Australia offers an interesting case study of climate policy effectiveness as Australia has ‘tried’ a wide range of policies to mixed effect. Given that more than half of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions typically come from stationary energy generation, most climate policy in Australia has focussed on electricity sector reform, particularly the uptake of variable renewable energy and the decrease of thermal power generation. Electricity supply in Australia has undergone substantial change over recent years, substantially due to these policies, and needs to continue changing in the future to meet climate change mitigation targets and ensure stable, cost-effective electricity supply. This paper is therefore written from the perspective of an electricity planner and seeks to learn from the experiences of climate policies tried over recent decades. We start by reviewing the history of Australian energy policy and a description of how the Australian electricity network is structured to operate. We examine the theory and effects of different policies tried, which range from renewable energy targets, carbon pricing schemes, subsidies for renewable energy and research and development initiatives. We make three key observations from the case analysis: (1) that there has been substantial expense and effort effectively wasted through duplicate effects of different policy mechanisms by both federal and state governments; (2) as various mechanisms enable variable renewable energy generation to increase, the market becomes distorted, increasing total system costs and decreasing system robustness and resilience; and (3) the narrowed focus of climate policy mechanisms on certain variable renewables, such as solar photovoltaic and wind generation, omitted the opportunity for uptake of scale-able low carbon, firm generation options, like nuclear power and carbon capture and storage.

澳大利亚对气候政策有效性提供了一个有趣的案例研究，因为澳大利亚已经“尝试”了多种政策以产生混合效应。鉴于澳大利亚一半以上的温室气体排放通常来自固定能源生产，因此澳大利亚的大多数气候政策都将重点放在电力部门的改革上，尤其是可变的可再生能源的吸收和火力发电的减少。近年来，由于这些政策，澳大利亚的电力供应发生了重大变化，并且在未来需要继续变化以实现缓解气候变化的目标并确保稳定，具有成本效益的电力供应。因此，本文是从电力规划师的角度撰写的，旨在从最近几十年尝试的气候政策的经验中学习。我们首先回顾澳大利亚能源政策的历史，并描述澳大利亚电力网络的运作方式。我们研究了尝试过的各种政策的理论和效果，这些政策包括可再生能源目标，碳定价计划，可再生能源补贴和研究与开发计划。我们从案例分析中得出三个主要结论：（1）由于联邦和州政府不同政策机制的重复影响，有效地浪费了大量的费用和精力；（2）由于各种机制使可再生能源的可变发电量增加，因此市场变得扭曲，增加系统总成本并降低系统的健壮性和弹性；（3）气候政策机制对某些可变的可再生能源（如太阳能光伏发电和风力发电）的关注范围缩小了，因此没有机会获得可扩展的低碳，可靠的发电选择（如核电以及碳捕集与封存）的机会。