Origin Energy boss admits a totally solar future is possible

Grant King of oil and gas giant Origin Energy got a grilling at Monday's Future Energy Solutions Deakin Lecture.

This video shows him being asked by a member of the audience why Origin, which waxes lyrical about its spending on renewable energy research (wind, solar photovoltaic and geothermal) has not invested in baseload concentrated solar thermal power, used in Spain to produce electricity. The audience member says $20 billion has been invested in the Spanish solar energy sector and asks Mr King if he "missed it or did he know about it and decide not to tell us".

And this is where Mr King's stonewalling is revealed. He squirms around the question until he is cornered and forced to admit: "Australia could choose to have an entirely solar future. That's a choice that's available to you as a community."

Hip, hip, hooray! Finally, an energy giant admits that baseload solar is a commercial proposition that is available now.

The subtext is that companies and governments can stop wasting millions of dollars researching vapourware technologies that will never be commercially viable such as hot dry rock geothermal, carbon capture and storage, safe nuclear energy and umpteen other pie-in-the-sky distractions.

Mr King revealed much without actually answering the question and it was that he, along with others shaping our energy policies, are picking winners.

But those winners are economic losers that are not even in operation at scale. These economic losers are on the agenda because they keep in jobs has-been geologists and nuclear physicists with strong links to the energy sector elite.

They are all wasting the economy's time and money and it is not too soon for Mr King to stop perpetuating their myths.

He has already been called to account by other sector chiefs over misleading speeches he has made about renewable energy leading to soaring electricity costs and his apparent refusal to be represented at the recent Senate inquiry into the Renewable Energy Target Bill, so that his claims could be tested.

The RET will incentivise 20 per cent of the energy sector's output to be sourced from renewables by 2020.

Now, for a company that boasts that a third of its customers choose to pay a premium for "clean" electricity, Origin's absence from the hearing last month was telling.

After all, Mr King is on the record as noting that: "We see people making a very clear and conscious choice in choosing to knowingly take on a higher cost to use a less carbon intensive product."

Other less hypocritical companies that did expose themselves to senators' questions wasted no time correcting Mr King's false assumptions that the RET will lead to a trebling in energy prices over a decade.

Wind giant Vestas' Ken McAlpine told the hearing: "I do not think what Mr King is saying is necessarily true; it is an opinion . . . I have seen Mr King's comments; they are in a couple of speeches. I do not think Origin has ever bothered to put out any statistics, modelling or anything to back up such claims."

And last week, Mr King's counterpart at AGL Energy, Michael Fraser, accused the Origin chief of talking "nonsense" by claiming the RET would require 6000 megawatts of gas plants to complement wind energy.

The Senate inquiry is due to hand down its report today and the RET Bill is expected to enter the Upper House next week.

Hopefully, the nonsense will be over soon and the government will finally be able to deliver on at least one of its climate policy election promises.