Remember when Anthony Albanese was promising to lower everyone’s power bills by $275? Oh, how we laughed.
We’re not laughing now.
Australia faces a new cost-of-living shock, with power prices forecast to soar by at least 35 per cent in 2023 as the early closure of coal-fired electricity generators creates a rocky energy transition.
And while Albo takes his second holiday less than six months into the job, ordinary Australians are reeling from mounting economic shocks.
With households already reeling from six consecutive interest rate hikes and double-digit food inflation, the nation’s fourth largest electricity retailer has predicted a steep hike in electricity tariffs amid a global supply crunch.
“Next year, using the current market prices, tariffs are going up a minimum 35 per cent,” Alinta chief executive Jeff Dimery told an energy conference in Sydney.
The huge jump in electricity and gas costs echoes soaring prices in the UK, which prompted protests and consumers to burn their energy bills.
And, gosh, I wonder why that happened? I thought their “renewables” revolution was the pathway to a future of cheap, abundant energy?
It’s almost like the utopian fantasies of the Climate Cult are as reliable as their doomsday predictions.
But, like their beloved socialism, the green left are convinced that what we really need is even more of what’s failed disastrously.
[Energy Minister Chris Bowen said] “Getting more renewables in the system will mean lower power prices. I don’t think that should be such a controversial statement in Australia in 2022,” Mr Bowen told the energy forum.
The Australian
Unless, of course, you’ve bothered paying attention to what’s happened in Europe, the UK… pretty much anywhere that’s fallen prey to the Climate Cult’s “renewables” zealotry.
The Opposition Leader said Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s “obsession” with shutting down coal-fired generation could lead to even higher bill increases.
[Peter Dutton] said he feared Australian families could face a “heat or eat” financial dilemma like some are enduring in Europe […]
“There are a lot of families in Europe over this winter where they say they will either be able to heat or eat but not do both. And I don’t want our country going down that path.”
As Dutton points out, Albanese before the election repeated the power bill-reduction promise no fewer than 97 times before the election. Since the election? The promise has disappeared faster than Albo boarding an Airbus.
In the meantime, contrary to the absurd fantasies of the climate cultists, Australia is learning the same painful lesson as every other country that’s been fool enough to launch itself off the “renewables” cliff.
“The obsession with 100 per cent renewables is going to lead to power prices increasing by much more than 35 per cent, and you’ll get the unreliability that we’re seeing in Europe or in California, where there’s a prospect of rolling blackouts.
“If you don’t like coal, and you don’t like gas, and the solar panels don’t work at nighttime … the lights are going to go out at some point.”
The Australian
Like socialism, though, it’s sure to work this time.
