Just when you thought that the public debate around clean energy in Australia could not possibly get any worse, any dumber, or any further divorced from reality, it did.

Energy minister Josh Frydenberg has sought to clarify recent comments on the storage requirements for new wind and solar farms, saying it would be up to the Australian Energy Market Operator to decide how much is needed.

Two sets of research this past week have confirmed that a second rooftop solar boom is well underway in Australia, driven by the rapidly improving economics of PV panels and storage, and by the rapidly worsening state of retail electricity prices.

Queensland’s Labor state government has become the latest in Australia to commit to a target of zero net emissions by 2050, adding momentum to the state-based carbon reduction effort and putting further pressure on the federal government’s own unambitious climate goals.