Chris Bowen's Green Energy Initiatives; A Complete Disaster

Chris Bowen, Australia's current Minister for Climate Change and Energy, has been hard at work putting new green energy initiatives in place to create a safe renewable energy source for the future generations. Unfortunately for him, however, nothing seems to be going as planned.

Labor's goal for carbon emissions was for our rate of emissions to be cut by 43% of our 2005 levels by the year 2030. Chris Bowens way of reducing these emissions was simply to initiate more green energy programs, more wind farms, and to try to produce electricity from hydrogen gas. Somehow, throughout all of this hard work, Australia's carbon emissions actually increased, by around 4 million tonnes, just in the past year. It seems Bowen's programs are actually sending him in the opposite direction of his

objective.

Between 2022 and 2023, the government, at both federal level and state level, allocated over $10 billion dollars in fossil fuel subsidies, which again goes against their objectives. To add to this, four new coal projects have been given the go ahead by the Labor party which look to add over 150 million metric tonnes of emissions over the lifespan of the programs. Why is Albanese's government buying into fossil fuels if they've promised huge movements towards renewable energy goals? Is it because they know our country won't be able to run on just renewable energy?

Among all these examples of contradiction, Chris Bowen has been trying his best to implement green hydrogen projects, which aim to create clean renewable energy from hydrogen plants. Bowen has initiated multiple schemes, like the Whyalla Hydrogen Project in South Australia, which aimed at creating "green steel" by using energy created through hydrogen, BP's renewable energy hub, which was estimated to cost an astounding $1 billion dollars, and Origin Energy's Hunter Valley Hydrogen Hub, just to name a few. The Whyalla project is extremely unstable, due to funding challenges and worries of financial feasibility, and seems like it may not continue on for much longer, even with the $593 million allocated to it by the Labor party. BP's Energy Hub has been heavily delayed due to, again, uncertainty on it's profitability, and Origin Energy's Hydrogen Hub is no more, after Origin Energy withdrew from it's flagship program in the Hunter Valley, again due to financial instability.

The common factor here seems to be the lack of market, and the high cost of renewable energy. There have been more projects than those I have mentioned, of which none have been successful yet, and almost every initiative that fails has that same reasoning; it's just too expensive. Another thing to note is if it's too expensive by huge corporations to initiate these programs, imagine the cost of this renewable energy for a household, or a warehouse, or a shopping centre. None of it seems economically viable whatsoever.

Chris Bowen has a lot of work ahead of him if he wants to keep his position. It seems everything he touches fails at the current moment. Perhaps he could turn it around, although it seems unlikely. In the current moment, it doesn't look good for him at all.