Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, Matthias Cormann placing bizarre restrictions on renewable energy development
By potentially restricting the CEFC’s mandate to “big solar” – particularly parabolic troughs and molten salt storage – and as yet undeveloped technologies such as wave and tidal energy, as suggested by environment minister Greg Hunt, the government is not just confusing the CEFC’s role with that of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, but also making its task of achieving double the government bond rate return impossible.
It is asking it to take on the riskiest technologies and put all its eggs in just a few baskets.
The Coalition’s push against renewables is bizarre, contradictory, risky nonsense, Guardian Giles Parkinson, 13 July 15 With its directive to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Abbott government is also telling the banks to avoid financing renewables here Not content with putting the renewable energy industry on hold through an interminable review, and then cutting the large scale component by more than one third, and then declaring wind energy to be offensive,ugly and unwelcome, the Coalition government has now decided to try to nobble the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC).
Clean energy bank ‘seeks legal advice’ after Coalition pulls plug on wind and solar projects
Not for the first time, but the attempts by treasurer Joe Hockey and finance minister Matthias Cormann to impose bizarre, contradictory and mystifying restrictions on the $10bn institution are designed to prolong the drought in large scale renewable energy investment and extend it to small scale renewables as well.
Much of the uproar has focused on the apparent targeting of wind technology and household solar – the two most successful renewable energy sectors in Australia to date.
But the intent of the Hockey/Cormann directive is to forbid the CEFC to invest in any “mature” technology, which it identifies as “extant wind” and rooftop solar. It could arguably include energy efficiency initiatives (such as LED lights and insulation), large scale solar PV, small hydro, land fill gas and waste to energy and numerous other technologies.
By potentially restricting the CEFC’s mandate to “big solar” – particularly parabolic troughs and molten salt storage – and as yet undeveloped technologies such as wave and tidal energy, as suggested by environment minister Greg Hunt, the government is not just confusing the CEFC’s role with that of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, but also making its task of achieving double the government bond rate return impossible.
It is asking it to take on the riskiest technologies and put all its eggs in just a few baskets. The experienced finance team on the CEFC board, including chairwoman Jillian Broadbent, will undoubtedly tell them that is just nonsense.
It’s not really the details that count. It is the big picture and the optics that matter in global financial flows. The Abbott government has long declared its interest in technologies that are “on the horizon” – hence the interest in wave and tidal – and its horror of technologies that are being deployed in scale now, and threaten the primacy of fossil fuels.
Having tried everything else to stop renewable energy, it has now turned its focus on big financial institutions. The message it wants to send to domestic and international banks is clear: don’t finance that stuff down here.
The contradictions are endless. The Abbott government argues that it does not want the CEFC to support projects that would otherwise make economic sense. But it doesn’t apply this criteria to its proposed $5bn fund – dubbed the dirty energy finance corporation – to support infrastructure for coal mines and coal generators in northern Australia.
As Abbott and Hunt have made clear, the government would close the CEFC if it had the numbers. And if it had the numbers, there would be no protection for the current renewable energy target either……….http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/13/the-coalitions-push-against-renewables-is-bizarre-contradictory-risky-nonsense
Antinuclear 
Their goal is to limit homeowners from generating their own energy (aka Energy Slavery) by supporting Utility Generation!
All AU Ratepayers should demand Energy Freedom:
The right to install Solar (via ultra low-cost Gov’t. Loans just like Big Utilities get) on their roofs and/or wind turbines on their own property PLUS get paid as much as the Big Utilities do for all Energy they add to the Grid at the time it is added.
Anything less is nothing short of Government supporting Big Utilities instead of the people of AU!
Beware all those Leaders seeking Nuclear Payback*
* http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Nuclear+payback
Those that support nuclear power because nuclear power somehow supports them; no matter what the health implications or other “costs” are for others.
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