OPINION: State governments are fighting back against the Albanese government’s plan for them to impose a price cap on coal to complement the proposed federal price cap on gas.
But although less public, there are plenty of other internal contradictions also roiling state governments as they try to mix energy reality with emissions reduction ambitions. Queensland and Victoria, for example, remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels even as they focus attention on renewable energy plans and Victoria blocks paying gas producers to provide back-up capacity in case of shortages in the national electricity market.
The always bluntly spoken Broad had informed a furious Bowen and his head of department at a meeting last June that his new minister’s demand for the Kurri Kurri gas plant under construction to use 30 per cent hydrogen from the beginning was nonsensical.The immediate complication is NSW’s approach to any new gas development – in particular the Narrabri gas field owned by Santos and due to supply the domestic market. State government approvals have been agonisingly slow.
So Perrottet waited until Kean was out of the country at COP 27 pushing NSW credentials in the energy transition to call in departmental chiefs and insist the approvals for Narrabri be speeded up rather than continuing at a snail’s pace. Broad’s days at Snowy were numbered as soon as Labor won the election. Labor had long opposed the Coalition using the government-owned Snowy Hydro to build the $600 million gas plant. It only relented ahead of the election, fearing its opposition would cost it the Hunter Valley seat. Insistence that hydrogen be part of the gas plant’s initial power generation mix offered a political fig leaf to allow Labor to shift position.
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