Antinuclear

Regular Murdoch commentator Judith Sloan has been a repeated critic of the RET, and let fly again on Tuesday, calling for the policy to be changed.

That’s fine, different points of view are welcome. But not when they are accompanied by such wild factual errors. Sadly, this has been the lot of the renewable energy industry in Australia.

The original Sloan article can be found here. Here are some of the erroneous highlights.

Back in 2009, there was an expectation that the fixed RET would lead to 20 per cent of all generated electricity coming from renewable sources by 2020. It is now clear that this estimate is hopelessly wrong; indeed the percentage could be closer to 30 per cent and the implications of this overshoot need to be considered.

No, there was an expectation it would be a minimum 20 per cent. When the legislation was passed in 2010, voted for by the Coalition, the expectation was for a minimum 22 per cent. If you don’t double count rooftop solar, which is reducing demand, the current proportion if the 41,000GWh target is met is 26 per cent. Given the urgent need to reduce emissions and effect a transition to a low carbon economy, this could be seen as a good result, unless you are a coal-fired generator.

It is equally clear the LRET cannot realistically be achieved by 2020. The amount of energy presently being produced by renewable sources is only a tad over 16,000GWh. A reasonable chunk of this is hydropower, but there is little prospect of any significant increase in hydropower generation before 2020.

So few sentences, so many mistakes. Apart from the fossil fuel generators arguing against the RET, everyone else accepts that it is reachable. The only reason this task has been made more difficult is because the federal government has threatened to cut the target.

The current amount of energy produced by renewables is more than 30,00GWh. The 16,000GWh referred to by Sloan is the bit that is generated by NEW generation constructed since the RET was introduced. Hardly any of it is hydro………

Hopefully, the Australian’s editorial pages will have room for all the corrections in tomorrow’s edition.http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/murdoch-media-wrong-again-on-renewable-energy-target-73253