Comment by nandomrumber

Snowy 2.0 isn’t an electricity generator, it’s pumped hydro. It relies on electricity being generated elsewhere.

The governments plan is bait and switch. Make it seem lucrative at the start, and then squeeze everyone who committed on better terms by ratcheting up the fees and ratcheting down the feed-in tariffs.

Alternatively, we could have built a handful of big combined cycle gas plants, close to the retiring coal plants to take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure, and legislated a cheap rate for gas from the gas extraction industry, and Australians could have had all-you-can-use electricity for $40 a month.

But instead of that, we’ve committed at least a couple of generations to virtue signalling, like Australia’s GHG emissions make any difference.

We’re happy to export the gas and coal, and uranium, so India and China can have cheap power to run industrial economies.

Cheap power comes not from residential customers managing their time of use, but from the excess of industrialisation. And we’re rapidly making it cost prohibitive to manufacture anything in Australia, or even run a restaurant. So that people in far away lands can have better lives.

Make us look pretty stupid to be honest.