Australians aren’t buying Turnbulls fence-sitting do-everything (do nothing) energy plan

There is a lesson for politicians all over the world.

Labor, Liberal, what’s the difference?

In Australia the Labor party is 100% Gung Ho about controlling the global weather with our power supply. Despite that Dead-Weight handicap, slightly more Australians think that the Labor party will be better at managing electricity prices than the Liberal government*.

A Newspoll conducted for The Australian revealed that only 37 per cent believed the Coalition and Mr Turnbull would be better at maintaining energy supply and keeping power prices lower, compared with 39 per cent who backed Labor to deliver the ­reform. Almost a quarter of voters were undecided.

…the voters who wanted to Axe The Tax are still out there, and their electricity bills are even higher.

It’s not as insanely crazy as it sounds. By trying to half-way appease both sides both sides of politics Turnbull pleases no one. He’s crushed the issue as a vote winner for conservatives, which is not all that surprising since he’s not all that conservative. His gut instincts are screwed.

Labor are offering themselves as chief-witchdoctors. This is a gold plated gift to conservatives. But the government is saying that they will be witchdoctors too, just the slow-doctor kind. Thus they are completely knobbled as Witchdoctor-Exorcists. They can’t mock the feathers and masks because they wear them themselves. Conservative pollies could have a field day with the narcissistic delusion of using windmills to hold back the tide, instead they are reduced to saying “Trust Us” — electricity has gotten obscenely expensive on our watch, but it will be worse if you put Labor in charge.

The findings come despite modelling showing that the ­opposition’s renewable energy and climate change target policies would add up to $300 a year to annual power bills.

Fighting with imaginary numbers.

Instead of “neutralizing” the climate issue, Turnbull gave the issue to the Labor Party

Tony Abbott won a ninety seat landslide on the Blood Oath to Axe the Tax. Compare that to the King of the Hollow Men, Turnbull, who offered a Labor Lite version to Australia and won by almost nothing. He used stealth and deception to sneak in an Emissions Trading Scheme, hiding it because he knew Australians would not want it, and now he wants to sell us, of all things, a National Energy Guarantee, as if we should believe him?

No wonder voters are confused

The Labor plan is worse than the Liberal plan  — but the Liberals can’t explain why. They can hardly say that renewables are shockingly expensive, and disruptive and “we’ll install less of these horrible things than Labor will”.

What can they say? — That Labor’s plan to change the planetary climate is burko, but we have one too. Vote for me and go slow-burko!

Standing in no mans land on the climate is not “compromise” or “statesmanship”. It’s not a negotiated middle position. It’s just cowardly nothingness. Either man-made emissions matter or they don’t. If they do matter, do something, go nuclear. If they don’t matter, laugh and axe the tax, and then count up all the seats you are about to win… the voters who wanted to Axe The Tax are still out there, and their electricity bills are even higher.

If Australians are confused in that poll about why electricity is expensive the Liberals have themselves to blame.

From the frying-pan into the fire,
As with Labor the prices go higher,
Due to climate witchcraft,
But with Liberals as daft,
It makes their kilowatt cost nigh as dire.

–Ruairi

*For foreign readers Liberals in Australia means conservative liberal, not leftie “liberal”. In theory anyway.

*Image Two Lassa Witch Doctors This media comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention‘s Public Health Image Library(PHIL), with identification number #1322

Audrey Zibelman

No wonder our national electricity grid is in deep. Audrey Zibelman is the CEO of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). The former New York based woman is a lawyer with an MBA who thinks we can change the weather with our power supply. She was appointed in March 2017. Thank Malcolm Turnbull. Apparently in 2016 she was a favourite for the future Team Hillary in the US.

Audrey the activist

Just to make her motivation clear. Her words last year:

“I believe we’re the last generation on earth who can really do something about climate change.“

The manager of our electricity market thinks wind and solar are actually competitive:

And the good thing is that technology has evolved so that we don’t have to worry about sacrificing economics for good environmental policy.”

Notably, what she isn’t dreaming of is cheap electricity:

Her dream is of a grid dominated not by big power suppliers and their fossil-fuel generators, but rather a system of “distributed energy” that delivers better supply security by storing solar and wind power in batteries for later use. She wants a market that better rewards people with rooftop solar panels and other renewables; with incentives for more efficient power use in peak times; that harnesses idle energy, instead of building more large power stations for short periods of peak demand in hotter months.

You might think the Australian national grid should be providing electricity rather than being a tool to reward people for buying uneconomic equipment in the hope of stopping Antarctica from melting. Silly you.

Oops? How do you mistake a 100% artificially forced transition with a natural one

Zilbelman talks about the energy transition as if it is some natural change thrust upon us, instead of an artificial bubble, like a giant marshmallow man, inflated entirely and pumped relentlessly by government dollars to keep it from collapse:

Resisting energy transition like trying to resist internet says Zibelman

“This is not a judgement about anything. It’s just the reality that the economics have changed, and technology has changed, and resisting this change is a little like trying to resist the internet. It’s just going to happen because of where technology is going.”

How many governments had to offer $5 billion in subsidies to convince people to try the internet? Zero.

Note from Jo:

Hope to see you in Sydney in two weeks!

I’ll be speaking at in Sydney with Ian Plimer in a few weeks at the ATA Friedman18 conference. That’s a rare event.

See an amazing line up of speakers on May 25-27 in Sydney, or come for the dinner or drinks sessions.

Get a 10% discount with the code Nova18.

Zibelman hasn’t done any research. Everywhere government subsides are withdrawn, renewable investors flee the market at light speed. In Germany, after 20 years of subsidies, half to three quarters of the wind industry was forecast to disappear as the subsidies end and another 80,000 solar jobs are gone. It happened in Australia too where 97 percent of renewables investment suddenly dried up without subsidies.

Audrey Zibelman — a lawyer with a BA and MBA

At university, she spent no years studying physics, chemistry or engineering.

• Doctor of Law (JD)  [Hamline University School of Law]
• Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) [Penn State University]
• MBA [University of Minnesota]

But she did marry an electrical engineer:

Her husband, Phil Harris, is the chief executive officer of Tres Amigas, a New Mexico-based company that is seeking to raise more than $1 billion to connect the nation’s electric grids and allow for greater growth of clean energy.

Which raised other questions in 2015. Journalists asked about potential conflicts of interest with her then role as head of the NY Public Service Commission. After that, she recused herself.   h/t Beachside at Catallaxy.

June 16, 2015:  ALBANY—As New York’s top energy regulator, Audrey Zibelman is in a position to influence a market worth billions of dollars and help set the policy that governs it. At the same time, Zibelman, who worked in the private sector before Governor Andrew Cuomo appointed her chairwoman of the state Public Service Commission in 2013, has unusually close ties to energy companies vying for work in New York.

She cofounded Viridity Energy  which sold software to help people with batteries and panels minimize their electricity bills. How uneconomic are batteries? It would only take $60-90 billion to back up South Australia. Yes, 100% renewable is possible — though not at the same time as having an economy.

The issue is “not technology” says the non-technologist

Storage, price, efficiency, frequency stability? Wave a magic wand, other people who understand these things will definitely absolutely solve this and with other people’s money.

Zibelman also believes she is in the best place to solve them. “The issue is not so much the technology; technology is happening,” she said. “It’s the regulatory regimes and the market regimes that need to be adapted to the future power system.”

It’s all just a question of rules. If we change the system and don’t worry about how much it costs, anything can be solved. We just need to use the right language when we talk to baby electrons.

 Zibelman was apparently on Hillary Clinton’s hot-list:

Australian Fin Review:

One of Hillary Clinton’s hot picks to lead the United States Department of Energy has been appointed as chief executive of the Australian Energy Market Operator, as part of the political and corporate exodus in the wake of Donald Trump’s upset election victory.

No surprise then, that she was so appealing to Turnbull who is on the same side of politics as Hillary.

For the record, AEMO is 60% owned by taxpayers

Just so we all know who is ultimately responsible for the AEMO:

AEMO is a public private partnership between government, which owns 60% and industry members (including generators, transmission companies, retail and distribution businesses, resource companies, and investment companies) who own 40%. AEMO operates on a cost recovery basis as a company limited by guarantee under the Corporations Act (2001). AEMO fully recovers its operating costs through fees paid by participants.

I was unable to find the salary package used to tempt her to move to Australia. From the 2017 AEMO Annual Report, total wages and salaries of their employees add up to $76m (unless I am reading page 56 incorrectly –can someone familiar with accounting check?)

Early…