Australia: Leftists Blame Power Shortages on Lack of Green Energy

Australia’s left-wing federal government on Thursday blamed recent power shortages across the country’s eastern states on “underinvestment in renewable energy” by Australia’s previous right-wing federal government, the public broadcaster SBS News reported.

“Earlier, Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen [pictured] blamed the situation on Australia’s previous governments’ approaches to renewable energy investment,” SBS News reported on June 16.

The Australian broadcaster referred to an interview Bowen gave to Australia’s ABC News Breakfast radio show on the morning of June 16. During the radio broadcast, Bowen repeatedly faulted Australia’s former conservative government for allegedly creating conditions that contributed to a power crisis throughout the country’s eastern region that began in recent days.

The electricity shortage caused blackouts across the Australian states of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania from June 14 to June 15.

“[T]he transition [to renewable energy] hasn’t been well managed by the previous Government. There wasn’t enough investment in storage. There wasn’t enough investment in transmission. We saw a drought in investment in renewable energy,” Bowen stated.

Continuing, the energy minister said:

[T]his is a crisis driven by and large by unexpected outages in coal fired power stations because the fleet has been ageing. […]

The fleet is ageing but there hasn’t been that investment in new technology, in new transmission, in new storage to come forward because the previous government just played around with it for nine years and had 23 different energy policies, kept denying the challenge, kept denying the opportunities, kept denying the need for a comprehensive economic and energy policy.

Elsewhere during his ABC News Breakfast interview, Bowen referred to his administration’s “Rewiring the Nation” energy policy. The left-wing Australian Labor Party (ALP) successfully ran on several policies, including the energy scheme, to win control of Australia’s coalition federal government during the nation’s latest federal election on May 21. Australia’s then-incumbent conservative prime minister, Scott Morrison, sought to win a fourth consecutive term in office during the vote but was defeated by the ALP’s Anthony Albanese.

The ALP’s “Rewiring the Nation” energy policy includes a plan to create a “special corporation to funnel $20bn into new transmission links to accelerate the uptake of more clean energy,” the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper observed on June 5. “The plan is part of Labor’s pledge to cut Australia’s 2005-level greenhouse gas emissions 43% by 2030, projecting renewables reach an 82% share of renewables in the National Electricity Market by then.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on June 16 confirmed his administration’s intention to fulfill its campaign pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent by the end of the decade. The leader made the vow while presiding over a ceremony in which he and Australian Energy Minister Chris Bowen formally signed relevant legislation at Australia’s Parliament House in Canberra.

Albanese told reporters at the signing that he had “written to U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Patricia Espinosa Cantellano to inform her of Australia’s new 2030 target,” according to the Associated Press (AP).

“Albanese said legislation to enshrine the new target in law would be introduced to the new Parliament which will sit for the first time on July 26. However the target did not depend on Parliament’s approval,” the AP reported.