Author(s): Matthew Warren

Politics & Society | Spectrum - April

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For 20 years Australia has been in political denial about the seismic changes occurring in the way we power our country. Successive governments continue to tell people that power prices will fall while the lights stay on. 

Debate is reduced to two equally preposterous narratives: coal-fired, climate change indifference versus an impossibly utopian renewable energy future. This nonsense swirls around an incredulous public while power prices rise, the grid is stretched, energy becomes political poison and the earth warms. How did it come to this and how can we find our way out of this mess? 

Matthew Warren has worked for all sides of the energy industry, is regularly attacked for being too pro-coal and too pro-renewables, and writes without fear or favour. He has been lobbying for a national climate and electricity policy for over a decade. With an entertaining and fascinating narrative, Blackout cuts through the waffle to chart the disintegration of Australia's energy security, call out what is holding us back, and plot the way for a brighter future.