The Victorian Government is seeking private investment in renewable energy – Can it be done?
Essays by Eric Worrall
“…We need to see 25GW of new energy [generators] between now and 2035…” – but Victoria consistently voted as the hardest place to do business in Australia.
Victorian government calls for more investment in renewables as resurgent SEC won’t be enough to hit target
Lily D’Ambrosio says less than a quarter of the energy needed will come from the SEC and urges the industry to produce the remaining 20.5GW
Adeshola ore Wednesday, April 12, 2023 17.37 AEST
Victoria’s energy minister has called on private companies to help do the heavy lifting in the state’s transition to renewable energy, saying the public State Electricity Commission (SEC) is revived. will not dominate the market.
Lily D’Ambrosio told an industry event on Wednesday that less than a quarter of the renewable energy needed to meet the state’s 2035 emissions reduction goal will come from the SEC and called for investment to produces the remaining 20.5 gigawatts needed.
This comes later SEC revival has become a top election promise of the state government last year, which Daniel Andrews repeatedly emphasized after Labor won a third government term.
D’Ambrosio assured private companies that the SEC was not designed to “overwhelm the private investment market”.
“There is a lot of space and we need all of you who are interested in this space to come and keep building, knowing that there is still a lot of work to be done in our state,” she said.
“We need to see 25GW of new energy [generators] between now and 2035.”
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In 2022, Victoria was voted the hardest place to do business in a business survey. The following information has been published in Australia’s leading financial newspaper, the Australian Financial Review. our Wall Street Journal equivalent;
Survey says Victoria is the hardest place to do business in Australia
Patrick Durkin BOSS Deputy Editor-in-Chief
February 9, 2022 – 5 amVictoria has been ranked as highest tax a state with the largest public sector and most bureaucracy, making it one of the hardest places to do business in the country, a damning new report finds.
More than half of businesses nationwide polled said Victoria was the hardest state to do business in. Four out of five people said they have difficulty accessing the labor and skills they need and just 7% said the Andrews Government is doing a good job of reducing the cost of doing business.
Victoria ranks well in a number of areas such as infrastructure (the government released a Deloitte report on Tuesday putting the value of major projects at $174.4 billion) as well as utilities. , research and development and higher education. But the state’s productivity levels have fallen dramatically over the past decade, and the time and cost of setting up a business have risen to the highest of any state.
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The 2022 Business Survey is no exception, there are stories from 2023, 2021, 2020, 2018 describe the difficulties of doing business in Victoria. More where they come from.
Why is Victoria such a difficult place to do business?
I believe the problem is decades of worker-centered government. Labor union socialist politicians have dominated Victorian politics for most of the past half-century and have leaned heavily in favor of workers’ rights. Even in the few cases when the “conservatives” won the Victorian election, they were not people most Americans would recognize as conservatives, they tend to be politically affiliated. more closely with the Democratic Party of the United States than with the Republican Party.
Due to a longstanding bias against workers’ rights, union organizers enjoy strong legal protections, which they are sometimes accused of abuse.
Large construction projects, even green ones, are often marred by accusations of organized labor tactics.
The following heartbreaking story is from Victoria’s desalination project, a high priority green project inspired by Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery’s 2006 absurd prediction that Australia faced permanent drought.
Coalition ‘forced desal recruitment’
AUSTRALIAN
UPDATE 2:11AM NOVEMBER 20, 2010, FIRST PUBLISHED AT 12:00AM NOVEMBER 20, 2010UNIONS at the desalination plant in Victoria have been using heavy-handed tactics against job recruiters to force recruitment of union members to take precedence.
This is according to intelligence from agents who conducted an espionage operation codenamed Project Pluto.
Sources say extremely generous wages and conditions, robust union figures and pressure on builders to meet tight construction deadlines for the more than $5 billion factory Brumby government dollars have led to many unacceptable recruitments, sources said yesterday.
A senior source said: “Some of the people hired at that site had never even worked in construction or at that location before.
“The managers gave in to forced unionism because unions stipulate who will work at the construction site. Supervisors go through the touch office and say ‘to keep the unions good, bring these people in’.
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John Setkawho is currently the head of the Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania branches of CFMEUVictoria’s leading construction labor union, in 2016 was charged by Victoria Police with hiring outlaw motorcycle gangs as union enforcers.
This is just my take on the situation. Whatever the real reason, investment in Victoria’s green infrastructure is not proceeding as quickly as Premier Dan would have liked.
One of the Victorian Government’s responses is to restore direct public ownership of energy infrastructure, fund a number of green projects and invite private investors to put up cash to invest in energy infrastructure. finance all the other projects they want to complete. They are working to ensure private investors have nothing to fear from government-funded renewable energy projects that compete with private projects.
‘Dangerous journey ahead’ under Victoria’s energy overhaul
Patrick Durkin And Angela Macdonald-Smith
October 21, 2022 – 4:54 pmClean energy investors have warned of an investment drought and major energy users say their survival will be at stake unless the Victorian Labor government implements a radical plan. to restore state ownership of the electricity supply.
Large industries fear that they will be forced into higher prices and forced to take on more risk Andrews government’s plan for re-election revive the State Energy Corporation to invest, own and retail renewable electricity.
The fear of the group representing companies like Brickworks and Bluescope Steel comes as major renewable energy investors say they will not invest the tens of billions of dollars needed to meet the 95% energy target. Victoria’s proposed renewables for 2035 if they are disadvantaged in any way against new state players.
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Private investors could face being squeezed out of the planned new investment in energy, which the super-industry — which will co-invest with the SEC — has lined up to support. Morgan Stanley has labeled the plan a “net negative” for key suppliers AGL Energy and Origin Energy.
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Where does Victoria intend to raise money, for direct government investments in green energy projects?
One possibility is China. Year 2021 Prime Minister Dan tried to sign Victoria with China’s Belt and Road.
China’s Belt and Road Project has been accused of using corruption and sharp practices to trap debt for unwary clients.. In 2021, the Australian conservative federal government vetoed the Victorian Belt and Road proposal, but the Australian federal conservatives lost the federal election to be held in 2022 and were replaced. by the far-left Labor/Green Party coalition.
A few weeks ago, Prime Minister Victoria Dan Andrews returns from a mysterious trip to China with a bright smile on his face. Reporters were excluded from meetings in China. I wonder why Prime Minister Dan feels the need to keep it a secret?
If Prime Minister Dan signs off with China’s Belt and Road, and the deal turns into a debt trap, anyone who invests in Victoria’s green energy infrastructure will have to shoulder that debt.
If all this isn’t enough to stop investment, during the Covid-19 lockdown, Premier Dan Andrews has established a track record of imposing some of the most business-unfriendly lockdown laws in Australia. . At one point Victoria police open fire with rubber bullets during freedom protestin spite of Premier Dan denied giving the order to open fire.
Many businesses have gone bankrupt during the lockdown and many people have often suffered significant financial losses as a result of the Victorian Government’s actions during the lockdown. The Victorian Government has vehemently opposed paying compensation for their actions during the lockdown, even when the State Ombudsman suggested compensation was due.
It is in my opinion that the Victorian Government’s harsh treatment of claimants for their heavy-handed blockade tactics is not to expect any sympathy or help from Victorian Government if your green project encounters some roadblocks.
Hands up for those who want to sign up for an investment opportunity in Victoria’s renewable energy push?
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