Liberal Coalition would reverse renewable energy progress. Risky politics?
Reversing renewable momentum would be politically risky for opposition leader Tony Abbott, not only because of electoral concern about climate change and the billions of dollars at stake, but also because the push to cleaner energy was born in conservative politics.
Australia’s political freeze on renewables Climate Spectator, Rob Taylor 27 May13, On a line of low hills standing sentinel beside a dry lake bed near Australia’s capital, giant turbines turning slo in a chill winter breeze give no hint of a multi-billion-dollar storm building around renewable energy. Slowly Infigen Energy’s Capital Windfarm, built five years ago, was a vanguard for wind power as Australia sought to wean itself from cheap fossil-fuel power in the face of climate shift blamed in part for Lake George’s transformation to a vast plain.
But big plans to expand the Infigen renewable energy project near Canberra and others like it have been put on hold awaiting the outcome of the September election. The ballot, which opinion polls show the opposition conservatives winning, along with an economic slowdown and rising home energy bills have put the brakes on Australia’s decade-long clean energy push.
At stake in the September 14 vote is a controversial carbon trading scheme championed by ruling Labor to curb greenhouse gas emissions, with a $20 billion pipeline in renewable investment largely on hold as nervous companies sit on their hands.
Infigen for one has not decided whether to go ahead with a $180 million expansion of the Capital wind farm, despite having local planning approval, or with a $150 million joint venture solar plant with US-based Suntech Power.
“We expect changes. We don’t know what they’ll be. But the uncertainty is having a crippling effect on the market,” says Nathan Fabian, head of a group of institutional investors with $900 billion in funds under management and worried about the looming climate fight.
The Coalition has pledged “in blood” to scrap a carbon tax and cut power costs in a country with plentiful supplies of cheap coal, while reviewing policy on renewable power.
But how they may do it is unclear.
“We don’t see any clear long-term policy direction on the climate or energy sector from the opposition,” says Fabian, of Australia’s Investor Group on Climate Change, which includes pension funds and major international banks. “And until that is clear, capital is sitting on the sidelines.”
World first
Reversing renewable momentum would be politically risky for opposition leader Tony Abbott, not only because of electoral concern about climate change and the billions of dollars at stake, but also because the push to cleaner energy was born in conservative politics……
big power generators and utilities like Origin Energy and EnergyAustralia, as well as gas producer Santos, are now pushing for the RET to be wound back or scrapped, along with the carbon price……
Large industry players are pushing opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt to consider a target of around 27,000 gigawatt hours instead of 41,000, which would drastically change the viability of some renewable projects in the pipeline…..
Last week, Hunt warned a conservative government planned changes to grants for renewable projects and that it would look to back out of contracts signed pre-election by the government’s $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation, set up to help commercialise wind and solar ventures. http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/5/27/renewable-energy/australias-political-freeze-renewables#ixzz2UXGqepAk
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