“This was a weather event, this was not a renewable energy event,” he told reporters. Michael Brear, a Melbourne University mechanical engineer and director of the Melbourne Energy Institute, said the blackout needed to be investigated to determine what impact, if any, renewable energy had. He wants the states to adopt a federal target of increasing Australia’s reliance on renewable energy from 15 percent now to 23.5 percent by 2020. The Labor government of Queensland, the third most populous state, plans to go from 4.5 percent renewable energy now to 50 percent by 2030. “The fact that we’ve had a one in 50-year storm is not due to renewable energy, it’s due to the weather,” Shorten told reporters.

Source: Washington Post September 29, 2016 04:13 UTC