If you’re not a regular visitor to Catallaxy Files (you ought to be), then you may not be familiar with this graph – which clearly shows what happens when governments diddle around in energy markets and increase subsidies to wind and solar energy in the name of ‘climate action’:

In just the last decade alone, energy prices have almost doubled in real terms. That’s right, once you take out inflation, the cost of electricity has almost doubled in just 10 years.

Just stop and think about that.

Those with a particularly keen eye will also have noticed that:

• abolition of the carbon tax saw an almost immediate decrease in electricity prices;

• the period of Tony Abbott’s Prime Ministership coincided with the only time electricity prices have appreciably fallen since the mid-late 1990s; and

• the period of Malcolm Turnbull’s Prime Ministership has coincided with electricity prices going straight back up again.

If you’d like to read the letter from Dr Michael Crawford to New South Wales Energy Minister Don Harwin that came with this first graph, then head on over here to Catallaxy Files – and add the site to your internet favourites while you’re at it.

It’s amazing how so many people are quick to get their pitchforks out over the price of petrol (which has barely increased over the same period), but will blithely accept a doubling of electricity prices – seemingly as if it’s the price we have to pay to ‘do something about climate change’.

When it comes to Australia’s disproportionate sensitivity to petrol prices, this statement made last year by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says it all:

The average price for petrol in the five largest cities (i.e. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth) in 2015–16 was 121.7 cents per litre (cpl). This was the lowest annual average since 2001–02 in real terms (adjusted for inflation). Gross retail margins, the difference between retail prices and published wholesale prices, in the five largest cities increased by 1.2 cpl on the previous quarter, and averaged 11.2 cpl in 2015–16, the highest level since the ACCC began monitoring them in 2002.

“We remain concerned about the petroleum industry’s high gross retail margins, which indicate motorists are not reaping the full benefits of lower international crude oil and refined petrol prices,” ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said.

The scariest part is that things are only just getting started. ‘Renewable’ energy currently accounts for about 17% of Australia’s annual energy generation – and Finkel, Turnbull and Shorten all want to increase this to 42% within the next 13 years.

(H/T Alan Moran)