I am putting this up in the hope people will send in links to articles which will hopefully explain the economic effects of the C Tax and now these planned huge changes.

As a starter Wattsupwiththat carries this article – Australia’s carbon tax – an expensive sop to the Greens?
I am curious to find out to what extent the C Tax is a giant money-go-round – “big puhlluders pay tax to govt while Govt compensates big puhlluders”.
No doubt our power bills increased but to what extent were they increasing anyway due to years of bringing in a raft of expensive and inefficient Green electricity schemes.

I see Andrew Bolt has – Rudd cools on global warming. To cut the carbon tax – AB will have a lot on this over time – also Catallaxy.
I like the quote from the AB blog – “All crap, from a party of liars.” Sort of quickly and neatly sums up the six years of Labor and GreenLabor for me.
Dr Alan Moran of the IPA has just sent in this address from last month.
Address to Rally “Stop These Things” Canberra 18 June Alan Moran, IPA

One of the great growth industries in Australia over recent years has been from the reallocation of funds from consumers and taxpayers to reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
It has been growth with a negative worth.
Both sides of politics have indulged this negative value–adding activity, though it was the Rudd/Gillard government that took it to its present levels.
Current government CO2 emission suppression policies employ four kinds of measures.
 First there is the carbon tax costing consumers $9 billion this year at the tax rate at $23 per tonne. While that rate will fall in 2015 the government plans to have it increase further in future.
 Secondly, the government is spending about $5 billion a year on subsidies to green schemes, half through wasteful green subsidies channeled through the “Clean Energy Finance Corporation”.
 Thirdly, there are measures like efficiency standards on housing, fridges and other items. These impose increased up-front costs on purchasers, estimated at $750 million a year for new home owners alone.
 Then there is the renewable Energy Target, which subsidizes windmills and rooftop solar through customers’ electricity bills. The target increases year by year and its annual costs will be $5 billion a year by 2020.
The current government’s policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions will cost between $20 and $30 billion a year, more than the entire Defence budget. And its policies can have no effect on global emission levels given that Australian emissions are a mere 1.4% of the global total, and that most measures will simply mean replacing Australian emissions with those of another country as industries move away to avoid our punitive taxes.
The insanity of the massive spending on these measures has started to strike home with the Coalition. They would replace $9 billion a year carbon tax with a less wasteful $500 million a year “Direct Action” in an attempt to buy out carbon emissions. And the Coalition would discontinue the disgracefully wasteful green subsidies handed out to eager corporate rorters through the $2 billion a year Clean Energy Fund.
This is a good start.
As far as subsidized renewable energy is concerned, this largely comprises windfarms which cost 3-4 times as much as conventional unsubsidized coal, gas and hydroelectricity, and solar panels which are even more costly. The costs of these exotic renewables is amplified by a need to have them backed up by fast-start conventional plant.
These programs are imposing a huge burden on consumers and businesses.
At present the cost boost to consumers is about 7% from the green schemes dominated by renewable requirements and 8% from the carbon tax. For businesses, where the share of generated energy within total delivered costs is higher, these impositions are higher.
And the cost of the green schemes will continue to increase because we are only half way to the 45,000 GWh target. Moreover, because they are intrinsically low quality and must run whenever they are available – about 25 % of the time – they automatically freeze out reliable power generation.
This is leading to the retirement of coal fired stations since they are no longer profitable. Hence the entire electricity system is made unstable and subject to blackouts, an event that was avoided by sheer luck a week or so ago in South Australia. Wind with 20 per cent of that state’s capacity stopped blowing and the system remained in operation only because a retired coal generator happened to be running experimentally. Without this large areas of the State would have been forced to shut down.
With rooftop systems the attraction to customers of subsidies to the tune of tenfold the worth of a power proved too great. Demand surged and state governments were forced to reduce the program’s attractiveness. The subsidies, unless corrective measures are taken, will continue for another 16 years.
But for those that think existing measures are locked-in, consider Spain, formerly the beacon for the Australian Treasury, the Greens, Senator Campbell and other climate alarmists. Lavish subsidies have led to Spain’s electricity industry being $34 billion in debt. The Spanish Government has already cut subsidies to photovoltaics and this week will announce its policy approach cutting the subsidy to wind.
The Coalition proclaims faith in the renewables program. That’s a great pity. The program’s effects were bad enough when consumers were hit with regulations forcing them to use this intrinsically high cost, unreliable power for 20 per cent of their supply. But because of higher prices from the carbon tax and the renewable impost, electricity demand is declining. On current estimates, subsidised renewables will comprise 27 per cent of supply by 2020.
Some encouragement can be taken from the Opposition’s movement to make the approval of new wind farms more expensive. The Opposition’s policy is beginning to recognize the senseless waste of money Australia is incurring with our unilateral decarbonisation policy. Greg Hunt has, commendably, opposed wasted expenditure by the Government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation and points out that wind power subsidies have no effect on the quantum of these renewable energy supplies. But unfortunately he has adopted this position because such subsidies disadvantage projects developed on what he calls a commercial basis. There is, of course, no commercial projects developed under the RET where the cheapest supply is wind at a cost of $100 plus per MWh, 2-3 fold the cost of coal.

Though Greens quite predictably are happy to see a deindustrialization and impoverishment of Australia the ALP also by its actions is adopting the same agenda.
Mr Combet has gloatingly said that the carbon tax has reduced domestic coal usage for energy by 7 per cent. Well the renewable energy program would have had a greater effect than this. But guess what? Last year the export tonnage of coal rose by 13 per cent. Coal burned overseas has no different effect from coal burned in Australia but the elected government spokespeople here just don’t understand this. The Chinese and Indians, unlike us, are not silly enough to destroy their economy by substituting this high cost power for fossil fuel generated electricity. And coal explorers, those putting their own money on the line, recognize that the trend of increased demand for Australian coal will continue. Over the past five years coal exploration spending in Australia has trebled.
It used to be said that in promoting wind energy we’d be getting on the ground floor in a new global industry. Gullible politicians like Victoria’s’ John Brumby and Steve Bracks with all the gusto of people spending somebody else’s money gave subsidies to blade manufacturing in plants, hailing the dawning of a sunrise industry. Within months the subsidies had disappeared down the silt hole hiding all such government spending the world over. We hear less about the creation of such infant industries now.
We also here less about the future of low cost solar, wind and other renewable sources yet to be invented. Wind costs are obstinately stuck at $100 per MWh and have been for many years. The technology is nearing its optimum and it remains three times the cost of coal in Australia. All the projected new technology developments that Treasury, Garnaut, Stern and other economic frauds have forecast remain in the labs or in people’s imagination. There are no breakthroughs on the horizon and wind would not be among them anyway since it is a mature technology that has run its course in terms of cost reductions.
The effect of all these carbon cost impositions on businesses is particularly potent in undermining living standards. Business energy consumption is falling because our most productive industries – including smelting and steel – are relocating overseas. Other firms, even including cafes, are finding energy costs forces them to reduce their activities.
Australia has the cheapest energy in the world – others use our coal with added costs of transport while we can locate our power stations on the coal fields themselves. We are denying ourselves this birthright and plumping for wind and other solar sources, which cost us at least three times as much.
Those imposing these policies upon us are either naïve believers in technological utopia or are scoundrels pursuing an illusory mirage of a carbon lite economy, which means a sacrifice of national productivity for no purpose.