Antinuclear

And it all came about because the country got lazy. Australia still has vast coal reserves, but the cost of delivery has soared to the point that consumer electricity prices have virtually doubled in the last five years. And now it is about to deal with a doubling, or even trebling, of gas prices.

This is clearly having an impact on Australia’s competitiveness, but the nation’s energy productivity hardly figures in any of the major economic reforms that are currently under consideration.

This is the major theme of a two-day conference in Sydney dubbed 2XEP, which stands for double energy productivity, a target that the energy efficiency industry says should be adopted in Australia (double the productivity by 2030), because all other major economies are doing the same thing.

Australia, though, has hopelessly inadequate rules and regulations on efficiency – be it for buildings, transport or electricity generation. Alan Pears, a professor from RMIT, noted that building regulations in Australia are at a point where they would not be legal in most other countries.

But Australia’s attitude to efficiency is long dated.

Robert Hill, a former environment minister in the Howard government and now at the US Studies Centre, made a few interesting points at the conference.

One was that his efforts to introduce stricter emissions targets on vehicles in Australia would destroy the Australian car industry. Now, the irony is, the country’s inability to produce energy fficiency vehicles was a likely contributor to downfall of the industry. The US car industry, meanwhile, is booming, particularly around low emission vehicles from the big 3 carmakers, and Tesla.

(He noted that he was also responsible for helping to introduce the first renewable energy target. He said that  he was told at the time that even a 1.5 per cent renewable target would “destroy” the Australian economy. Now, he noted, the target was for a minimum 20 per cent and his home state was over 30 per cent. Still, the alarmism continues)……….

As part of its roadmap, the alliance to save energy proposes:

Changes to National Electricity Rules to support utilities undertaking Demand Management instead of new infrastructure investment

– A national investment incentive scheme for business in all sectors to improve energy productivity, including facilitating greater private sector finance.

– Streamlining, harmonising and extending existing energy efficiency schemes such as the NSW Energy Efficiency Scheme and the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target.

– Minimum fuel economy standards for passenger and light freight vehicles, consistent with other developed nations.

– Greater development and use of public transport and urban planning to reduce traffic congestion, including through innovative financing and road charging.

All of which shouldn’t be, but could be, a major challenge for the government under its current policy directions. The Direct Action policy is likely to absorb the various state based energy efficiency targets, raising questions about whether any such savings would be “additional” to what would have happened.

And it seems the Abbott government is determined to focus its infrastructure on the building of yet more roads – even to the point of pushing state governments to sell energy infrastructure to provide the funds for more tarmac. http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/australias-lousy-energy-productivity-why-it-lags-the-world-52780