Coal/nuclear lobby trying to kill renewables in Australia.

[kristopher]

The Minerals Council of Australia isn't just a coal industry lobby group; its membership is also heavy with uranium mining interests such as Areva. As you'd expect, they are calling for continuation of a coal/nuclear centralized system.

Coal lobby wants energy transition thrown into reverse

By Giles Parkinson on 17 February 2014

The Minerals Council of Australia has launched an extraordinary attack on the climate policies of the world’s leading economic institutions, and suggested that Australia throw its evolving energy supply into reverse and abandon renewable energy in favour of more coal.

In a display of logistical gymnastics, the Minerals Council suggests that Australia’s rising electricity costs could be addressed by adopting the most expensive “clean” technologies – carbon capture and storage and nuclear – neither of which would be available in Australia for well more than a decade.

The suggestion, and its call to abandon the renewable energy target, are included in its submission to the energy white paper. Its basic assumption, of course, is that the world shouldn’t, and won’t act on climate change.

The figures it quotes from the International Energy Agency on coal forecasts, for instance, use those scenarios which the IEA itself says are completely inadequate to address climate change.

The Mineral Council also attacks the notion of “carbon budgets”...

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/minerals-council-57246

Australia chooses climate change denier to head renewables review
By Giles Parkinson on 17 February 2014

The Australian government has nailed its colours to the mast on the issue of renewable energy by choosing manufacturing chief and climate change denier Dick Warburton to head its review into the renewable energy target.

dick warburtonWarburton will head a four-person panel that will report to the Prime Minister’s office, rather than to either the environment department or the ministry for industry, which includes the energy portfolio. Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s chief business advisor, Maurice Newman, shares Warburton’s view of climate science and dislikes renewable energy, wind farms in particular, and Abbott himself has blamed renewable energy for rising electricity costs.

Warburton was one of the main campaigners against the carbon price under the previous Labor government. He said on repeated occasions that climate science was not settled. “On the cause there’s huge debate about whether carbon dioxide is the main cause,” he said at the time.

The other members of the panel will be Matt Zema, the CEO of the Australian Energy Market Operator, Shirley In’t Veld, the former head of WA government owned generation company Verve Energy, and Brian Fisher, the former long-term head of ABARE who gained notoriety for his positions on climate policies and is a noted free-market hardliner.

The selection of key members with an antipathy to renewable energy will not be a surprise to those who have watched the Abbott government in its first six months....

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/australia-chooses-climate-change-denier-to-head-renewables-review-65883


They work with their "think tank" tools to create and propagate misinformation and lies.

The $5bln IPA mistake that derailed Australia’s renewable policy
By Giles Parkinson on 14 February 2014

Ever since it became clear earlier in 2013 that the conservative coalition parties were likely to gain power at the next federal poll – which they did – the renewable energy industry in Australia has pretty much ground to a halt.

The reason for this? The Coalition’s insistence from early last year that it hold another review of the renewable energy target, even though the Climate Change Authority had completed one just months earlier.

The problem was that the CCA did not give the answer the Coalition and its business supporters wanted. Not only was the renewable energy target weakening the revenues, profits and business models of the incumbent generators, the Coalition was being fed the line that RET was much more expensive than being let on.

The new Coalition government has since tried to dissolve the CCA, and the government’s inner core is being advised by climate change hard-liners and renewable-haters who repeat the theme that renewables are expensive. Prime Minister Tony Abbott most certainly thinks so.

This week, the Australian Chamber and Commerce and Industry was at it again....

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/the-5bln-ipa-mistake-that-derailed-australias-renewable-policy-52328

[kristopher]

1. More on how the Coal/Nuclear conservative cabal operates...

Renewable energy review could have a preordained outcome
By Giles Parkinson on 18 February 2014


Australian clean energy groups put on plenty of bravado when the federal government unveiled the members and the terms of reference of its long-threatened review of the renewable energy target on Monday. “Bring it on,” strutted the Clean Energy Council. The CEC and other groups such as Vestas, the world’s biggest wind turbine maker, and Pacific Hydro, Australia’s biggest specialist investor in renewables, suggested the facts would speak for themselves.

If the clean energy industry thinks that facts will win this argument, it is kidding itself. It has taken the government several months to work out how it will get around its statutory obligation for the Climate Change Authority to conduct the next review. In choosing climate change science denier Dick Warburton to head its inquiry, the Abbott government has chosen someone who has not let facts get in the way of his ideology and policy positions.

Warburton says he is not a climate change denier, but a “sceptic” about the role of humans in climate change. He doesn’t accept the science. Given the consensus of thousands of scientists, all major scientific bodies and all but a couple of rogue governments, then denial and what he calls “scepticism” amount to the same thing.

Warburton has also surrounded himself with people who, like himself, have spent much of their careers fighting environmental initiatives (carbon pricing, renewables) in an effort to protect the interests of the companies they managed or represented. Warburton did this as head of Manufacturing Australia, Shirley In’T Veld as head of Verve Energy, and Brian Fisher, the former head of ABARE and more recently a fossil fuel lobbyist, had a long history of creating modeling that argued against environmental mechanisms.

The purpose of the RET review is purportedly about the cost of the RET to consumers, but ...

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/renewable-energy-review-could-have-a-preordained-outcome-29730