to Kalamazoo and stop employing green activists to run our national energy market.

No End to the Energy Wars

As for the idea that this “signals an end to the energy wars”… Not A Chance.

As long as customers are being forced to spend money on magical glass panels to stop droughts and save whales, or to subsidize windmills to hold back the tide and stop crocodiles, there will be no end to the energy wars. As long as Chinese Crypto miners can get electricity at a third of the price in Australia that Australian Newsagents can we know we still have a problem. Once the public realizes how fool politicians sold them out to the renewables industry with witchdoctor excuses, there will be hell to pay.

Still crook. H1N1.+ RSV icing.