Essay by Eric Worrall
Electricity prices are rising despite recent political promises not to, and renewable energy investments have stalled despite the government’s desperate efforts to attract new capital.
‘Significant Slowdown’: Alan Finkel Quits Victoria’s SEC
Patrick Durkin Deputy Editor-in-Chief of BOSS
June 23, 2023 – 5:00 p.m
Former chief scientist Alan Finkel has given up his role as adviser to Victoria’s state electricity commission, the organization’s chief executive has warned Energy prices will rise despite campaign promises by Victorian Prime Minister Daniel Andrews the SEC would lower prices.
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Chris Miller, appointed as the SEC’s interim CEO, conceded on Thursday that the energy transition would lead to a sharp rise in energy prices, despite Mr Andrews’ election claims.
“We know that Achieving 95 percent renewable energy in Victoria will require a significant increase in billed tariffs‘ he told the conference.
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However, Mr Miller cited warnings from Australian energy market operator Daniel Westerman’s CEO and data from the Clean Energy Council showing: “a profound and recent slowdown in new financial commitments for large user generation projects”.
“As a matter of fact, in the first quarter of this year there were no new financial commitments across the country despite a strong project pipeline.”
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Read more: https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/profound-slowdown-alan-finkel-quits-victoria-s-sec-20230622-p5dijw
Part of this slowdown may be due to the perception that China’s economy is on the verge of crashing. Australia is heavily dependent on the Chinese economy.
The problem China is grappling with is that for decades Chinese local officials have engaged in a Ponzi scheme, borrowing heavily to meet sham economic growth targets and squandering the borrowed money on useless infrastructure projects — worth at least $18 trillion US dollars in outstanding Chinese local government debt. Much of this money was spent on purchasing raw materials from Australia to build all this pointless infrastructure.
But now China is suddenly running out of money thanks to its crazy Covid lockdown. The pyramid scheme is now fully revealed.
The outlook for Australian minerals exports to China looks a bit uncertain.
We can only speculate as to why this debt-fueled Chinese Ponzi scheme has grown to the point of threatening the stability of the Chinese state. I suspect this remained secret for so long because when local officials were promoted to Central Committee posts on the basis of their feigned economic successes, their top priority was to conceal their personal financial misconduct. They could not expose their former subordinates who perpetuated the Ponzi scheme without exposing their own misdeeds. This is likely to have created a web of lies and cover-ups stretching from local governments to the Central Committee.
In Western countries, a free press usually covers and debunk such public sector financial disasters long before they become national disasters, although the Western press has arguably been asleep at work lately, at least when it comes to dealing with Democratic political scandals .
The dire financial crisis in China has put Australia under pressure. Most current federal and state governments are committed to massive spending on greening Australia’s economy, but who in their right mind would want to lend money to a country that could be on the verge of losing its biggest customer? As interest rates rise and the Chinese economy falters, companies across the country are tightening their belts in anticipation of the impending crash.
As for China, the only step in China’s strategy is to create a distraction so big that people don’t realize that their government has wasted all their money.
Whatever China decides, none of it bodes well for the Australian economy.
Of course, the fast approach of China’s export crisis hasn’t stopped our financially illiterate politicians from spending borrowed money like water and pushing ahead with their Nut Zero plans. They still destroy real power plants and offer up the remnants of Australia’s manufacturing industry like a creepy Aztec sacrifice, perhaps hoping the gods of green energy fantasies will smile at their mindless humiliation.
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