Surging prices of energy in Australia have gotten so bad that even the legacy media can’t ignore it any more. So, they’re falling back on another tried’n’true tactic: lying by omission and blame-shifting.
When the Biden administration recently tried to blame America’s spiralling energy prices on Big, Bad, Vladimir Putin, it was a dodge so blatant that even Jake Tapper called bullshit. ““Not all of it. Some of it, yes.” But even the “some of it” shouldn’t be any of it, if America was still, as it was under Trump, energy-independent. Literally, Joe Biden’s first acts as president were to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and sign the US up to the Paris climate follies. With the stroke of a pen, he not only killed tens of thousands of jobs but ended America’s brief, shining moment of energy independence.
Like the Biden White House, the Australian legacy media will spin all manner of dodges to avoid telling the whole truth.
Energy prices were rising before the Russian invasion as the world economy accelerated out of a pandemic-induced slump. But the conflict triggered a sudden and dramatic global supply shock as businesses and governments around the world spurned Russia’s enormous oil and gas supplies.
But why were they so dependent on Russian oil and gas? As they were warned by former President Trump, the very climate policies of European nations — which Biden was so quick to emulate — left them completely dependent on Russia to keep the lights on and the heaters running.
The same idiotic climate policies that are starting to impact Australia so badly.
There have also been domestic forces at work. Australia’s ageing fleet of coal-fired power plants has been plagued by unplanned outages. This has cut the supply of electricity to the energy grid, adding to the pressure placed on gas, which (unlike coal) can be cranked up at short notice as an alternative source of electricity generation.
Why is our fleet of coal-fired plants suddenly ageing and unreliable? Because a combination of government meddling and climate activism has scared away investors and pushed Australia onto a disastrous “Net Zero” path of having to rely on intermittent, unreliable “renewables”. The tacit admission is there, too, that coal is normally steady, reliable baseload power.
Another of the big lies of the climate lobby — that “there’s no future in coal” — is also being exposed.
“Coal prices have skyrocketed and there have been outages at a number of coal-fired power stations, increasing electricity prices and increasing demand for gas to fuel gas-fired power generators that were suddenly called into operation,” Dwyer said.
Weather has also played a big part. Floods in Queensland and NSW affected coal supplies. And a recent cold snap has further fuelled demand for gas to warm homes, sending prices even higher.
Obviously, coal is very much in demand in places that aren’t so stupid as we are.
It also begs the question: why is gas so in demand when it gets cold, as it does every winter? Where are the “renewables”?
The situation hasn’t been helped by relatively low electricity generation from renewable sources. According to market analyst EnergyQuest Australia, cloudy weather resulted in a 27 per cent drop in solar power generation in May compared with April, while wind-generated power fell about 1.9 per cent.
The Age
Well, fuck me: it gets cloudy in winter, just when everyone is turning their heaters on. Who could have foreseen this? Apparently not the geniuses in Canberra.
