Antinuclear

And the government has told senators it will still pursue the abolition of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), despite accepting advice from the agency on achieving emissions reductions through its direct action policy.
In a hearing on Wednesday, CEFC chief executive Oliver Yates said the agency was reassessing how much it could contribute to Australia’s 5 per cent emissions reduction target by 2020 because of uncertainty over the RET.

The government recommended last year that the target for large scale renewable energy be reduced from 41,000 gigawatt hours of baseline power by 2020 to closer to 26,000 gigawatt hours.

The CEFC, which was set up by Labor to invest in low emissions projects, had previously estimated its work could achieve about half of Australia’s target but Mr Yates said that forecast would have to be reviewed.

“The level of emissions in relation to the projects we finance obviously is quite dependent upon the projects that we are likely to finance,” he said.

“At the moment, we’re seeing a change within that as large renewable projects have been slowed down with the RET.”

Mr Yates pointed to research by Bloomberg, which found there had been an 88 per cent reduction in projects because investment had stalled while negotiations between the government and Labor were deadlocked.

“The amount of investment within the large sector for renewable energy is about back to the same level it was in 2002,” he said.

“So we’ve gone back about 12 years is where we are now in terms of the current investment that’s occurring in large scale renewables whilst the market has no certainty as to the outcome of the RET review.”

Mr Yates said the CEFC’s work was continuing, despite ongoing uncertainty over its own future…….http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ret-negotiations-set-industry-back-12-years-clean-energy-finance-corporation-20150225-13ok66.html