For some time now, Malcolm Turnbull has been irate over criticisms that he no longer "believes" in renewable energy.
The criticisms were made after his government, without any initial evidence, rushed to conflate South Australia's major power blackout last year with its heavy reliance on wind and solar power.
Turnbull once confided that energy policy is not a matter of belief like religion, but one of science and engineering.
In calling on Wednesday for the construction of new clean coal-fired power stations to help gas provide baseload power while renewable technology was developed further, he was, in his view, proposing what he thought would best guarantee supply at the lowest cost while still guaranteeing reduction targets would be met.
"The next incarnation of our national energy policy should be technology agnostic," he said.
"I came into politics at the ripe old age of 50. I'd spent my whole life in business. I approach issues very objectively, very pragmatically. My interest is in results. I am not a political hack. I am not a political animal."
Turnbull did not abandon renewable energy. Along with coal and the increased use of gas, he cited large-scale storage facilities like battery farms for wind and solar-generated power as the third pillar of his energy policy. The country was "really underdone" on storage, he said.
Nonetheless, it was a policy shift from July last year when newly minted Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg accepted the decline in the use of coal and said the electricity sector needed to rely more on gas for back-up as it inevitably moved towards renewable and other clean energy sources.
"We shouldn't have blanket moratoriums on unconventional gas like we have in Victoria and NSW because you need more gas and gas suppliers," he said.
"We need to have diversity in energy supply, that also means gas and there's still going to be a reliance on coal, even though there is going to be a transition away from coal, which is not a bad thing."
Inevitably, Turnbull's re-embrace of coal, albeit supposed clean coal, will be leapt upon by his critics as yet another example of him pandering to right-wing forces. Certainly the right of the party was happy after Wednesday's speech and the coal industry, too.
And it will do him no harm in One Nation territory of regional Queensland either, and other depressed regions along the east coast.
Moreover, if the government actually subsidises the construction of the power stations, as was immediately flagged by Arthur Sinodinos and Barnaby Joyce, using loans from such bodies as the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
Politically, it's another example of how even if he is genuinely being pragmatic, as he insists, those who do not like him will believe the worst and cite it as yet another example of the Turnbull not being the man he once was.
Just as Turnbull spent the first part of this week being belted for not denouncing Donald Trump's immigration ban, knowing that if he did, it would imperil the refugee deal with Barack Obama, which Trump reluctantly agreed to honour.
Had Turnbull given Trump a mouthful over immigration, it is almost certain the deal, still shaky, would founder.
But the re-embrace of coal will also test Labor, which has thrown its lot in with renewable energy and a carbon price on the electricity sector.
