After four years of bitter sniping, rhetoric and ideological warfare on energy policy, the past month has seen surprising progress in the debate about meeting Australia's energy needs.
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Billionaire Elon Musk's arrival in South Australia to help announce the commissioning of the world's biggest battery - expected to be up and running on renewable energy by Christmas - represents a major shot in the arm for the renewables industry and will focus the eyes of the world on Australia this coming summer as that state seeks to prevent a repeat of the blackouts that plunged it into crisis earlier this year.
And Friday's meeting of state, territory and federal energy ministers brought some welcome progress as well, with the announcement that the federal government will adopt a timeline to implement 49 of the 50 recommendations put forward in Dr Alan Finkel's review into the future security of the national electricity market. That news should go some way to ensuring that significant body of work results in real, tangible outcomes, rather than becoming another worthy dust-collector in a ministerial bookcase.
Yet the biggest limiting factor continuing to hold back major investment in the renewables space remains unresolved - the policy uncertainty coming from the federal government, particularly in relation to the key Finkel recommendation that has not been adopted: a clean energy target.
At a time when the government is talking about holding back gas exports to try and keep the lights on, the federal Liberal party has appeared all but paralysed on finding a way to address the looming problems in the nation's electricity market.
Several frustrated state Labor governments have suggested the need to fill the leadership void themselves. The ACT has already set an ambitious 100 per cent renewable energy and zero net emissions target by 2050. Despite the fearmongering by some, ACT residents now enjoy some of the lowest electricity prices in the nation and the territory has managed to attract significant investment in wind and solar generation.
But as the Business Council of Australia said on Friday, a piecemeal approach of states and territories going it alone will not deliver the comprehensive, national policy framework required to sort out the current mess.
Major private sector investors looking to build the kind of infrastructure that will deliver a robust national electricity network typically take a long-term view before committing their money. They need to know that regardless of whomever is in power their investments will not be compromised by interventionist governments changing their minds or backing out of previous commitments. A clean energy target is crucial step in providing that certainty to industry.
While it may be too much to hope that there will be a national consensus any time soon, the gains that have been made in recent weeks are encouraging. Perhaps another summer of rolling shutdowns, blackouts and fading airconditioners will be required to prompt the last of the opponents within government to realise that maybe renewables can be part of the solution, rather than the cause of the problem.
