Page 3796 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 29 October 2014
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There is oversupply in the energy system. This is the best opportunity we have to shut down coal while maintaining our energy security and, therefore, move Australia towards a clean energy future and away from the dirty fossil fuel energy production of the past. It is vital that in the federal environment the Labor Party and the Palmer United Party do not cave in to any compromises that will undermine the renewable energy target and send clean energy jobs offshore.
The Greens’ view is that the renewable energy target should be increased to 90 per cent by 2030. That is what we should be doing. Even the Warburton review, the review that was set up to undermine the renewable energy target, found that increasing the renewable energy target would be cheaper than scaling it down, that Australia’s electricity would cost less if the renewable energy target was scaled up than if it was removed. Yet what we see is the federal Abbott government moving in the completely opposite direction.
When members of the Liberal Party come in here and say, “We are concerned about the cost of living for Canberra households; we are concerned about keeping electricity prices down,” they should go and look at the Warburton review and talk to their federal colleagues about why they are pushing policy in a direction that will actually increase electricity costs, contrary to the finding of the Warburton review. It really is quite bizarre and again warrants a bit of internal reflection on the disconnect between the rhetoric that we hear in public and the policy decisions that have been taken.
We have seen a clear response from industry around this approach on the renewable energy target. According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald, a report produced by international law group Baker & McKenzie says that lowering the renewable energy target is likely to undermine existing investments while freezing new ones and will open the federal government to demands for compensation. The company, which has provided legal services to clean energy projects, said that any reduction in the renewable energy target would increase the cost of capital and make many existing and future projects financially unviable. Existing projects up for refinancing might not be able to meet the minimum financing requirements based on the revised set of risks and parameters. It goes back to that very question of sovereign risk, doesn’t it? The Liberal Party, the ones that say we should create a conducive business environment, are prepared to change the rules and ruin an industry that was making perfectly good progress.
According to wind farm developer Infigen, the proposal to cut the rate is “disingenuous and a misrepresentation of the facts” for the coalition to say that they had only supported a 20 per cent goal rather than the fixed number of terawatt hours, as fixed targets were legislated under the previous government with coalition support and Minister Macfarlane “knows that a floating target would not have been investible”. Again, we are seeing a mischievous approach, one that seeks to twist the facts and really does no credit to the current federal government. They are flying in the face of their own advisers. They are pushing us in a direction which will increase rather than reduce electricity costs and doing the planet a disservice by locking in and supporting the dirty fossil fuel industries and the most polluting form of electricity generation.
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