Energising the Liberals

Nuclear power is promising. However, the first plant will not be available before the mid-2030s, while nuclear power may not have a significant role in electricity generation before the 2050s.

Coal will be critical in the meantime.

Second, recognise that wind and solar energy cannot produce baseload electricity, even with large-scale battery support, an impossibly expensive way of overcoming renewables' intermittency.

In addition, they are high cost, with retail electricity prices having increased twice as much as overall prices since 2000.

Furthermore, wind and solar farms are leading to increasing conflicts with farmers and others over land use and the environmental problems associated with them (e.g. bird deaths, how to dispose of used wind turbines and solar panels).

The best Liberal policy in this area would be to commit to phasing out government support for wind and solar power, including subsidies, running at $10 billion a year and steadily increasing under Labor. The next best policy would be for them to say as little as possible in favour of renewables.

Third, they should abandon the target of Net Zero emissions – it is a pipe dream entailing a political and economic transformation of Australia that would be destructive and serve no good purpose.

Do the Liberals want to see whole industries, including coal and natural gas, destroyed? And thousands of protesting farmers driving tractors down the main streets of our capital cities?

Fourth, the Liberal Party could recognise that natural gas' main role in electricity generation is for peak-load power (required to meet temporary jumps in demand), not baseload power, for which it is more expensive.

In addition, natural gas is in short supply in the eastern states, a result particularly of the:

• NSW Liberal government's decision in 2014, only partly relaxed since, to ban onshore gas exploration.
• Northern Territory's effective ban on hydraulic fracturing until this year.
• Federal Labor's imposition of natural gas price caps in the eastern states.
• Victorian Labor government's planned phasing-out of natural gas.

The NSW and Northern Territory actions have seriously delayed exploration and production in their areas of responsibility, as have natural gas price caps. The onshore production in Victoria, for example, is effectively outlawed.