It is getting increasingly hard to make sense of exactly what is happening in Australian energy policy these days. Just ask comedian Rob Sitch, who looked at the industry while researching for his new series of “Utopia”, where he plays the head of the fictional National Building Authority.

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.

Four Labor states and governments have formalised their push to purse their own clean energy target mechanism, officially breaking away from the federal government after the Coalition refused to endorse the Finkel Review’s recommendation on the issue.

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.