Governments and Utility Companies

Australia is blessed (and cursed) will having huge reserves of coal and a review of the latest statistics clearly shows that coal remains our most common form of power generation. In the past year much has been made about the failure of the Emissions Trading Scheme and its apparent demise. This got me thinking about why Australia is so slow in taking up renewable energy. After all all states have some scheme in one form or another. All states except a net metering scheme except NSW. The role of the power generating utilities receives so little coverage in the media that one could be forgiven for thinking that they are not interested which is far from the truth.

Utility companies are for all intents and purposes, a government sanctioned monopoly. Now lets not get emotional about this as there is good reason for this. We all take the quality and reliability of our energy supplies for granted. In simple terms, the government acts on our behalf (business and residential users) to regulate the price of power (gas and electricity) and various governments have acted to introduce some form of competition in the distribution of gas and electricity which is a welcomed move.

However there is a fundamental issue at the heart of renewal energy be it solar power or wind or any of the other various forms. Up until this point and apart from some very rare instances, the utilities have been the only source of power generation. Quite understandably, their projects are big, take a long time and have very high risks. They talk in terms of wind and solar farms and are faced will all sorts of environmental objections. With solar and wind, there is a potential for any organisation or private individual to become an independent power supplier and this is a whole different ball game. It is a big challenge having to come to terms with many small independent producers instead of just a few. Neither the governments nor the utilities seem to have come up with a viable sustainable model apart from some tinkering around the edges.

Ok so if we all went out and installed some form of renewal energy device on our homes, offices and factories, the individual impact would be small but collectively done in a well coordinated fashion the small incremental watts would start adding up to mega watts. There does not however appear to be any coordinated strategy between the governments, utilities and users to make this happen collectively and what we have is haphazard uncoordinated schemes that barely limp along.

There is potential not just for individuals but for smaller companies to enter the market but this will not happen under the existing conditions. It is time we get serious about this