Former Australian prime minister John Howard has blamed state governments for a looming energy crisis in the country, saying they have put too much emphasis on renewable energy.
"I think state governments - on both sides of politics - have been a little too eager to please the renewables push, and I think that's putting it mildly," he said in an address to the Stockbrokers and Financial Advisers Association in Sydney on Thursday.
"The prohibitions that have been put on gas exploration in Victoria and South Australia, and the way in which coal seam gas exploration and exploitation in NSW and other parts of the country have been imposed, I think we have really, collectively, not handled this well," he said.
The federal government in April announced it would impose export controls on companies when there is a shortfall of gas supply in the domestic market, following several rounds of discussions about the domestic gas crunch that is leading to gas and electricity shortages on Australia's east coast as well as a jump in prices.
Analysts have attributed the shortages to high regulatory costs and policy uncertainty created by successive governments.
"It will mean one of the greatest public policy failures this country has had if we end up having, in eastern Australia, what could genuinely be called an energy crisis, with huge rises in prices and blackouts," Mr Howard said.
"I am not suggesting that is going to happen, but we certainly have a problem."
He said this was surprising given that Australia had 38 per cent of the world's uranium reserves, hundreds of years of coal reserves, and enormous supplies of natural gas.
Mr Howard - whose government refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol, a global agreement to set binding emissions targets for countries - said he believed one of the reasons his government was defeated in 2007 was concern it was not doing enough about climate change.
