Antinuclear

While pledging to abolish the carbon price, the Coalition has always offered bipartisan support for the RET, which remains the biggest driver of investment in renewable energy.

But Senator Boswell told the Senate on Thursday that the RET should be abolished….. Coalition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt has said there are no plans to change the RET, but the Coalition would consider a review to be held in 2014.

Meanwhile, Greens senator Christine Milne will use a speech on Friday to take aim at the Coalition’s Direct Action climate policy, which she claims is a ”sham”.

Direct Action proposes to spend more than $1 billion a year, mostly on competitive government grants to companies or farmers who ”bid in” ideas for how they might reduce emissions.

But Senator Milne will outline why she believes the scheme has no chance of working.

”The Coalition expects more than 60 per cent of the abatement to come from soil carbon – but the science to back this up is not yet solid, so this abatement would not be recognised in international treaties. That’s a show-stopper,” she will say.

And she will quote Coalition frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull to make the point that ”assessing the tenders to ensure that they involve genuine reductions in emissions is fraught with difficulty.

”As Malcolm Turnbull has said, and I quote, ‘If a scheme operates whereby the government pays the firm to reduce its emissions intensity . . . there is firstly going to be a substantial and contentious debate about what the correct baseline is, and then whether it will actually be reduced . . .

”Arguments of considerable ferocity will arise as to whether a new piece of equipment would have been bought anyway, with the risk that the government ends up funnelling billions of dollars to companies to subsidise their profit without achieving any real additional cuts in emissions.’ ”

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/stress-over-renewable-energy-goal-20130228-2f96j.html#ixzz2MbLaIMoa