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This week, Australia deserted the cause

CET proponents argued that renewables have become competitive in cost and are reliable, a claim greeted with guffaws. Australia’s confidence in climate gurus took a hit when South Australia, a state 40-per-cent larger than Texas that went on a renewables building binge, suffered a series of six major blackouts, including one last September that blacked out the entire state. Unlike coal and gas, which can be called upon when needed to meet varying demand, wind and solar power breed vulnerability because they can’t be dispatched — they produce if and when the wind blows and the sun shines.

Ironically, in rejecting the Clean Energy Target, the Australian government accepted the proponents’ claim that renewables have become competitive in the free market — it is thus eliminating by 2020 the subsidies renewables have been receiving, as well as eliminating the requirement that utilities rely on renewables. Instead, to prevent more of the blackouts that have shaken the country, the government adopted a National Energy Guarantee that requires power companies to rely mostly on “dispatchable” sources such as coal and gas.

The government is “hell-bent on destroying renewable energy,” charged Australia’s Labor opposition party. It’s a “complete victory for the coal industry,” fumed South Australia’s Labor premier. And, of course, they’re right, notwithstanding the lip service the government pays to meeting its 2030 Paris carbon-emissions goal. With renewables boasting ever-lower costs, MPs argue with a straight face, the government would be prudent to wait until 2025 or later to address Paris, when renewables presumably will be irresistibly inexpensive. The renewables industry, based on government projections, estimates the government’s approach could result in “virtually no new wind and solar projects in the country between 2020 and 2030.”