In this era of accelerated news cycles, one day apparently is a long time in climate change politics.
This past Wednesday, Kane Thornton, chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, began his morning warning delegates to his industry's annual summit to brace for more of the "trash" being hurled at them by opponents of renewable energy.
Climate change (and how to tackle it) is largely responsible for the highest turnover of Prime Ministers in Australia since 1945. Animation by Matt Davidson.
"As we become more successful, we become a bigger target, and we need to understand it's the price we pay for our success," he told the audience in Sydney.
By the day's end, however, the appearance of Josh Frydenberg, Australia's first federal minister for the environment and energy, had given Thornton cause to believe the battle may be about to turn.
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| Josh Frydenberg is Australia's first Federal Minister for the Environment and Energy. Photo: Jay Cronan |
"We are not talking about the economy versus the environment," he told the summit's dinner that evening. "We have to get out of that mindset.
"Other mindsets may soon be cast aside. Mark Butler, Labor's climate change and energy spokesman, praised Frydenberg as a "very energetic, talented, driven minister" who might be capable of bridging one of Australia's widest political gaps.
"The scope for bipartisanship is there on climate change," Butler told Fairfax Media on the sidelines of the summit, adding later: "For the better part of a decade, we've had this toxic division."
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| Cooling towers and smokestacks at a LaTrobe Valley power plant in Victoria. Photo: Carla Gottgens |
Butler's office also describes as "brilliant" the coordination it received from the resources ministry – then held by Frydenberg – during the caretaker period. By contrast, the relationship with the office of then environment minister Greg Hunt remained one of "trench warfare", much as it had for years.
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| Solar panel prices have dropped 80 per cent in five years. Photo: Mark Metcalfe |
"There will have to be some handshaking across the aisle, and some deal making and some close consultation in many areas of my portfolio," Frydenberg told the Wednesday dinner.
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| Clean energy investors are hoping for some policy stability. Photo: Supplied |
Although dubbed "Mr Coal" during his previous role, Frydenberg said the fuel's role would shrink, nothing that recent investment in new electricity generation in Australia had all been in renewable energy. Wind power prices had dropped by half over the past five years and solar PV prices had dived 80 per cent, and battery prices would tumble too, he said.
The current renewable energy target – for annual generation of 33,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity by 2020 – was "set in stone", he added, sparking applause from the diners.
More acclaim, though, was given to comments about the problems in South Australia that had prompted a jump in short-term wholesale electricity prices and triggered one of Frydenberg's first acts in his new ministry – to call state and territory energy ministers for a meeting on August 19.
Defying urgings from some members in his own government and sections of the media to blame the price surge on SA's relatively high dependence on renewable energy, Frydenberg instead downplayed the sector's role in the "crisis".
An ill-timed upgrading of the main power link to Victoria in mid-winter was "the main reason" for the jump, Frydenberg told ABC's Lateline. While the intermittency of renewable energy compared with baseload supplies was a factor, so was a huge jump in gas prices and a cold snap that forced up demand.
Moreover, SA's problems preceded most of the clean energy investments. Yes, short-term prices had jumped three times above the $5000 per megawatt-hour mark this year but in the first quarter of 2008, they did so more than 50 times, Frydenberg told the dinner.
"People have to understand that this volatility is not a new thing … To say it's the fault of renewables is not an accurate assessment," he said.
Frank Jotzo, deputy director of the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, said Frydenberg's comments about the energy transition and the decarbonising task "are the kinds of things that we have not really heard from the coalition previously".
However, while there may be convergence between the Coalition and Labor on the climate challenges ahead, there's still a gulf in how they would address them, Professor Jotzo said.
Labor, for instance, supports the re-introduction of a carbon price but the Coalition faces a political problem "because of the past rhetoric" opposed to such a move, he said.
Butler, too, cautioned that the next few weeks would be "critically important" for how Frydenberg and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull responded "to those trying to stymie any progress on establishing a more mature consensus".
The "real challenge" would be how to "strive for affordable, accessible, and reliable energy supply at the same time as we transition to a lower emissions future", Frydenberg said.
Greens deputy leader Larissa Waters said government policy rather than just the market would be needed to drive the necessary shifts.
"While we welcome the change in rhetoric on clean energy from warfare to acceptance, actual policy change is needed to deliver and expedite the transition our economy so needs from dirty fuels to clean, and with it the tens of thousands of jobs that we so desperately need," Senator Waters said.
For Thornton, of the Clean Energy Council, Frydenberg's comments had given his industry "real heart".
There's an emerging prospect of "a different approach and a new era of bipartisanship around clean energy and climate policy more broadly," Thornton enthused.
"It's pretty exciting, to be honest."
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