The lights were hardly out in South Australia before politicians and lobby groups were staking out their ground in the argument over climate change and renewable energy.
Within hours of a massive storm that triggered a statewide power blackout, the Climate Council was blaming global warming for the wild weather.
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| A satellite image shows the storm over South Australia on Wednesday. Photo: Supplied |
Renewable energy sceptics inside the federal government didn't quite say "We told you so," but the message was none too subtle.
South Australia's aggressive pursuit of renewable energy that supplies about 40 per cent of the state's power had put at risk the stability not only of its own energy network but that of the rest of Australia as it pursues a low carbon emissions future.
"There are serious questions for the future of the energy system about how do we combine energy policy and climate policy," Josh Frydenberg, the federal minister responsible for energy and the environment, said.
"How do we keep the lights on?"
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce queried whether there was an over-reliance on renewable energy in South Australia.
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| Professor Will Steffen from the Climate Council. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen |
"There are real questions for the future of the national electricity network as to how we make this transition effectively," he said.
"You can't have a situation like last night."
South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill insists the lengthy outage was caused by bad weather and renewable energy was not to blame.
This is unprecedented: Weatherill. The blame game has begun after South Australia's state wide blackout with the Premier attributing it to storms, others an over reliance on renewable energy. Courtesy ABC News 24.
Independent senator Nick Xenophon is not convinced, calling for an inquiry into his state's power supply.
He wants the Australian Energy Market Commission to carry out a robust independent analysis to learn lessons from the incident and ascertain whether South Australia's energy mix made it more vulnerable to an outage.
Energy expert Andrew Stock, a member of the Climate Council, dismissed attempts to blame renewables for the blackout as opportunistic and irresponsible.
"Storms can knock out electricity networks no matter where the power supply is coming from," he said.
At the time of the blackout, 1000MW of wind power was being fed into the South Australian system.
The council warns the South Australia storm event is a sign of weather to come.
"The atmosphere is packing much more energy than 70 years ago, which contributes to the increasing intensity of such storms, " Professor Steffen said.
Intense rainfall was projected to increase in Australia and had already increased at a global level.
"This is a prelude to a disturbing future, and it's only going to get worse if we don't address climate change."
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| Sydney wakes up to grey rainy weather. |
"We will need to ask serious questions about how an entire state lost access to power, which is unacceptable for business and the rest of the community," chief executive James Pearson said.
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