Last month I was in the far north-west of Australia. Every day for two weeks, the weather report didn't change - sunny, warm, dry, and no wind. Meanwhile, south-eastern Australia froze in icebox weather conditions on the other side of the continent.
During my absence, a perfect storm of conditions, including a cold snap, struggling aged coal-fired power generators, and the surge in power prices driven by the shortages created by the war in Ukraine, triggered the collapse of Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM).
The regulator, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO,) suspended the market-based system for 11 days and took control to avoid widespread power blackouts. AEMO, during this time, used its extraordinary powers to directly instruct electricity generators to provide supplies to plug any shortfalls.
How did it come to this in Australia? We are a wealthy country with a small population and substantial energy resources, including natural gas, coal, uranium, solar and wind. Yet we became an energy basket case for almost two weeks. The regulator even begged people and businesses to minimise their use of power.
For people who think that politics and party policies don't matter, the energy crisis is proof that it does.
The origins of the collapse of our power system in June go back to electricity generation policy failures over 50 years. In 1971, because of cost overruns, prime minister Billy McMahon cancelled the building of Australia's first nuclear power station. This was already in the early stage of construction on the NSW south coast at Jervis Bay.
If Australia had begun this transition to greenhouse gas-free nuclear power half a century ago, we would never have developed such a heavy reliance on polluting coal-fired power stations in recent decades. Moreover, Australia's current path to net-zero would have been significantly more manageable, as countries such as France, with 70 per cent nuclear energy, have shown.
Australia's June 2022 power crisis brought into sharp focus the problem it now faces as it attempts to transition from fossil fuel-dependent power to a renewable energy system.
In reality, old coal-based power stations with an ageing fleet of generators are shutting down faster than renewables can replace their capacity. Political parties can come up with whatever renewable targets they like; they are meaningless if sufficient, stable, dispatchable power is unavailable.
Additional capacity is now needed because of past energy policy missteps, such as the McMahon nuclear policy glitch. Since then, numerous prime ministers have compounded the problem by frequently changing energy policies.
This includes Howard's failure to have in place before the 2007 election his planned Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). Both party leaders, Turnbull (2009) and Rudd (2010), unsuccessfully tried to adopt similar schemes.
Between 2013 and 2022, during the "climate wars", the ATM (Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison) governments attempted to change energy and climate policy several times.
This included Abbott's Direct-Action plan, Turnbull's National Energy Guarantee (NEG) and Morrison's Technology Investment Road Map. Predictably, the main effect of this "chopping and changing" policy was to reduce business confidence in the energy sector.
Under-investment in new power technology was the outcome.
AEMO has just published its integrated system plan for the supply of affordable and reliable energy that could achieve Australia's net-zero target by 2050 and avoid a repeat of last month's energy crisis.
AEMO warns that Australia will need to reverse its under-investment in the power system and spend an additional $12 billion to achieve our energy goals over the next 30 years.
To achieve this will require a ninefold increase in grid-scale solar and wind capacity, a threefold increase in firming capacity (dispatchable storage, gas, and hydro) and a fivefold increase in distributed solar power.
The reality is meeting Australia's 2030-2050 climate targets is now utterly reliant on appropriate technologies being developed in a timely way.
Given that the critical missing technology is large-scale batteries to turn our current 24 per cent electricity renewables into stable dispatchable power, this is unlikely to occur.
Many battery projects are at an early stage, and completing sufficient high-capacity batteries to support rapidly expanding renewables is a huge challenge.
With new technology, the transition of our energy system away from fossil fuels to meet our 2050 net-zero commitment is possible.
However, given Australia's meandering energy and climate policy track record, will we have the sustained focus to achieve this in time and keep the lights on?
