<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/we-will-break-their-grip-as-origin-stalls-on-eraring-andrew-forrest-says-fossil-fuel-industry-can-be-beaten/>
"The least surprising news of 2026 so far has already become the most
important: Origin Energy’s decision to extend the life of the country’s biggest
coal generator – again – has been seized as proof by the naysers that the
energy transition to renewables and storage can’t and won’t work.
Of course, the likes of Origin Energy and the other legacy generators have done
S.F.A. to disprove this theory, happy to be driven by the greed of their
shareholders and their option deals to ignore climate change and new
technologies, and use their market power to feather their own nests.
Is there any chance that their market dominance, and their near total capture
of regulators and policy makers be broken in enough time to save the
transition, and give the country some chance of meeting its renewable and
emissions targets?
Enter the consumer. That’s you and me, and the half million or so households
that will, by the end of this financial year, have taken advantage of the
federal government’s home battery rebate scheme, and who will likely have
installed some 11,500 gigawatt hours of storage, and nearly another 3 gigawatts
of rooftop solar.
By 2030, that number will have grown to 2 million households. This is the basis
of a mass movement. One that tells the legacy energy industry that they can
stick their obfuscation and spin – and the plans to extend the life of their
ageing and dirty fossil fuel generators – into their own conduits.
The big retailers, and the market operator for that matter, dearly hope that
households will sign away control of their newly acquired batteries to
so-called virtual power plants, for the sake of the grid.
There’s diminishingly little chance of that, given the breach of trust that is
now so deep that most consumers are determined to use the technologies
available – rooftop solar, battery storage, electric vehicles, demand
management and smart controls – to take charge of their own energy destiny.
They can take heart from the actions of some of the nation’s biggest
consumers."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
