Net zero on energy promises

As we wind down to the dawn of a new year, it's worth recapping how Labor has delivered "net zero" on some major energy promises.

At the time of writing, there are still a couple of weeks for PM Anthony Albanese to see out his pledge repeated about 100 times before the 2022 election that power prices would fall by $275 in 2025. Instead, Santa's Christmas sack contains a message from the Grinch, Treasurer Jim Chalmers, ending federal rebates. At the same time inflation is on the rise and indications are that interest rates are also likely to rise again, delivering another hit to Aussies struggling with mortgages, rising rents, food and fuel prices, all linked back to their energy bills.

The reality is average household power prices in some states have increased by about $1200, or much more for businesses struggling to stay afloat. Many have already pulled the plug or departed our shores.

No worries though if you are a major consumer such as Rio Tinto’s Tomago aluminium smelter or the struggling Whyalla steel works, our government has billions in the Santa Sack to subsidise "affordable" power despite a national debt about to soar past the trillion-dollar mark. In this case "affordable" does not necessarily equate to "reliable" with the increasing rush to intermittent, unreliable and costly renewables, so the years ahead should prove interesting.

For those Green Dream Believers who still think an almost total reliance on renewables is the answer, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)  has just warned that coal generators will have to remain part of the Australian landscape until 2049 - which will leave only a year to deliver on Albo and Energy Minister Chris Bowen's fabled "net zero by 2050". Good luck with that, and with reaching their promised "82 percent renewables" by 2030, seeing the current level is around 40 percent.

 Australia is hell-bent on destroying the environment by clearing native forests, flattening mountain tops and ruining arable farmland to establish mainly Chinese-sourced eye-sores that will all need replacing in another 15 to 20 years, creating huge disposal problems. We now know some wind turbines contain big quantities of asbestos in their braking components, along with poisonous BPA contaminants that can leach into the air and groundwater.

Meanwhile, China is building a new coal fired power plant about every week along with expanding renewables and nuclear energy. According to Google's AI, it exceeds our annual CO2 emissions in just 12 days. Australia remains the only OECD nation with a crazy ideological ban on nuclear energy, while close allies such as the US and the UK are embracing the latest technology including small modular reactors, or repowering old plants such as Three Mile Island to meet the huge energy demand of AI data centres.

Albo and Bowen apparently think we can run new data centres that will consume more power than a New York skyscraper with “The Windmills of their Minds” and back-up batteries which won’t see them through the day when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

Will they manage to get just one “green hydrogen” energy project off the ground and running to meet another pledge to make Australia a “green hydrogen superpower” backed by $2billion in subsidies? Oops, quoting Google’s AI overview again: “Reports indicate that dozens of green hydrogen projects in Australia have been mothballed, cancelled, or significantly delayed. One analysis from early 2025 noted nearly 100 proposals, of which 61 individual projects had been ‘archived’.”

Australia produces just one percent of world global CO2 emissions, so despite Albo and Bowen's dire predictions, if we cut all our emissions to absolute zero at further huge cost to our economy, it would have practically zero effect on world climate. Former chief scientist Alan Finkel admitted that to a senate hearing several years ago before trying to walk it back after copping flak from climate catastrophists, of which there are many.

Currently CO2 makes up a tiny 0.04 percent of the world's atmosphere which is at the lower end of the geological time scale. Past eras have shown levels more than 10 times higher, when plants and coral reefs thrived, such as during the Ordovician period.

It is an essential trace gas for all plants and animals so be careful what you wish for - if levels drop below 0.02 percent, life as we know it would cease to exist.