Our vision

The Clean Energy Council (CEC) is the peak body representing Australia’s clean energy and energy efficiency industries.

The high level principles for Clean Energy Council policy are:

• To accelerate the development and deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency technology (clean energy) and to ensure at least 20% of Australia’s electricity is generated by renewable energy by 2020.
• Contributes toward a level playing field for clean energy technology relative to fossil fuel based energy generation sources, including through a price on carbon (and other complementary measures).
• Achieve long term policy stability to underpin investment in clean energy technology, based on national consistency and minimal administrative burden.
• Support the development and deployment of all clean energy technologies, recognizing their unique barriers, circumstances and stages of development.
• Reduce the cost and improve the efficiency of clean energy technologies.
• Ensure the safety and reliability of clean energy technology.

The CEC advocates policy development on behalf of its members at the federal and state government level and promotes understanding of the industry and its potential through forums such as industry events, forums, conferences, newsletters and publications.

The following outlines the CEC definition of clean energy. Technologies outside of these definitions will not be directly represented by the CEC.

The CEC represents renewable energy and energy efficiency. These are defined as follows:

Renewable Energy

• All sources of renewable energy including hydro, solar, wind, marine, geothermal and bioenergy. All technologies and projects should comply with relevant laws and regulations in that jurisdiction.
• Other low emission sources with a very low carbon footprint such as:
                  o Fuel cell technology
                  o High efficiency cogeneration/trigeneration using natural gas
                  o Hydrogen and storage technology
                  o Waste coal mine gas.

• The CEC will not support fossil fuel based energy generation including:
                 o Traditional coal fired electricity generation
                 o Large scale, 100% gas fired generation (including from coal seam methane gas)
                 o Carbon capture and storage.

The CEC will not support nuclear generation technology given it is broadly considered to be non-renewable and is currently prohibited in Australia.

Energy Efficiency

• All demand side (behind the electricity meter) activities and technologies which increase the efficiency and reduce (per unit of activity) the consumption of electricity
• Technology or activities that improve the efficiency of renewable electricity generation (as defined above).