The political energy wars in Australia will flare again with the ascendancy of the right of the Liberal party, surging of One Nation, and relative gutlessness of the government.
The ‘debate’ will be about residential energy costs.
It is too easy for faux ‘Current affairs’ programs and politicians to find someone with 3 small kids not able to pay the electricity bill. That story gets splashed around as the core of the ‘national conversation’.
What is rarely given any oxygen is the impact of energy costs on industry. From the local coffee shop, bakery, and warehouse to energy intensive industries like smelting commodity ores, and cement.
When energy becomes too expensive, unstable or unreliable, businesses close, or relocate, and lift prices.
The principals of these businesses rarely get heard, unless they are a really major business like an aluminium smelter. As a result, the ‘debate’ will be about the wrong thing.
We should be talking about ‘energy sovereignty’.
Throw away the slogans, and work towards making energy one of the inputs to our way of life that we actually control. Why be a price taker at the whim of others, and a flailing and ineffective domestic policy vacuum.
Renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuel generated power, but the fight remains about the environment and retail prices, not cost and sovereignty.
Cheap power is rapidly becoming the strategic necessity of the 21st century. It shapes both national and geopolitical outcomes. Those who control power generation will end up controlling the economy. Foundational to control of power generation is the control of the essential elements in the power supply chain: lithium, graphite and other science fiction sounding minerals.
China is not only generating the cheapest power, but they also control the supply of these minerals from the extracted commodity to the final input to manufactured products.
Our focus on the retail price of energy is way too narrow.
We should be focussed on the strategic importance of the whole supply chain, and where in that chain strategic power can be exercised.
Currently Australia has none, but we have the potential to be a major global player.
That means bi partisan agreement on significant long-term investment with a long-term ROI measured by the standard of living of our grandchildren.
Is there any chance of all of that happening?
Header courtesy Tom Gauld at New Scientist.
