With the lost years and disconnections between investors and retailers, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that whatever renewables investment Australia now has, it should have had more. Meanwhile, Australia hasn’t even enjoyed the short-term financial benefits of repealing the carbon tax, which was demonized for making electricity unaffordable. As a result, Australia now has the most expensive energy prices in the world, and a power supply so unreliable that summer blackouts are now a real possibility.

There are many reasons for this, including an underdeveloped renewable energy grid and coal-fired power stations on which Australia has for so long relied that are nearing the end of their operating lives.

Enter the Turnbull government’s National Energy Guarantee. Perhaps its most fundamental change is that it addresses energy retailers, rather than generators. It’s a useful idea, ensuring that energy investments have a home in the consumer market.

The policy plan makes two fundamental requirements of the retail companies that sell energy to consumers. First, retailers have to meet a quota for reliable energy — “dispatchable” energy that can be made available immediately. This seeks to minimize the chance of blackouts, which the government has argued are at least partly a function of how renewable energies like solar and wind can fluctuate with weather unless effectively stored. This may be read as a way of giving an advantage to coal, though that seems less likely as storage of renewables increases.

Second, there is a limit on the amount of emissions intensity that will require retailers to purchase “clean energy” from energy generators. It’s a proposal that manages to obey the current laws of Australian politics. There’s no carbon price, no taxes and no explicit focus on renewable energy. The reliable energy quota is deliberately agnostic on the sources of energy, thereby making it a blank political canvas. If you really believe coal is the future, the quota can accommodate that. Same if you think renewables are becoming cheaper and more reliable every year. The policy plan holds at least the potential for broad support, which is something Australia has never achieved.

But that’s only possible because, for the moment, it’s largely content-free. Just about everything depends on what the relevant reliable energy quotas will be, but no one yet knows. Will they be set low and then increased? If so, how quickly? What relationship will they bear to Australia’s commitments under the Paris climate accord? Will they shift the emissions burden to the electricity sector, or will they require other sectors to make disproportionate reductions? And precisely how severe will the penalties be for retailers that fail to meet these targets?