Chief scientist Alan Finkel is widely expected to lay out various policy scenarios for Australia’s energy industry when he presents his report to COAG leaders on Friday, but perhaps the most profound impact of his report will be how it can shape the discussion of the future of the industry.

Australia’s energy policy has been bogged down by the idea that “baseload” power – from spinning turbines powered by burned fossil fuels – is the only source of cheap, reliable and dependable power.

This myth, propagated by industry incumbents, conservative ideologues and the just-don’t-knows, is one of several often rolled out in an attempt to demonise the impact of variable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, and roll back ambitious emissions or renewable energy targets.

Finkel is likely to try to reset the discussion. He needs to.

His preliminary report gave a major taste of what he calls the “unstoppable transition” of our energy system that would be based around the consumer rather than centralised generation.

“It is the antithesis of the centralised energy model”, he said then. And he continued along this line in an appearance at a Senate Estimates committee last week.

Asked by Labor industry spokesman Kim Carr if his recommendations about the operations of the electricity system would include “base load” power, Finkel responded:

“I prefer to use the word ‘reliable’, but not because there is something intrinsically wrong with ‘base load’. The challenge is not the kind of power it is but can it be delivered when it is needed and securely?”

Senator KIM CARR: That is right. Dr Finkel: The combination of reliable and secure means that you can operate the system for large industrial consumers and for everybody— Senator KIM CARR: Will the aluminium industry look to your report with confidence in terms of security of supply? Dr Finkel: Yes.

This is critical. We have seen in the past week the fears and misconceptions of Australia’s manufacturing industry about the issue of “baseload power”.

Bluescope Steel’s Paul O’Malley was on Radio National breakfast on Thursday morning arguing that a focus on emissions or renewable energy would amount to all jobs and industry leaving the country. “It’s really easy, if we don’t want jobs in Australia, let’s make emissions reduction a number one priority,” he said.

O’Malley said this at the same time as apparently embracing the “clean energy target”, that according to modelling commissioned by the Climate Change Authority would bring 70 per cent renewables by 2030, the same as other scenarios such as renewable energy target or government legislation.

(For the record, we think the modelling commissioned by the CCA is absolute rubbish. It is based on nonsensically high assumptions about the cost of wind and solar, and somehow imagines that geothermal energy will make a miraculous re-appearance and play a dominant role, or that solar will all but disappear after 2020. It even imagines new coal generation (unabated) after 2040. We pray that Finkel is producing his own modelling, based on some up to date assumptions about the cost of wind and solar, the cost of integration, and of gas).

The assumption that coal is the cheapest power source is being propagated by the likes of Tony Abbott, still influential within the large conservative rump in the Coalition. “Coal is by far the cheapest form of baseload power,” Abbott said on 2GB radio on Wednesday.

Not so, says Finkel. In that Senate estimates hearing he noted: “The actual cost of bringing on new coal in this country per megawatt-hour is projected to be substantially more expensive than the cost of bringing on wind or solar.”