Does your bank invest in fossil fuels?

[Rolf Latham]

But there used to be a time in the history of Australia when governments saw we had to make a transition to cheaper sources of energy production and distribution and put in place the necessary subsidies for that to happen, so the incumbents could be put out to pasture.

Like the snowy river scheme I guess............ or previous to that ?

ta
rolf

 

[HiEquity]

Like the snowy river scheme I guess............ or previous to that ?

ta
rolf

Absolutely - and centralising the power network while taking it to hundreds of thousands of farmers and towns in regional areas who had previously relied on their good old diesel generator. Most farmers have no idea of the massive cross subsidy that goes into keeping them connected to the grid. When a new three phase power line in outback Australia costs up to half a million per km to build and there are kms between customers it doesn't take long to work out that there are much cheaper ways of doing things - for everyone.

The reason for this is that building power lines is labour intensive while solar panels and batteries aren't. And labour is expensive these days...

But change would require disrupting the status quo... so we let the monopolists keep at it. After all, the governments who make the rules own the monopolies so they are hardly going to change all this on their own now? To do so would decimate their balance sheets. So we all pay instead...