AS we all know, the rewards of procrastination are great in the short term but quickly peter out in the medium to long term.
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This week we’ve been given a great big lump of procrastination gift-wrapped to look like something of substance. But once you get through all the layers of wrapping, there’s almost nothing there.
Its name, suitably enough, is the NEG.
The National Energy Guarantee, announced this week in a scene worthy of ABC TV’s Utopia, looks like a policy and sounds like a policy but it’s actually just a place-holder, something to give some “announceable” shape to empty space.
The NEG is the Turnbull government’s response to chief scientist Alan Finkel’s recommendation for a Clean Energy Target as part of a package of reforms that would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
While Turnbull himself is famously aware of, and was once concerned about, climate change, he is now far more aware of and concerned about backbench revolt. His backbenchers don’t like anything to do with clean energy. They like coal.
So instead of setting goals for renewable energy, the NEG requires providers to guarantee a certain level of “dispatchable power” from sources other than wind or solar. Providers will also be required to reduce emissions in unspecified ways that suit them.
The government insists that this policy will do everything: it will both guarantee supply and reduce emissions.
Unlike the Finkel report, which ran to 200 pages, paperwork for the NEG, in true Utopia style, ran to about 20 pages.
We just have to believe Turnbull when he says it’s going to work wonders in all directions, because the details about exactly how this is to be achieved are missing.
So, how do we make sure that power is reliable while we reduce our emissions and ensure that ordinary people do not bear the brunt of change in rising power prices? It’s very difficult. But not impossible. The first step is to stare down the anti-science troglodytes rather than pander to them at every turn.
It’s worth noting that BHP, not a green organisation by anyone’s standards, is just about begging for a carbon price (or tax, to use that dirty word).
Unlike Turnbull’s backbenchers, the company does not equate clear emissions policy with ruin.
It just gives all players enough certainty to make long-range plans. But that’s not what we got this week.
