In this interview, Scott Hargreaves appeared on Perth Live 6PR and discussed the IPA’s research on net zero.
All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.
Below is a transcript of the interview.
Oliver Peterson:
Of the two, the Institute of Public Affairs has just completed a five-year review into the Western Australian government’s energy and climate policy, which it says show that it’s failed. To tell you more, Scott Hargreaves is the executive director of… Affairs, and he joins me in the studios today. G’day Scotts.
Scott Hargreaves:
G’day. Thanks for having me back.
Oliver Peterson:
My pleasure. What have you have to look at here?
Scott Hargreaves:
Yeah, so on Sunday, it’ll be the fifth anniversary of the initial climate targets. And it’s funny how these things date. It’s all about green hydrogen, and being a renewable energy superpower, and how we’re going to have emissions reductions in WA. But what we found is, basically, a litany of failure. So we called it a launchpad failure because it didn’t… And it’s doing a lot of damage along the way. The emissions targets are not being met. In fact, emissions are going up. But meanwhile, we are locking into the closure of the baseload, coal-fired power stations and that puts us in the frame for blackouts, as from ’28, ’29, 2030, which is our real concern at the moment.
Oliver Peterson:
Absolutely. It should be for everybody else at the moment. Because you mentioned there the green hydrogen. This was meant to be the superpower, wasn’t it, Scott? It got lots of fanfare, lots of announcements, lots of bigger… Miners as well. We’re talking about green hydrogen, but that conversation’s gone a little quiet recently.
Scott Hargreaves:
Yes. I think at one stage there was a list produced by the federal government of a dozen amazing green hydrogen projects all over Australia, and one by one they’ve all just quietly disappeared because it was never going to work. And unfortunately, a lot of the things that are baked into this plan are simply unachievable at any cost. And one of our fears is that people will say, “Oh no, we have to stick to the plan. We just have to flog the poor old donkey harder and we’ll get there.” But that would actually be a disastrous path.
Oliver Peterson:
So has these announcements that have been made, as you say, five years ago now, baked in via ideological reasoning as opposed to practical, achievable outcomes?
Scott Hargreaves:
Yeah, I think that’s true, because one of the key things you should know is so, then it was handed to the poor old engineers, who actually have to build the system and keep the lights on, and they were meant to deliver a whole of system plan by about now, how we were going to manage this 2030 transition, get all this wind and solar on, and still keep the lights on. They sent in a note to the teacher saying, “Can we have another two years, please?” Because they can’t do it. So what does tell you that it was ideology, rather than an actual plan of what could be achieved.
Oliver Peterson:
So what’s the government been doing to try and look at the choices that it’s made? What have you discovered in your research here, Scott?
Scott Hargreaves:
Well, I think there must be some wise heads buried in government. I think a lot of this is happening away from… So the Premier himself, when confronted with the fact that emissions are going up, he said, “Well, that’s because we’re building things in WA, and there’s lots of great projects. And if that’s how it works out, well, that’s okay.” They also ditched their climate legislation. They were going to legislate these targets, and that’s quietly disappeared. So there’s some realists in there, but meanwhile, the energy plan is proceeding at a hundred miles an hour to close down these coal-fired power stations without any realistic replacement.
Oliver Peterson:
So, at the moment, we’ve got the battery scheme, for example. We’ve got the double dip in Western Australia, between the federal scheme and the state scheme. But ultimately, if you sign up to that and your neighbour loses some power or somebody down the road, they can take the power that you have generated, storing in your battery, and that’s why you’ve accepted the subsidy. So ultimately, as the taxpayer, we are funding infrastructure, which is, I thought, the role and the responsibility of government, Scott.
Scott Hargreaves:
Yeah, isn’t it? Exactly. And it’s completely flipped that these batteries to make your power reliable, but now you’re being asked to contribute to the grid, and they’ve even talked about plugging in your electric vehicles to put power back into the grid. And, of course, the big problem with batteries is they can really only back up a system for a short amount of time. Then you need backup of the backup, which is gas, and gas in WA is a long way to the north, and there’s a pipeline of a fixed size, and there’s only so much gas you can bring down through it. And there’s no way you could increase that by 2030.
Oliver Peterson:
Net-zero targets… Obviously, that the federal government has signed up to, the WA government is signing up to. Is it delivering any progress, Western Australia, towards that target?
Scott Hargreaves:
Well, WA is actually the outlier. As I say, the Premier has been confronted with the fact that emissions –
Oliver Peterson:
Going up.
Scott Hargreaves:
– Are going up. And while the other states have come down a little bit, no one’s really on track to achieve that across Australia, but you could see a way. He’s definitely nowhere near it. So that’s our concern.
Oliver Peterson:
Okay. In terms of coal, as you said, the two-year delay and the coal-fired power stations to continue, do you think that two years might not be enough, Scott? That we might hear further delays? It might be three, four, five years?
Scott Hargreaves:
Yeah. I think that it’s time to call the reality now so that you can actually then deliver a whole of system plan. So you’re looking at Colley in ’28, Mudgee in ’29, and Bluewaters in 2030, all closing… Over a thousand megawatts of electricity, and you can’t afford that. So I’m saying call it now. We’ve done a review. Review and reset. The government, it’s time they were honest and gave their poor old electricity system planners a chance to do something that might actually work.
Oliver Peterson:
So relook at the policy, reset the policy, and just skip some sort of, if that’s even possible, guarantee, Scott, to taxpayers that they’ll be able to keep their lights on.
Scott Hargreaves:
Absolutely. Because, at the moment, there’s been a lot of bill credits and subsidies so that there hasn’t been the sort of bill shock yet in WA that we’ve seen in the eastern states, and I can report from that front. And you don’t want to be in that situation. So electricity prices have gone up by 12% to 14%, but they could go up by a lot more, plus it’s that risk of blackouts.
Oliver Peterson:
Are you predicting they will?
Scott Hargreaves:
You would have to have blackouts. Imagine these long, hot summer days when the sun goes down and there’s no more solar energy. The wind, there’s no more wind energy. The battery lasts for an hour, maybe, if you’re lucky. And then to use a technical term, you’re stuffed.
Oliver Peterson:
Very stuffed by the sounds of things. This is heading towards a disaster, as you say in your research, five-year review into the energy plan showing that we’re headed for disaster. It’s something we need to sit up and take note of, Scott.
Scott Hargreaves:
Thanks so much.
Oliver Peterson:
Appreciate your time. Institute of Public Affairs executive director, that is Scott Hargreaves with that exclusive research this afternoon here on 6PR, the five-year review into our energy climate policy fails. They’re saying in 2020, the government released its first whole of government climate policy promising to align the state with the national net-zero by 2050, to accelerate that phase out of coal-fired generation on the Southwest interconnected system and turn WA into renewable energy and green hydrogen superpower, but it’s not working.
This transcript with Scott Hargreaves appeared on Perth Live 6PR 26 November 2025 has been edited for clarity.
