Antinuclear

Audio: Tony Abbott’s war on renewable energy

Audio Prime Minister vows to revisit renewable energy target http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2013/s3939181.htm Stephanie Smail reported this story on Thursday, February 6, 2014 ELEANOR HALL: The Prime Minister is vowing to look closely at changing Australia’s Renewable Energy Target (RET), as Queensland’s biggest energy generator warns that the target is pushing up costs in the industry…..In its submission to the Federal Government’s Energy White Paper, Stanwell blames energy policies, including the renewable energy target and the carbon tax, for its soaring costs……

Mr Abbott agrees that Australia has become one of the world’s most expensive countries for energy.

He says the carbon tax needs to go and other energy policies might need tweaking…..

STEPHANIE SMAIL: Kane Thornton from the Clean Energy Council says there’s no evidence to support claims the renewable energy target is to blame for soaring power prices.

He says a move to overhaul the target would be a backward step.

KANE THORNTON: We would see a fairly significant impact on the amount of new renewable energy that came into the energy sector in Australia and that would obviously therefore have to increase our exposure to both that old coal-fired power generation but also higher cost gas generation.

That would ultimately mean that we’d be exposed over the longer term to higher retail electricity prices because of that increased cost of gas and also obviously the carbon footprint from our energy sector would clearly trend upwards again…….

STEPHANIE SMAIL: The Federal Government’s Energy White Paper is due to wrap up in September.

February 7, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News