Worse, we have outsourced the dirtiest and most labour intensive production to developing nations, and now cry about their CO2 emissions.
There are many like me who would argue that relocating industry to Third World nations such that we can import the production was a foolish move in every possible way.
First because we lose our independence. Whatever they say, we can't afford to disagree with too strongly when we're relying on them for things we actually need. So whilst we might disagree with what some other country does, our hands are tied when it comes to exerting any real pressure.
Second because we lose work and career opportunities in our own country. There's no point telling people to "have a go" when their entire industry no longer exists and has been replaced by low end service sector stuff paying a relative pittance or which simply doesn't offer work that interests the individual. That's causing a huge divide in our society due to the economic ramifications of having a system which requires a large portion to be engaged in low value activities.
Third because we've lost control over the environmental, safety, human rights etc aspects of production and along with everyone else are engaged in a race to the bottom on those fronts. If it wasn't for this aspect then slashing emissions in Australia would be a cinch - just do it and if our goods cost more then not a big problem if we're not competing against anyone who hasn't done the same thing too.
I've nothing against the idea of development in poorer countries, that's entirely reasonable, but the competitive globalised model isn't a great way of going about it. It's akin to chucking a bucket of boiling water into a bath full of cold water - the end result is we all end up slightly better than what used to be the bottom but nowhere close to what was previously the best.
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On the question of renewables and electricity costs, there's a difference there with association versus causation.
If we look at Australia as an example well yes Adelaide has the highest retail electricity prices of the significant cities and yes it also has the highest use of non-hydro renewables.
That's not the full story however since SA also has the lowest load factor of any state, that is the lowest average load as a % of peak load, and also has highly fragmented ownership meaning that the scale of individual operators is small.
Both of those points are critical to the high costs in SA. Comparing with Tasmania as otherwise the most comparable state in terms of population etc it's rather revealing:
*Adelaide's population is over 6 times that of Hobart's
*SA's population is about 3.4 times that of Tasmania's
*SA is a physically much larger area although partly offsetting that most of it doesn't have mains electricity available versus the virtually inescapable presence of the grid in Tasmania.
*Almost total lack of hydro generation in SA and a high reliance on expensive fuels (gas and to a much lesser extent liquids) versus high reliance upon hydro generation in Tasmania with very limited use of expensive fuels.
*Weather itself imposes costs since high temperatures are unfavourable to all aspects of the supply chain and that's a far bigger issue in SA than in Tas.
*AGL and Origin are both large organisations as such but looking at their SA operations, they're substantially smaller than Hydro Tasmania's operations in the island state whilst the various other players in SA are comparatively tiny. The lack of scale in SA leads to loss of efficiency technically and in terms of staffing, overheads and so on.
*Multiple competing owners also leads to operating efficiency losses. It's not unusual that lower cost plant sits idle whilst higher cost plant runs - that's the inevitable outcome of having them compete for business.
*Load factor in Tasmania about 71% versus about 41% in SA. This is directly related to the lack of heavy industry in SA with household use of gas and the climate adding to it.
*The ownership structure in Tasmania facilitates the adoption of technical approaches which would be administratively prohibitive elsewhere, requiring more costly alternative approaches. In simple terms Tas can and does push the system along a lot harder due to this "tighter" approach to it all.
Renewables haven't had no impact in SA, it would be untrue to claim that, but they're by no means the whole story or even most of it.