{"id":374311,"date":"2025-04-09T10:23:27","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T08:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=374311"},"modified":"2025-04-09T10:23:29","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T08:23:29","slug":"instead-of-8b-in-rebates-labor-could-have-built-gas-and-coal-plants-and-actually-made-cheap-electricity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=374311","title":{"rendered":"Instead of $8b in rebates, Labor could have built gas and coal plants and actually made cheap electricity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From JoNova<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Jo Nova<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Today\u2019s magic trick is how to make electricity look cheaper by taking money from children<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Tomorrow \u2014 we pretend to control inflation by printing more money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Labor Party tried to control the weather with our power stations and promised us it be would cheaper. For some reason that every engineer can explain, they damaged the electricity grid and electricity got more expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to hide this, they have to borrow money to pay us so they can pretend electricity is slightly less expensive, and inflation figures are not so scary. Since our children will pay off that debt one day somehow, the Labor Government is nicking the money from babies and telling us how compassionate they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cThis is hip pocket help for households, and it recognises that people are still under pressure,\u201d Treasurer Jim Chalmers told the ABC.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWithout our assistance and without our interventions, electricity would be more expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

More expensive than what Jim?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next magical  $150 electricity rebate to households will cost $1.8 billion dollars<\/a>. Think of it as a performance art, a piece of theatre, or a band-aid on a gaping wound. For Australians this will be the third year<\/a> of rebates, so the total cost, respectively, is $3b<\/a> in 2023 , plus $3.5b<\/a> in 2024, plus $1.8b for a total of $8.3 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s no intellectual merit in the rebate, it\u2019s not like it\u2019s an incentive scheme for homeowners to \u201cstay alive\u201d or use more or less electricity. The sole point of the rebate is to hide the failure of the governments energy plan. It\u2019s to bury the market signal which is screaming \u201cbad, bad, bad\u201d so the Labor Government can do more of the same \u201cbad things\u201d that got us into trouble in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The PM also thinks giving away money reduces inflation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the cost of living measure would put downward pressure on inflation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We wonder why any country ever suffered inflation when the solution is so easy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

$8 billion in Rebates could have made electricity cheaper for 30 years<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately a \u201crebate\u201d doesn\u2019t reduce real electricity prices or inflation, except in advertising and ABC news (sorry, I repeat myself). If the government is going to incur a debt on our behalf, it could have used this $8 billion to buy at least four new gas plants and an advanced efficient coal plant, any or all of which would have reduced the price of electricity for 30 years to come (or 60 years in the case of a coal plant).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For reference the cost of the 660MW Hunter Power Project is expected to be around $1b<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China started building 92GW of coal plants last year<\/a>, which is twice as much coal power as Australia has<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow \u2014 we pretend to control inflation by printing more money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":374315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818216,691818656,691820781,691822776],"class_list":["post-374311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-australia","tag-electricity","tag-electricity-grid","tag-expensive","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1znh","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":297164,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=297164","url_meta":{"origin":374311,"position":0},"title":"Electric cars suffer \u2018unsustainable\u2019 depreciation in secondhand market","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"01\/19\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Electric cars\u00a0lose as much as half of their value after just three years on the road, new figures show, as the rate of depreciation far outstrips petrol equivalents.","rel":"","context":"In \"electric vehicles (EVs)\"","block_context":{"text":"electric vehicles (EVs)","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=electric-vehicles-evs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/image-331.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/image-331.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/image-331.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/image-331.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":414021,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=414021","url_meta":{"origin":374311,"position":1},"title":"Amping Up Datacenter Demagoguery re: Rising Electricity Costs","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"11\/20\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Left unchecked, early November 2025 will go down as the Rubicon when datacenters became the scapegoats for higher electricity costs. 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