Is Australia (or parts of it) having an energy crisis?

I was watching an older episode of 60 Minutes Australia and they were talking about this big energy crisis in Australia (it was from 2017), so was wonder if this is still a thing, and if so, why it’s happening? I didn’t realize Australia WAS having an energy crisis and I’m hard put to figure out why they would be if they are. They should have a ton of potential for solar and wind and geothermal…not sure about the potential for hydro…plus, don’t they have large coal reserves as well? IIRC, they have some of the largest reserves of uranium, though I don’t know much about Australia’s nuclear program (has their public put the quash on it or something)?, so they should have a lot of potential there too.

So what, if anything, is going on? Or is this just old news, nothing to see here anymore (or ever)?

Punching
Australia energy crisisinto Google returned a bunch of news stories from yesterday, so it doesn’t look like old news.

Some of it’s regional. IIRC their NG transmission system is not nationally integrated, so getting a surplus of gas from one side of the country to the other requires expensive liquefaction.

It’s a big country with an unevenly distributed population. They have pretty extreme weather events too. South Australia gotnailed pretty hard back in 2016 for instance.

This is a first world energy crisis rather than a third world energy crisis.

It’s about investment and infrastructure rather than kilowatts.

As suggested by the OP, if there is one country on the planet which should be materially advantaged by a global move to renewable energy resources it’s Australia.
But we have coal in abundance, 75% is exported. It’s currently our largest export earner.
We are now the world’s largest exporter of LNG.
We hold the world’s largest reserves of uranium (23%) but there is no nuclear powered generation. The only nuke is Lucas Heights which is a research and medical isotope facility.

Apart from Tasmania hydro power there isn’t much primary hydro capacity or potential.
The Snowy Mountains scheme is pumped hydro and functions as the energy supply insurance for the east coast grid where 80% of population is Snowy is actually a net consumer of energy.
There is a substantial geothermal (hot rocks) potential but a long way from population centres

As to solar, well slip, slop slap, we have that covered in spades but the majority of solar power generation is rooftop installations. There are only a couple of solar farms/power stations.
We have a bit of a thing about wind farms, not totally logical but with so many other options we can get by without the eyesores.

The nub of the crisis is that the power utilities have aging facilities, some are profoundly inefficient brown coal consumers and should be pensioned off on health grounds. I doubt any proposal to build more coal-fired electricity capacity would get a green light by authorities.
But industry is holding off on investment on alternatives because they think the government will blink on Paris carbon targets, well actually the NATs and the feral right of the LIBs have wired their eyes shut. There are elements of climate denial, financial advantage and not insubstantial US influence in this position. The Adani coal venture is an example.

What industry want is agreed guidelines. This would be good, I’m not sure it is essential. These guys want the rewards sans risks but it would make for a more harmonious household.

There is a viable plan (the National Energy Guarantee) on the table which passed the LIBs party room and almost certainly would have been passed through Federal Parliament but it become a victim of party dynamics in a minority government as the NATs and feral LIBs vetoed it. It cost Turnbull his prime ministership.

I’m not going out on much of a limb to suggest that resolution will arrive in May 2019 following a government changing election, likely landslide, quite possibly blood curdling loss.

Could have been resolved and garnered domestic and international goodwill anytime in the past decade or so but que sera, sera.