03 February 2010
All parties now ready to solve renewable energy issues
The Clean Energy Council has warned that specific measures in the Coalition’s new climate change policy to assist some clean energy technologies will not work unless the national Renewable Energy Target is fixed.
Clean Energy Council chief executive Matthew Warren welcomed the Coalition’s recognition that the design of the RET needed reform to drive the development of both large and small scale clean energy technologies and called for bipartisan cooperation.
“The Coalition introduced the world’s first renewable energy target in 2001 and worked constructively with the Rudd government last year to expand it to 20 per cent of Australia’s electricity by 2020. However, the low price of renewable energy certificates has stalled investment in renewable energy projects and the support and ideas of all major parties are needed to fix the problem,” said Mr Warren.
“One of the fundamental structural problems with the current design of the RET is that a range of support measures for small scale technologies are unintentionally crowding out investment in industrial scale clean energy plants.
“We need to find a way of continuing to roll out household scale clean energy technologies like solar panels and solar hot water while at the same time building multi-million dollar clean energy projects.
“Increasing the existing support for household scale technologies will only exacerbate this problem unless at the same time their impact on the value of renewable energy certificates is neutralized. The Coalition has already indicated its support for a measure proposed by The Greens to effectively reduce the impact of rooftop technologies on the RET,” he said.
The CEC does not support the Coalition proposal to carve out a portion of the renewable energy target for large-scale clean energy projects or for emerging technologies.
“This type of banding presumes we know what will happen in the future, which is impossible given the range and scale of the different technologies at our disposal. By trying to pick winners you risk creating another kind of market distortion that will cause other problems down the line,” Mr Warren said.
“The biggest challenge for the industry right now is investor certainty. Developing and legislating a decisive and effective solution to the design of the RET will help remove the regulatory uncertainty which is stalling multi-billion dollar investment in this sector.”
“The risk of dangerous climate change is real and is already being factored into the commercial decisions of major investors. We continue to encourage climate change policy that incorporates and clarifies this risk so that we can accelerate the multi-billion dollar challenge of decarbonising energy supply in Australia and globally.”