Antinuclear

Government sources said a proposal to set the target at 31,000 gigawatt hours of baseline power by 2020 was put to Labor on Monday afternoon in a bid to break a deadlock that has existed for more than 12 months.

Labor is understood to have rejected the offer but could not be reached for comment.

The Opposition and the clean energy industry had been pushing for a figure in the mid- to high-thirties, but government sources said 31,000 was in line with demands from some quarters of the renewables sector.

Kane Thornton, chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, said on Monday that 31,000 gigawatt hours was too large a cut from the existing target of 41,000 gigawatt hours by 2020.

“We’ve been quite transparent about our position on this,” Mr Thornton said.

“There’s a strong consensus in the renewable energy sector on a desire to resolve this.

“But there’s also a strong consensus on what reduction in the target the industry is willing to accept.

“We’ve made this quite clear and explicit – 31,000 is quite clearly a number we’re not prepared to accept.”

The failed offer continues the uncertainty that has plagued the renewables sector since the government launched a review of the target more than 12 months ago……..

Oliver Yates, the chief executive of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, told a Senate estimates hearing last week that uncertainty over the target had set the industry back 12 years.