Essay by Eric Worrall
Queensland’s lengthy reigning premier Annastacia Palaszczuk could have minimize and run within the face of adverse polls and a looming election, however her successor’s plan to speed up coal job losses will assist?
‘My job to persuade them’: Steven Miles is aware of local weather change is coming for Queensland
Unique: New premier hopes to navigate path to transition in disaster-prone state that makes billions from coal
Andrew Messenger Solar 24 Dec 2023 01.00 AEDT
Even for an incoming state premier, Steven Miles has had a busy first week.
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Miles had already got down to make local weather change one of many themes of his first week in workplace, even earlier than ex-Tropical Cyclone Jasper flooded the state’s north. Two Fridays working, the pupil of Al Gore has rolled out main inexperienced bulletins: doubling the state’s emissions discount goal to 75% by 2035 in his first announcement as premier and banning new fuel developments from the state’s far western river programs, an election promise relationship to 2015.
Miles is keen to construct a consensus across the economics of the transition: a hyperlink between metropolis and bush, proper and left.
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Miles hopes he has discovered the reply.
“It’s my job to persuade [people] that addressing local weather change isn’t a risk to jobs, it’s really a option to defend jobs,” Miles says.
“Should you take a look at the high-emitting industries in locations like Gladstone and Townsville, they’re going to lose their international clients in the event that they proceed to be reliant on such excessive ranges of fossil gas power.
“So the easiest way we will defend these jobs is by offering them with renewable power in order that they will promote their merchandise into markets that more and more need inexperienced, aluminium, inexperienced metal, inexperienced merchandise. And equally, if we get it proper, we will additionally entice new industries.
“Up to now, they we’re drawn to our low-cost, plentiful fossil fuel-based power. Sooner or later we can have low-cost, plentiful, firmed renewable power.”
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The issue with this plan is affordable, plentiful, firmed renewable power doesn’t exist.
Batteries are impossibly costly. Accessible dam websites are approach too distant and wouldn’t present sufficient capability. And if the plan is to agency utilizing pure fuel or coal, there is no such thing as a must construct the renewables – it might all the time be cheaper simply to construct the pure fuel or coal, and neglect the renewables.
Internet Zero can’t and won’t occur, with present know-how decisions.
Sadly Queensland’s mainstream political opponents, the Liberal Nationwide Celebration, are additionally dedicated to Internet Zero, simply on a barely slower timeframe – so they’re virtually as unhealthy.
Why is my residence state of Queensland cursed with such a parade of financial fools? If worldwide demand for coal drops, the business will cut back and realign by itself. There isn’t any want to speak coal down and attempt to kill it off.
The one hope of political sanity in Queensland, Queensland can also be residence to One Nation and Katter’s Australian Celebration. Katter is aligned with distant rural areas, and helps ethanol mandates, however in addition they oppose emissions reductions. One Nation has a sound local weather coverage. Each have extra palatable power concepts than any of the present mainstream events.
On the worldwide stage, there is no such thing as a proof of a long run drop in coal demand, fairly the other. The IEA retains predicting a drop in demand on the idea of the anticipated Internet Zero transition, however in 2022 and 2023 coal use reached all time highs, and 2024 demand can also be anticipated to be excessive. Not one of the renewable power programs being created by inexperienced obsessed governments are delivering. The one risk to long run coal demand is nuclear power, which loved a lift in profile and recognition on the latest COP28.
Personally I anticipate a major quick to medium time period drop in demand, however not due to Internet Zero. The economically incompetent Xi Jinping Chinese language Communist regime is doing each mistaken transfer you possibly can think about within the face of their realestate sector collapse, their authorities is pouring cash into nicely related however already failed industries, and doubling down on ineffective infrastructure initiatives – all of the failed insurance policies which made the 2008 GFC so painful within the west, and extra. However no one can predict when that circus act will come unstuck.
