Curses! Wind and solar ramp-up, foiled again…

Australia’s RE obsessed PM, Malcolm Turnbull has committed political Hara-Kiri with his brazen push to double subsidies to wind and solar.

The National Energy Guarantee is being pitched as a policy that will slash Australian retail power bills, notwithstanding that it effectively increases the current annual Renewable Energy Target (currently 33,000 GWh for wind and large-scale solar) from around 25% of electricity demand, to a figure in excess of 42%; all meant to be satisfied by wind and solar – and a few mythical mega-batteries and water pumped uphill – aka Turnbull’s ‘Snowy 2.0’.

It’s a well-worn truism that the patrician and aloof Malcolm Turnbull is hopelessly out of touch with Australians (apart from merchant bankers with million-dollar views of Sydney Harbour). However, in the last fortnight or so the embattled PM has shown that he’s also totally out of touch with…