Extract from ABC News
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says the Government's focus on a gas-led economic recovery is "a fantasy" and "crazy stuff" that should not be part of the Coalition's energy policy.
Key points:
- The Government is pushing for a "gas-led" recovery from the coronavirus recession
- Malcolm Turnbull says the Government's focus on gas is "crazy stuff"
- Mr Turnbull was rolled by his colleagues after a fight over energy policy
The Federal Government is reshaping the nation's approach to reducing carbon emissions, turning the focus to backing investment in a select few technologies and supporting heavy industry to cut emissions.
Energy Minister Angus Taylor on Tuesday released a Technology Investment Roadmap that will guide $18 billion of Commonwealth investments towards five priority technologies over the next decade.
The five technologies are hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, soil carbon, storage options and "low-carbon" steel and aluminium production.
The roadmap identifies coal, gas, solar and wind energy as "mature" technologies, which are not on the priority list.
The Government has also threatened to intervene and build a new gas power plant in NSW unless industry can meet its demands for more reliable power, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been promoting a gas-led recovery out of the coronavirus recession.
But Mr Turnbull said gas was an expensive fuel and should not be heavily invested in.
"To say that will lead your energy revolution and cheaper energy is a fantasy, and the reason it is a fantasy is because there is no cheap gas on the east coast. It costs too much to extract."
In a separate interview with the ABC, Mr Turnbull accused Mr Taylor of "misleading" the public with his claims about gas.
He said no amount of "patronising mansplaining" would change the fact gas was not as cheap as his former colleagues were claiming.
Energy policy ended Turnbull's leadership
Energy has long been a policy area which puts the ideological differences within the Coalition on full display and has proven deeply challenging for leaders in the past.
The new energy roadmap is a reversal of the Coalition's last attempt to set an energy policy, the Turnbull government's technology-neutral National Energy Guarantee, which would have contained a commitment for the electricity sector to reduce 2005 emission levels by 26 per cent by 2030.
Internal party conflict over that policy ultimately ended Mr Turnbull's prime ministership in 2018, and saw Mr Morrison take the reins.
Mr Turnbull criticised his successor for refusing to commit to a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 despite describing it as "achievable".
Mr Turnbull said Mr Morrison's reluctance to commit to the 2050 target was at odds with the Paris agreement, which aims for climate neutrality.
"The idea that you crash the economy by cutting your emissions is just again, that's ideology taking the place of what should be sound environmental and economic policy," he said.
"There is a reason just about every other developed country in the world apart from [Donald] Trump's America is taking a very different approach."
Roadmap more of a vague shopping list, Opposition says
Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers described Mr Turnbull's intervention as "insightful".
"The absence of a coherent, overarching energy policy is costing Australia jobs when jobs aren't exactly thick on the ground, but also costing us the opportunity to get more, cheaper and cleaner energy into the system," he said.
Mr Chalmers said the technology roadmap was more of a "vaguely interesting shopping list than it was a comprehensive plan for energy".
Energy Minister Angus Taylor told the National Press Club on Tuesday the Government's plan provided a path to achieving net zero carbon emissions without locking in a target.
"The goals are clear. We have to bring those technologies that can really move the dial into parity with the higher-emitting alternatives."
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