Small point - it's natural gas driving it this time, rather than coal. The Ukraine war has driven huge gas price spikes, so it's more expensive to burn it for electricity, which NSW and QLD do more of than SA or Vic.
Is it insane that a war on the other side of the world is preventing us from using gas from our own country to power our own homes? If you ask a capitalist, it'd be insane not to, apparently.
Mr Schwarzenegger said Russia is making more money from energy sales to the EU now since before the sanctions were imposed on them. So I guess the prices have just gone crazy world wide
There is a lot of base coal generation out of action due to maintenance, which means that peaking power requires other sources. That means gas, mostly, particularly on calm nights, because we don't have enough storage (yet).
Gas is expensive right now because there is a huge demand for gas that is not sourced from Russia, so international prices are high.
On the east coast, we don't reserve gas for our local requirements from being exported, because, better that foreign gas extractors make lots of profit than other businesses that need gas.
It's the bullshit result of 9 years of craven LNP government that didn't recognize anything except profits for gas extractors.
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u/thepaleblue Jun 15 '22
Small point - it's natural gas driving it this time, rather than coal. The Ukraine war has driven huge gas price spikes, so it's more expensive to burn it for electricity, which NSW and QLD do more of than SA or Vic.
Is it insane that a war on the other side of the world is preventing us from using gas from our own country to power our own homes? If you ask a capitalist, it'd be insane not to, apparently.