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Why can't the US have this kind of intelligence? The coal union knows that Renewables are replacing coal. So they are offering an assistance package to the workers. Win win!
Why has Australia's largest coal mining union backed Labor's Renewable Energy Target?
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4282591.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 28/07/2015
Reporter: Matt Peacock
Australian's largest coal mining and energy union was the surprise backer of Labor's 50 per cent Renewable Energy Target at the party's national conference, so what moved them to support it when Prime Minister Tony Abbott claims there will be a massive cost for consumers.

Transcript
SABRA LANE, PRESENTER: Endorsement of the latest push for a substantial increase in Australia's Renewable Energy Target is coming from an unlikely quarter. Australia's largest coal mining and energy union, the CFMEU, says it's inevitable that many of the country's coal-fired generators and mines will close and not be replaced, with thousands losing their jobs as a consequence.

But the union support for Labor's renewable energy target has come at a price. In a surprise move at the ALP conference on the weekend, the union backed Labor's 50 per cent Renewable Energy Target in return for an unprecedented assistance package. Matt Peacock reports.

MATT PEACOCK, REPORTER: The Latrobe Valley, heart of Victoria's brown coalfields and generator of 80 per cent of the state's power.

But even here, people know that change is coming.

Coal is no longer king.

LUKE VAN DER MEULEN, CFMEU VICTORIA: I live in this community, I'm part of the community and I'm really concerned for it.

MATTHEW WARREN, CEO, ENERGY SUPPLY ASSOC. AUST.: We're going to see potentially jobs lost in regional communities where the power stations are, the ones that are reaching the end of their life.

MATT PEACOCK: Australia's unexpected surge in solar rooftop power has transformed the electricity market and the days of even giant coal-fired power stations like this one, AGL Loy Yang, are numbered.

TONY MAHER, PRESIDENT, CFMEU: You've got a Loy Yang power station, the biggest power station in the country, on the rooftops of Australian homes. That is exceeding expectations and it's having an effect on the market share. That's the reality that we're facing.

MATTHEW WARREN: 10 years ago we had around 700 households in Australia with solar panels, today it's approaching 1.4 million. So that's a relatively aggressive technology boom in that sector and it's likely to continue.

MATT PEACOCK: Labor's adoption at the weekend of a 50 per cent renewable target in 15 years would only hasten the demise of coal.

BILL SHORTEN, OPPOSITION LEADER: We will not be intimidated by the ridiculous, ignorant, fear-mongering scare campaigns that will come.

MATT PEACOCK: Already Prime Minister Tony Abbott has pounced on Labor's policy.

TONY ABBOTT, PRIME MINISTER: You've got this massive and unnecessary commitment to renewables which will cause a massive overbuild of wind farms, all of which has to be paid for by the consumers.

TONY MAHER: Geez, it's like a bloody swimming carnival with all the green and the red.

MATT PEACOCK: But the unexpected seconder of Labor's renewable energy target was the head of Australia's largest coal mining and energy union, Tony Maher.

TONY MAHER: We've got to face the reality in domestic coal-fired power. The companies, led by AGL and Energy Australia, have announced that they will all close their fleet by 2050, one by one. So - and they won't be building other ones to replace them, so we have to deal with that.

GREG COMBET, FMR CLIMATE CHANGE MINISTER: Just imagine the coal miners union itself endorsing a policy to increase renewable energy generation.

TONY MAHER: Renewables are winning the investment race. And the introduction of battery storage, cheap battery storage in homes is very attractive to consumers and they'll vote with their feet and you'd be a mug not to see that.

MATT PEACOCK: Australia exports 80 per cent of the coal it mines and nearly half of that is to make steel, not electricity. The union says these mines still have a secure future.

But it's a different story for domestic coal. The union's now got Labor to agree to a special government agency to find new jobs for the workers to be displaced.

LUKE VAN DER MEULEN: There's ways of making sure that those people that are in the power station can exit in an orderly manner with voluntary departure packages and things like that and they can be transitioned to still-running power stations. So that can minimise the impact.

GREG HUNT, ENVIRONMENT MINISTER: You've got an ALP which has literally made it up on the run and electricity prices are guaranteed to go up, not by a little amount, but obviously by a massive amount or they wouldn't be preparing for major job losses.

MATT PEACOCK: Tony Maher's price to support the Labor resolution is high. He wants more than the dole for his displaced members.

But, I mean, a lot of your members are paid 100 grand or more.

TONY MAHER: Lots of money. Yeah, worth every cent. And that's how they did it in Germany - it was income support or early retirement and it all costs money. And what we want the - the - Labor in government to do is to provide the funding, to do the calculations, to establish the agency and to tell us how they're gonna solve the problem.

GREG HUNT: The Labor Party, when they set up the carbon tax, gave the brown coal generators $5.5 billion. ... Now, what we see is another compensation plan for a policy which they haven't prepared, nobody can say where it came from and it's an extraordinary example of policy being fabricated and with real-world impacts.

MATT PEACOCK: The transformation of Australia's industry has already begun, warns the electricity suppliers.

MATTHEW WARREN: We've already seen it begin. In South Australia we've seen 440 full-time jobs go or going in the township of Port Augusta and that's a big hit for that town and that region. So, this is real and it's gonna keep happening over the next decade and beyond.

LUKE VAN DER MEULEN: Any change is gonna impact on the Latrobe Valley community very hard because we are a very big coal producer and generator for the Victorian community.

GREG COMBET: The economy's always adjusting. We're seeing industries decline, industries grow. The important thing when that's happening is not to say, "Look, stop the world." You can't stop change. But to support people through the process of change.

MATT PEACOCK: For the electricity industry, there's an even bigger problem. That's the need for coherent planning free from partisan politics.

MATTHEW WARREN: What frustrates us is we're talking at the moment about how we ice the cake and we haven't baked the cake. We actually need to see and deliver the serious policy structure that delivers the transformation and then we can talk about how we're gonna manage the consequences of that, not the other way around.

SABRA LANE: Matt Peacock reporting.