It is now over three years since Scott Morrison waved a lump of coal around the floor of parliament in a question time stunt. A lot has changed since then | npomalley
It is now over three years since Scott Morrison waved a lump of coal around the floor of parliament in a question time stunt. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared, it won’t hurt you,” the then treasurer said, passing it along to a delighted Barnaby Joyce as coalition ranks cheered behind them.Scott Morrison says ''what matters is lowering emissions... lowering costs... and creating jobs.”A lot has changed since then.
Minister for Energy Angus Taylor, the Prime Minister and Minister for Finance and the Public Service Mathias Cormann at the Snowy Hydro Tumut 3 power station. Morrison has threatened to have the government-owned Snowy Hydro power company build a gas plant should private enterprise not step in and do it themselves.There Morrison announced an injection of $1.
The government’s enthusiasm for gas was made even more clear in March when Morrison announced the creation of the National COVID-19 Co-ordination Commission. Now more simply known as the NCC, the Commission, tasked with advising the government on rebuilding the economy, was to be led by Nev Power, director of gas exploration outfit Strike Energy.
Further, in NSW the closure of the aging AGL Liddel power station in the Hunter Valley loomed and the government was determined not to allow it to prompt the same price shock caused by the closure of the giant Hazelwood plant in Victoria in 2017.All of these imperatives appeared to play into Morrison’s announcement on Tuesday that if the private sector did not invest, the government would step in to support the construction of gas pipelines as well as a new 1000 gigawatt plant at Liddell.
Further, when gas - which is mostly methane - escapes unburnt into the atmosphere during extraction, transport, processing and use, it is around 80 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a 10-year period.Bruce Robertson, an oil and gas specialist with the pro-renewables Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, made his objections to Morrison’s announcement as simple as possible when he spoke with the“What we need is less gas, not more gas.
“There are no material reliability concerns that would warrant this kind of interventionist approach, and there are already mechanisms in place to address any shortfall identified.” “The extra capacity mentioned above that is not accounted for in the AEMO modelling is like icing on the ‘we are ok’ cake,” she wrote.Critics of the Morrison’s gas fiesta were even more agitated on Thursday after the announcement that the government's two vehicles for funding renewable technology would have their remit broadened.
Morrison’s mention of hydrogen energy here is significant too, because it is an emerging technology that might one day be used domestically and for export, and which emits no carbon dioxide when burnt.
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