Technology innovation is one of the Biden administration’s most powerful tools for accelerating progress on climate change. Recent successes in renewable energy and batteries show how this can work.
Waiting in line in freezing rain to fill propane tanks in Houston, Texas, Feb. 17, 2021.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
The Texas electric power market is designed to give energy companies incentive to sell electricity at the lowest possible cost. That focus helps explain why it collapsed during a historic cold wave.
A policy that aims to reshape the electricity sector needs to be judged on its numbers. But the lack of public modelling from the Energy Security Board makes it impossible for analysts to do this.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull still can’t seem to distance himself from coal.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
The Turnbull government is still tying itself in knots over the future of coal, as literally decades of policy turmoil on climate and energy continue to roll on.
Information about discounts will be simpler, but you’ll still have to do the legwork to shop around.
AAP Image/Julian Smith
The government’s deal with electricity retailers to provide simple information to customers about their discounts and bills is a welcome step, but doesn’t cut to the heart of the power price issue.
What are the key policy challenges facing the new Turnbull government in terms of economic growth and budgets, cities, transport, energy, school education, higher education and health?
The UK’s first new nuclear power station since the 1990s is coming at the expense of renewable energy and leaving us unnervingly in hock to the Chinese.
Bringing down over-investment in electricity networks is a complicated area for regulators.
Flickr/Indigo Skies Photography
James Whitmore, The Conversation and Michael Hopkin, The Conversation
The federal government’s keenly awaited Energy White Paper is firmly focused on cutting prices and red tape, and boosting industry competitiveness - and less so on climate change and renewable energy.
NSW Treasurer Andrew Constance with the 2014 budget. An economic analysis has found electricity revenues have been crucial to keeping the NSW budget in surplus in recent years.
Paul Miller/AAP
We found that without state-owned electricity revenues, the NSW Coalition government would have struggled to avoid recording deficits in every budget since its election in 2011.
Money spent on helping consumers reduce demand means less money spent on substations and other infrastructure.
Bidgee/Wikimedia Commons
Incentives for cutting peak power demand are cheaper than building ever more infrastructure and sending power bills ever higher. The industry has a chance to embrace this new approach - but will it?