False claims against Renewable Energy Target

The energy sector big boys said that the RET must be stopped because, they aren’t making the profits they used to.

Sochi and the renewable energy target, Independent Australia, 2 March 14 If we can spend $307 million on sport and $20 mill to get a few minor medals at the Winter Olympics, we can afford to keep the renewable energy target, writes Lachlan Barker. [Among]the noisome pile of slime that is Abbott Government policy was the cutting, sorry, ‘reviewing’ of the renewable energy targets.

For future reference, note that when an Abbott acolyte – sorry, troglodyte – says they are ‘reviewing’ something, it means that funding is being withdrawn; this is the simplest way to scupper anything that Government disagrees with……….

The Howard Government introduced the mandatory Renewable Energy Targets(RET) in 2001 and this led, as you would expect, to an increase in investment in clean energy sources in Australia.

One example is windfarms in South Australia is, solar, both on roof, and atconcentrated solar thermal (CST) plants, is another.

Despite all the sceptics crying at the time: “Solar only works during the day” and “none of these can provide adequate base-load power”, the various renewables got a little toehold in the market and began making slow inroads.

The problem we have today is that, slow though this progress has been, it has already frightened the major players in the energy sector – Energy Australia (EA) and Origin Energy – so much that they called Canberra and told Treasurer Joe Hockey, Environment Minister Greg Hunt and Energy Minister Ian Macfarlane that they wanted this pinko, hippy, renewable energy thingo stopped in its tracks — pronto!

The three amigos duly obliged and called for a ‘review’, with the clear goal of knocking this clean energy nonsense on the head for good.

Now, when I did my research, I thought I was going to find that the reasons given by the government for stopping the RET and continuing with coal fired power would be the old standard “solar and wind are just not practical”.

But much to my astonishment, I found that it was much simpler than that.

The energy sector big boys said that the RET must be stopped because, they aren’t making the profits they used to.

How’s that?

Apparently, because of the high prices that Origin and EA charge, we homeowners have begun reducing our power usage to save money.

Hence a drop in profit for coal-fired energy companies.

Added to which, with an increasing number of homeowners asking for their power to come from green sources, the energy sector latched onto this as the primary cause of their falling profits.And thus the call to Canberra to have the RET scrapped — an act of ecologic bastardry that will kill off, financially, many of the nascent green power suppliers.

So now we come to my vote for f$%^wit of the year, Burchell Wilson, Chief Economist of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

He was on the ABC’s 7.30 Reportspouting a load of “renewable energy is costing the homeowner more”bollocks.

I have gone over his gobbledegook in his interview with Sarah Ferguson, and even I, the writer of this article struggle with his lack-of-logic.

So let’s go with a couple of points.

First he says, the RET is costing “$1.6 billion across the economy.”

How’s that, Burchell?

$1.6 billion would buy a lot of solar panels and quite a few wind farms but, unless they’ve been superbly camouflaged with the sort of invisibility technology that Doctor Who would be proud of, I haven’t seen them.

So exactly how the RET is costing us $1.6 bill? I confess myself mystified.

Then he goes on to say: