Antinuclear

While jobs and growing the economy is clearly at the top of Premier Jay Weatherill’s list, what needs to happen behind all of that is how to guarantee a reliable power source into the future. The South Australian Government’s is continuing to refine its policy measures aimed at insulating the state from the recent summer damaging blackouts.

I congratulate the Premier for taking the lead on it. It is not the last word; but it includes important steps in the right direction.

Our political leaders at both state and federal level need to get serious about encouraging investment in the best balance of energy generation options which are low carbon, reliable and lowest possible cost (of which renewables must undoubtedly form the major part), and ensuring we have a market and delivery system best suited to that mix.

South Australian electricity prices have always been higher than those in the National Electricity Market — mainly because the state lacks the low-cost coal resources of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Although the price excess over the other states is now proportionately less than a decade ago, wholesale power prices all over Australia are higher than ever before because gas has become scarce and expensive.

Renewable energy (solar and wind) is now much cheaper than new build coal and gas generation. The continued expansion of renewable energy will allow South Australia to reduce and then reverse its past electricity costs disadvantages. Australia could be a renewables leader — and South Australia, in particular, could be a superpower of the low carbon world economy.

More than 40 per cent of electricity in South Australia already comes from solar and wind — leading the nation.

In July 2016, the South Australian government and Adelaide City Council commissioned ZEN Energy battery storage demonstration systems at three Government-owned buildings and one City Council building in Adelaide, with the intention to show that the buildings’ carbon footprint could be reduced while saving money in the long term.

These will constitute Australia’s leading virtual power bank, helping to back up the grid as well as the buildings in which they are installed. These types of projects could lay the groundwork for the large-scale rollout of sustainable energy systems.

In the low-carbon economy of the future, Australia’s advantages are likely to be more sustainable and permanent, so long as we make the most of our resources, for the foreseeable future, the low cost of renewables in Australia relative to the rest of the developed world will be manifest in low prices to domestic users.

The emergence of Australia as the energy superpower carbon world economy has to begin with serious study by serious people of the issues and these are complex issues. Policy making has to be based on sound analysis — from good economics and good science.

These aren’t matters of opinion. We wouldn’t get very far if we all had our own opinions on Newton’s third law of motion. If we all acted on different opinions on that, we wouldn’t get our car down the street very far. So let’s stop thinking of climate science as being a matter of opinion. There’s real science that can guide us and let’s root our policy in acceptance of that. Australia happens to have more than its share of first-rate climate scientists.

Whatever we choose to do, let’s recognise that this is a fundamental transition in Australia’s energy sector that has to play out over decades, and it will be much more costly if we chop and change policies.

■ Professor Ross Garnaut, author of the Climate Change Review 2008 and 2011, is Chairman of Zen Energy and is the keynote speaker at the inaugural World Environment Fair in Adelaide this weekend.