It’s hard to overstate how badly Tasmania is getting renewables wrong.
The politics is toxic. Deniers haunt the halls of Parliament, corporate donations and lobbying are hidden from us, and government focus groups write motherhood statements in place of genuine energy, climate or jobs policy. Actual policy is largely outsourced to ‘mates’, ‘the market’, and the PR teams of corporate interests.
As a result, we have plenty of spin about ‘200% renewables’ and ‘billions in investment and thousands of jobs’, but no modelling or planning to back any of that, no restrictions on where companies can build wind farms and transmission lines, and no recognition within government that the climate and extinction crises also present opportunities to provide genuine and sustainable jobs and growth for Tasmanians.
Meanwhile, communities are being railroaded, councils are being secretly lobbied and won over, tourism operators and anyone concerned for wildlife are being ignored, hundreds of kilometres of proposed new transmission lines will devastate forests and farms, and insurance companies are reassessing what increases they’ll need to impose on us as fire risk increases from those power lines.
Bottom line, our government and TasNetworks are subsidising foreign investors to exploit our wind resources. These renewables companies will send the energy to the mainland and the profits offshore. That’s the whole ‘renewables plan’ – let companies do what they will, with taxpayer backing, hope there’s a few jobs spraying herbicide under the power lines, and congratulate TasNetworks for planning a 20th-century era electricity network which TasNetworks themselves directly profit from. We bear the costs and get nothing in return; they take the money and run.
But! Here’s how action on climate, action on the extinction crisis, and action on sustainably boosting our state economy, could achieve the goals the current government claim they’re pursuing. In two words…
Good planning.
Broadly, planning should take a problem-solving approach – assessing issues according to evidence rather than ideology or self interest, having awareness of context and for whom one is planning, using wide consultation to refine issues and possible solutions, then having a system to check if solutions are working or not.
These simple steps, which politicians claim they follow, aren’t possible in the current ubiquitous soft-corruption of our democracies, where elections and favourable legislation are increasingly bought and paid for by the wealthy and well-connected.
But, returning to good planning, a fundamental question has to be asked: who are we planning for and what do we want as outcomes?
I contend that all government planning, at every level, should plan fairly and equitably for the benefit of all Tasmanian people. All planning should include climate science and the extinction crisis as foundational guiding data points. All planning should be transparent, open and available for democratic scrutiny.
Dissent should not be demonised, dismissed or criminalised. People should always be included in decision-making, even when we think they are wrong. We should recognise there are powerful vested interests who will fight tooth and nail against good planning. Those vested interests must be called out and held to account.
In regard to renewables, planning should nationalise power generation and distribution, and make power derived here benefit the people who live here. Power is a public utility, and its generation and distribution should be owned by the people of Tasmania, and not exist merely to profit foreign investors, and leave our power owned and controlled by another country.
As part of action on climate, energy policy isn’t limited to just how we make electricity. Energy-use efficiency, and sustainable and value-adding local manufacturing are critical to the whole. If we’ve got jobs, we can afford action on climate.
Niche solutions to different energy needs and consumption patterns are available now; monolithic and inefficient for-profit power grids such as TasNetworks are promoting are a redundant 20th-century solution that does not fit with 21st century needs.
Transport, whether personal, commercial or agricultural, must be a functional part of renewables production and energy use planning. Cheaper power should subsidise the transition to low-emissions across every sector. Ongoing communication and problem-solving in and across each sector is critical.
Letting companies send our wind energy offshore is a process that scars our farms, forests, properties and views, without any recompense for us. Independent analysis shows that what Tasmania is planning now is unsustainable, won’t benefit us, and will harm our communities, wilderness and economy. The ‘jobs and growth’ mantra is a lie, but it doesn’t have to be if we simply tell our decision-makers to stop, go back to the drawing board and perform the good planning we’re all asking for.
Good planning will get social licence; jobs and growth will happen quicker. The current plan is an economic and environmental disaster that we pay for. Tasmanians deserve better.
