Completely agree that wind is the cheapest option now. I was simply noting that the Treasury modelling reckons CCS will be cheaper than solar thermal and that geothermal will also be cheaper than solar thermal, neither of which is backed by the evidence.

Agree that O’Brien may have been poorly advised. However, that being the case, Rudd was pretty damn poorly advised, too! If MRET was factored in to some of the scenarios, as indeed it was, Rudd should have known that and told O’Brien that it was. End of story. And your proposed questions are excellent ones!

However, I have to inject a note of caution on several other points made by Tim.
Wind power is cheaper now than most international projections for the price of coal power with CCS, but solar thermal electricity and solar PV are still very expensive and that won’t change overnight.

We hope that the first (tiny: 1 MW) hot rock geothermal power station will commence operation in 2009 in South Australia and that the first large geothermal power station (500 MW) will be operating by 2015. Until then, we don’t really know what it will cost. However, it is much simpler than coal with CCS and so is likely to be much cheaper.

Kerry O’Brien was poorly advised, since some of the Treasury scenarios DO include the proposed expanded 20% Renewable Energy Target for 2020. What Kerry should have asked Rudd was “Why hasn’t this expanded RET been implemented? Why did the first Rudd budget allocate nothing for solar energy research from the new Energy Innovation fund when $100 million over 4 years was an election promise? Why was nothing allocated in the budget to solar, wind or bioenergy from the new Renewable Energy Fund of $500 million over 6 years? Why is money being allocated to CCS and not renewables?”