0 0
Read Time:3 Minute, 56 Second


The deputy Liberal leader, Josh Frydenberg, has rejected Barnaby Joyce’s call to allow the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to invest in coal in a bid to slap down a growing Nationals revolt.

The Morrison government has deferred the looming internal brawl on coal by removing its own bill from the notice paper, but on Wednesday more Nationals came out in support of the Joyce amendment and Liberal Craig Kelly said he would consider it.

Joyce’s amendment follows the release of a Nationals backbench manufacturing plan and dissent over Scott Morrison’s attempt to lift Australia’s emission reduction ambition to net zero by 2050 – with climate and energy proving the battleground for the junior Coalition partner to differentiate themselves from the Liberals.

Joyce told Guardian Australia it was “philosophically implausible” for Australia to export coal yet it “wouldn’t consider the proposition of using it in the cleanest way possible” for itself.

“I’m not saying you’ve got to build a coal-fired power station,” he said. “But I genuinely believe the greatest effect we could have on carbon emissions is to invest in the technology to use the product we sell.”

Joyce said he had forewarned the energy and emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, of his amendment on Tuesday. He said it should have come as “no surprise” because it was “National party policy”.

“It’s one of the reasons we won the election, one of the reasons we’re in government: we had the temerity to say if we’re selling the product, the most logical place to put a high-efficiency, low-emissions power plant is central Queensland,” he said.

“Nobody proposed 100% renewables, we’re going to have to refurbish the existing coal-fired power stations in any case.

“If we don’t stand up for ourselves we’d be a group called the opposition.”’

In the lower house, Nationals MP George Christensen used debate on the Coalition’s omnibus industrial relations bill to echo Joyce’s arguments about using coal and attack Labor for opposition to a new power station.

“We can apparently dig it up, we can ship it overseas, it can be burned in coal-fired power stations that are being built at a rapid rate … in places like India, China, even in Germany,” he said. “But guess what? We can’t do it ourselves because apparently if Australia does it, Australia is bad.”

Nationals MP Llew O’Brien said he “absolutely” supported the Joyce amendment and would be prepared to cross the floor over it.

“The Nationals have obviously put forward a policy paper that sought to increase manufacturing in the country and assist coal fired power as part of that policy,” he told Guardian Australia. “Barnaby’s amendment to this legislation is in line with that.”

Frydenberg told reporters in Canberra he did not support the Joyce amendment, he supported the $1bn grid reliability fund, which would be run by the CEFC and Liberals want to use it to invest in new gas generation.

With Labor opposed, Joyce’s amendment would be set for failure if Liberals voted against it, suggesting removing the bill from the notice paper is more designed to avoid the poor optics of a Coalition split. Kelly has estimated that 40% of Nationals would back the Joyce amendment.

Experts said, in the unlikely event Joyce’s amendment won broader support in parliament, that, as currently written, it would almost certainly fail in its attempt to allow the CEFC to support coal-fired power.

The amendment proposes that the CEFC could invest in a coal plant if its emissions intensity – how much CO2 it releases per megawatt hour of electricity generated – was less than 80% of the average across the power grid.

Simon Holmes à Court, senior adviser to the University of Melbourne’s Climate and Energy College, said there was not a coal plant in the world that would qualify under that definition. He said it would also rule out many “fast-start” gas plants.

The Greens and Labor want to amend the bill to prevent the energy minister overriding the CEFC board’s choice of investments, and reinstating the requirement that projects must make a profit, preventing a Coalition bid to water down investment rules to favour gas.

Multiple studies, including by government agencies, have found the cheapest form of new electricity generation in most cases is solar and wind backed by flexible energy storage.

The Australian Energy Market Operator last year found new gas-fired power was another flexible option, but gas prices would need to be lower than expected if it was to compete with pumped hydro, batteries and other alternatives.



Source link

Happy
Happy
0 %
Sad
Sad
0 %
Excited
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
Angry
0 %
Surprise
Surprise
0 %
Abhi
info@thesostenible.com

Average Rating

5 Star
0%
4 Star
0%
3 Star
0%
2 Star
0%
1 Star
0%

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *