“A mere child, full of rage, obsessed with doom, totally devoid of any practical solutions – but here she was lecturing the world on how to fuel their 21st century economies.” – Andrew Bolt from the Murdoch Press in Melbourne.
“I shouldn’t be up here, I should be back at school on the other side of the ocean …” – Greta Thunberg at the 2019 UN climate action summit in New York.
Last night (23 August 2022) I attended the Royal Geographical Society of QLD rooms in Spring Hill. There was a Geography in Conversation session with Trevor Berrill, an alternative energy engineer, David Shankey, the Director General of Department of Energy and Public Works (Energy Division), and Paul Simshauser, the CEO of Powerlink, a government owned corporation that manages Queensland’s electricity transmission system.
All three were highly qualified. Perhaps the most impressive qualifications were held by Paul Simhauser who has a PhD in economics from the University of Queensland and is a member of the University of Cambridge prestigious Energy Policy Research Group. After the moderator read out the Professor’s formidable qualifications, Paul Simshauser joked: “After hearing that introduction I can’t wait to hear what I have to say”.
Why would such a highly qualified person be in charge of a government corporation that manages poles and wires? Why is he paid over $800,000 per annum? Why not have the wires underground? Well, Simshauser’s post (no pun intended) has become extremely political in recent years because of the escalating cost of electricity. Simshauser was brought into government from AGL, one of Australia’s largest carbon emitters, and took over the director general’s job of energy in Qld before he moved to Powerlink, displacing a long term public servant in the process.
Another presenter, David Shankey, now occupies the DG position formerly held by Simshauser. Shankey later privately boasted that they found another job for Simshauser’s predecessor in SEQ Water. Such condescension to senior public servant of over 38 years by a johhny-come-lately. This is the revolving door of public/private enterprise, not only in the Energy portfolio, but across the public service. Both sides of government have politicised the public service. Both men replaced more senior public servants. Shankey is a lawyer by trade, so why is he the Director General in an arena occupied by Engineers? Even more curious is that he served as an ALP political staffer and has limited experience in the public service administration. He work as a journal for Channel 7 quotes Bill Gates as one of his main influences. So what does he know about energy? Very little from his performance at the talk. He deferred to Trevor Berrill’s superior knowledge of engineering, energy and electricity. His Linked In account claims David is “experienced in political and administrative workings of Government as a Senior Advisor to three Ministers and the Premier of Queensland for the past six years.” We asked about energy efficiency he brushed it aside until he was reminded that the energy market itself has announced its own failure.
Price
The graph below tells the story of price crisis.
On the crisis
David Shankey gave many reasons for the increased price of electricity: everything from change of federal government, the Ukraine war and the Callide 4 explosion which took out a key power station in QLD. This is all smokescreen from a spin doctor. There was an explosion at Callide in the central Queensland coal-fired power station in May 2021 that triggered mass power outages state-wide, from the NSW border to north of Cairns (https://youtu.be/svgLqcmv9n8 ). He is there to help manage crises like this not to ensure they do not happen.
David Shankey was concerned that there is little competition in regional QLD because 700,000 people receive electricity from one retailer. David Shankey also said that there are ‘supply chain issues’ with China. So who is responsible for creating those tensions? Shankey said the PM and the US Ambassador, Caroline Kennedy, have been discussing Australia’s dependence on China. Australia that is without a domestic manufacturing industry relies on heavily China for supply of both solar panels and for batteries. There is only one manufacturer of solar panels in Australia yet he boasted we are the greatest user of solar energy in the world.
These price and supply crises are all market driven in an area that is an essential service. Electricity as a commodity has become a human right. Yet trading in the electricity system was deregulated (code for privatised) in 1998. The AEMO which controls the national grid from Port Augusta to Cairns declared a few weeks ago that the electricity market had collapsed. It was forced to embrace emergency regulatory powers to make sure the grid did not fall over. In some of his research papers Paul Simshauser sheets home the blame to government regulation being responsible for increased electricity prices. This is not the case. All the evidence points towards a failure of the neoliberal experiment in energy, a collapse of the market because of privatisation, gold plating and profiteering.
Rich and Poor
I asked Professor Simshauser where he obtained his evidence that the rich use less electricity than the poor. The good professor said that his department has all the Bureau of Statistics and Census data, and monitors the street addresses of the people consuming electricity. Cheryl from RENEW fired back: “how do you know if they are poor?” The professor claims he has all the data on how we live and how much we earn. He knows if we are pensioners or on benefits, knows how many people live in each house and can trace electricity use during the day. During my many years in the Tax Office (1987 – 2003) never once did I witness a Commissioner of Taxation willing to release income information to other government departments. I witnessed first hand tax officers refusing a Director General of Social Security such information. Professor Simshauser said he would reply to my question in writing; however, in words, his answer was squarely challenged by Trevor Berrill who pointed to studies of far greater energy use by wealthy people in the eastern suburbs of Sydney in comparison to people in the poorer western suburbs. Poor people have refrigerators, some rich people have whole cold rooms.
Instead of answering my question outlining evidence for his claim that rich people are using less electricity than poor people, he sent me this paper On the Inequity of Flat-rate Electricity Tariffs by Paul Simshauser and David Downer. In it he describes an energy market death spiral. If Queensland continues to use coal fired power to produce 80% of its electricity we may well see a death spiral. But not the one the good professor means. His paper is concerned about price, not about climate change.
It is clear that it is the countries with the highest standard of living that produce most of the carbon emissions contributing to climate change.
Energy Efficiency
I also asked David Shankey why he played down the need for energy efficiency, the need for which had been highlighted by Trevor Berrill.
During the conversation, long-time environmentalist, Jan McNicoll, insisted that the managers of the state’s energy market provide clear undertakings for reduced carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels. Simshauser said that the state is committed to zero emissions by 2050. McNicoll understandably said this was too long to wait. I might add that not a single carbon emission target been met in the last 20 years.
I observed that there were very few young people in the audience of about 40 people. I saw only two people under 30. Both Simshauser and Shankey were younger than most of their audience.
It was left to one of the oldest in the room, Trevor Berrill, to make a plea for increased energy efficiency and a return of electricity generation and supply to public ownership. Berrill has been making these arguments for as long as i have known him, which is over 40 years. Both Simhauser and Shankey said that they knew Trevor Berrill. David Shankey said “when I first met Trevor Berrill his ideas were at the fringe and now they have become mainstream.” That was in 2015.
Sadly, Trevor Berrill’s pleas have fallen on deaf ears.
So what does it take to bring energy to serve the interests of people. Only 28% of electricity produced is consumed by people, the remaining 72% is my mining, industry and businesses. They and the class that support them want to own the electricity but they also do not want to prices to be high. They do their best to make ordinary people pay for electricity suppl and to build infrastructure and then they press government to privatise it. Premier Anna Bligh was chucked out of office because she tried to sell off the electricity grid. The Labor Party had already sold Qld Rail. Reformists have struggled to bring the rogue capitalists under control. It is doubtful that climate change can be stopped under capitalism.
Both Shankey and Simshauser are paid a lot of money by government get the energy electricity system working properly. From their talk at Geography in Conversation they appear to have failed. Neither of them appear to have a prepared speech which systematically addresses the subject. That was left to Trevor Berrill. What is worse, they are apologists for a market gone wrong.
Thanks are due to the people who asked intelligent questions like how do we reach a compromise between agriculture and solar farms so that the little arable land we have in Australia can continue to produce good quality food.
Many thanks to the hard working organisers at the Royal Geographical Society for putting on the supper and the talk and thanks to all the presenters.
The talk given by Trevor Berrill is below. The other presenters refused to have their talks recorded. They spoke of the cuff and did not appear to have a prepared speech. This was very disappointing.
Ian Curr
24 August 2022
One thought on “Energy – a conversation about the social democratic response to neo-liberalism”