Why I’m standing up to AEMO’s Integrated System Plan

It is crucial in a public policy debate to maintain a civil discourse that engages robustly with evidence and analysis, discerning fact from fiction, while not maligning the motive or reputations of those making arguments.

However, the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO’s) Integrated System Plan (ISP) — billed as a roadmap for Australia’s transition of the National Electricity Market (NEM) power system — has become an obstacle to debate proceeding as such.

By masking a politically-determined policy ambition in the regalia of an independent, expertly-determined ‘optimal’ path, the ISP has fundamentally debased the energy debate.

For more than a year, the Energy Team at the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) has engaged in discourse through every imaginable channel from formal submissions, social media, to parliamentary inquiries, pointing out the flaws in the ISP at every turn.

And at almost every turn, our efforts have been acknowledged to be of substance, yet substantially ignored by AEMO.

The most critical instance of this intransigence was the imposition of the 82% renewable energy target for 2030 as a binding constraint on every scenario in the ISP. This number first appeared in the Reputex document commissioned by Labor before they won office. It was meant to be a modelled outcome of the Rewiring the Nation policy, not a policy itself, just as Labor’s predicted $275 dollar fall in energy bills was predicted to become an outcome of policy.

And yet the wheels of government and the energy regulatory system have turned in such a way that this dubiously projected outcome of policy is now treated as an accomplished fact in every scenario of the ISP.  As such, the roadmap is now simply a lens through which to view the projections of Reputex. And since it allows no comparison with any alternative, it’s not just rose-coloured, but blindly opaque.

The consequences of this situation are profound and dire. Apart from undermining the policy debate about nuclear energy, consumers are being railroaded into paying for premature investments to chase an implausible target.

Yet AEMO has indicated it perceives no problem and would happily do it all again.

The pervasive misunderstanding of the ISP has been persistently abused for political purposes.

“I rely on the evidence … I trust AEMO” said Matt Kean, current Chair of the Climate Change Authority in Senate Estimates, in attempting to shut down a Coalition Senator’s efforts to discuss the substance of what those authorities actually say.

Kean went on to wield the false narrative that AEMO has actually found the cheapest path to bludgeon away Senator Cadell’s inquiries.

If we can’t debate the facts without being goaded into declaring distrust for the experts, what choice remains?

The experts have told us explicitly they haven’t done the tests that the current government persistently imply they have. This destroys any basis for trust in the government narrative.

But since the experts have been surprisingly mute while the force of their reputation has been used to obliterate civil debate about their actual analysis, the question “do you trust the experts?” is finally going to get the full-throated answer it’s probably long deserved: No. The trust is broken.

Evidence heard by the Senate Select Committee into Energy Planning and Regulation in Australia has provided the straw that decisively broken the camel’s back.

In response to every question and submission, AEMO has consistently maintained that the rules bind it to force the 82% target onto every scenario.  That its hands were tied.

Email exchanges obtained under Freedom of Information by CIS have exposed this excuse as false.

The perception that AEMO’s integrity and independence has been compromised is now unavoidable.

If the reasons given to rebuff the persistent petitions of stakeholders cannot be trusted, neither can any other institution, process or person that has actively participated in sheltering the ISP, and nurturing the monster it has grown into.

The current ISP should be repudiated by AEMO.

Nothing less can possibly restore our energy debate to the civil, fact-focussed discussion of the evidence that it desperately needs to be.

Until that happens, a battle over the trustworthiness of our institutions is both inevitable and necessary.

Aidan Morrison is the Director of Energy at the Centre for Independent Studies