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I think you can regard the fact that In the main, coal fired generation in Australia we're state owned and built with taxpayer funds to say that they were extremely heavily subsidised.
The NBN comparison is meaningless, though perhaps not quite. Given that there is little to no interest in building new coal fired capacity by the companies that largely own the existing ones, who but the government would build them? Or who else would build them without huge subsidies and shifting of risk to the public purse?
Given the above from Gary regards the operating costs of various methods of generating power, what do you suggest as an alternative to building more coal fired power as the existing plants age and shut down? There is no point in railing about energy costs and renewable unless you actually have some idea how to drive down energy prices.
As for pumped hydro being reliant on old and maligned technologies, it is a big, fat, wet battery, the source of the energy it is storing up the hill is not relevant to it, but what it does do is allow for non traditional power sources to be used, overcoming the "intermittency" that the Feds love to tell us over and over again is the "We'l all be Rooned" downfall of any and all renewable sources of energy. Hell, they would even be able to help coal fired stations with their still existent base load issue by "consuming" energy overnight when the generators would really rather not have to test out the PID settings to ramp the boilers down and back up again and then release it over the day when demand starts to outstrip supply. There is probably even money to be made trading energy like that, and unless you suggest re nationalising power or providing subsidies, making it possible to make money is the only way things will happen.
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