Antinuclear

Australia’s Renewable Energy Target on track to stay

Shrinking the cost of renewables, CLIMATE SPECTATOR: Daniel Palmer , 2 Nov 2012 On Wednesday, the front page of The Australian and the third page of The Australian Financial Review carried stories of complaints about the renewable energy target. It was followed up today by an editorial in The Australian and one suspects many more similar pieces in coming weeks. It represents the last roll of the dice for those critical of the scheme to influence the Climate Change Authority on the RET Review, but it will probably come to nothing…..

Given the Climate Change Authority has come to a preliminary conclusion that the benefits outweigh the costs based on the original modelling that overstated costs, surely its opinion on the worth of the scheme has only gone up in light of this development.

Those against the large-scale scheme in its current form are going to have to shout mighty hard to get through now given the costs have been shown to be so moderate. In fact, their chances of getting the CCA to
alter its mindset in the next few weeks appear remote……
It’s when a cabinet minister comes out as strongly against the scheme
that eyebrows should be raised. In the meantime, the official line
from both major political parties is that they will respond shortly
after the final report is published in December.

The coalition, like the Labor government, has said previously that it
will back the findings of the review.

What few have picked up however, is that the Climate Change Authority
is a body the coalition will disband if it wins power at the next
election. In other words it has said it will accept the advice of a
body it doesn’t think should be in place.

While the final recommendations are likely to differ little from the
preliminary, it’s going to be an interesting end to the year for the
clean energy sector.
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/RET-Climate-Change-Authority-Clean-Energy-Council-pd20121102-ZMVQM?opendocument&src=rss

November 2, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, energy