Australia can have a net-zero electricity system that is affordable and reliable. Yet we are on a path to a less reliable and less affordable alternative.
Yet, more supply that is intermittent and widely distributed doesn’t only bring lower emissions, it also means the basic nature of the market is changing.There are increasing concerns that the current market design may not deliver enough new investment in generation, transmission, and storage to deal with this changing reality.
More recently, coal closure and its replacement with solar and wind have been driven by federal and state renewable energy policies. Ministers and the market bodies introduced a succession of policy and rule changes to deal with threats to resource adequacy. Signal the introduction of an enduring carbon price, explicit or implicit, for the energy sector, to guide future investments and gas plant closures.
The result would be effective renationalisation of the energy system, with higher costs and greater risks to reliability than the first choice.