Fossil fuel industries have a stranglehold on Australia’s renewable energy development
Part of the problem is that Australia’s renewable energy industry is, by and large, a subset of the fossil fuel industry. Origin, AGL and Truenergy have a stranglehold on electricity markets and they want to decide the pace of our response to climate change…..
Renewable energies are the only zero emission solution that we know will work, at scale – and once a plant is built we get free fuel forever.
Body politic sapping energy from climate change plans, SMH, September 3, 2011 The wheels of clean energy are turning in ever-diminishing circles as politics hogs its place in the sun, writes Paddy Manning. PARTY-POLITICKING on the carbon tax is to be expected. It would be scandalous if a Coalition state government came out and backed the multiparty climate change committee’s ”clean energy future” package.
What is galling is watching the clock turn back on state policies designed to help tackle climate change. Backsliding on support for renewable energy in Victoria and NSW is a foretaste of life under Tony Abbott.
According to the Clean Energy Council, Premier Ted Baillieu happily kissed goodbye to as much as $3 billion in wind farm investment this week – a perverse outcome given Victoria’s excellent wind resource. What will that do for the state’s competitiveness in clean energy, let alone for Australia’s response to climate change? It seems Baillieu and his colleagues couldn’t care less.
On rooftop solar, things aren’t as bad – at least on Thursday the government retained a 25¢/kWh feed-in-tariff (down from 60¢/kWh) that will help the PV industry along to grid parity, which in much of the state should arrive by 2014. A bigger problem than the reduced tariff is the 75MW capacity cap – which on past experience may be met within months, meaning the stop-start approach to solar policy will continue.
It’s equally dire in NSW where Premier Barry O’Farrell has replaced the old Solar Bonus Scheme with (drum roll) nothing at all, and where the premier casually told radio 2GB that his government hadn’t approved any new wind farm applications ”and if I had my way, we wouldn’t”.
In a Thursday speech, NSW Energy Minister Chris Hartcher went so far as to warn against over-reliance on renewable energy! With federal climate change minister Greg Combet flagging a wind-back of renewable schemes when (or if) the carbon price comes in, it feels like there’s a backlash on in Australia – strengthening even as renewables get more competitive……
Part of the problem is that Australia’s renewable energy industry is, by and large, a subset of the fossil fuel industry. Origin, AGL and Truenergy have a stranglehold on electricity markets and they want to decide the pace of our response to climate change.
This week International Energy Agency researchers predicted solar PV and solar-thermal plants could produce most of the world’s electricity by 2060 – and half of all energy needs – with wind, hydropower and biomass plants supplying much of the rest. Renewable energies are the only zero emission solution that we know will work, at scale – and once a plant is built we get free fuel forever.
”Loony-tunes (sic)” (as one columnist complained this week)? Tell that to the IEA.
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