Originally posted on 9 October 2020 by Lyn Allison
The Prime Minister’s determination to ignore global warming and shower his fossil fuel and political mates with public money is on full display in this budget.
$11 million to refurbish Delta Electricity Vales Point coal-fired power station
This power station was due to close in 9 years but its co-owner is Trevor St Baker, former Liberal Party candidate and donor of $100,000 to the Liberal Party. St Baker apparently paid $1m to buy this ageing and heavily polluting plant from the NSW Government in 2015.
If this is not corrupt, we don’t know what is.
According to National Pollution Index data for 2018-19 the plant pumped into the atmosphere:
$5 million for electric vehicle manufacture
This is referred to in the budget papers as an Advanced Manufacturing Facility based in South Australia.
The facility is designed to:
…. facilitate the manufacturing and assembly of electric vehicles, and for a bi-directional vehicle-to-grid trial in South Australia to examine the concept and operation of systems which support solar home charging, grid services and virtual storage infrastructure,
This sounds like a lot to expect from $5 million!
It’s not clear who will get the $5 million but Adelaide start-up ACE-EV proposes to produce 15,000 EVs by 2025 and this will require $130 million in investment. The first of these vehicles will be launched next year.
The SA Government is spending $4.9 million on its EV Action Plan which will leverage private investment in charging infrastructure.
There is nothing in the budget for a national EV charging network or any sort of Federal plan even though one was promised last year.
The Government earlier announced $74.5 million between 2020 and 2025 for a Future Fuels Fund to encourage the uptake of “new vehicle technologies” such as plug-in hybrid (PHEV), battery electric vehicles (BEV) and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV). Given the Government’s predilection for fossil fuels, the bulk of this may well go to plug-ins and gas-sourced hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. The words relating to EVs are to “perform integration analysis and develop improved information on electric vehicles and charging infrastructure”.
Grants will be made available for EV fleet charging facilities.
Meanwhile, there’s $200 million for diesel fuel storage and $211 million to support oil refineries.
There is, of course, nothing for renewable energy because Government says it is now ‘mature’ (as if oil and gas were not), nothing to promote energy efficiency, and of course no price on carbon.
