Page 1204 - Week 05 - Thursday, 4 June 2020
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I am pleased to present the Electricity Feed-in (Renewable Energy Premium) Amendment Bill 2020 to the Assembly. This bill makes amendments to the Electricity Feed-in (Renewable Energy Premium) Act 2008, which established the ACT small and medium-scale feed-in tariff scheme.
The scheme allows for payments to be made to households and businesses that are generating renewable electricity and was open for applications between March 2009 and July 2011. Its objective was to encourage the uptake of renewable energy generators such as rooftop solar photovoltaic systems. The increased uptake helped drive solar PV prices down and make renewable generation accessible to more households and businesses across the ACT.
In 2018-19 there were 10,170 generators supported by the scheme, and collectively they generated 46,550 megawatt hours of clean electricity for the ACT. Under the act, Evoenergy, as the ACT electricity distributor, is required to provide data to the ACT government for the purposes of an annual report on the scheme. Evoenergy also uses the data to calculate the amount that is passed through to ACT electricity consumers. In 2018-19 the average weekly cost to a representative ACT household was 85 cents.
In January 2019 I requested an audit of Evoenergy’s data to ensure the ongoing efficiency of reporting, and that the data being provided to the ACT government is accurate, reliable and timely. The results of the audit indicated scope for improvement to be made to Evoenergy’s data collection and record-keeping systems, and for improvement in the information provided to the ACT government.
The amendments presented in this bill have been prepared to support these improvements by strengthening the legislative requirements for data collection and record keeping. A strong legislative response to the audit recommendations is needed to ensure that the small and medium-scale feed-in tariff scheme continues to retain the confidence of ACT energy consumers.
The amendments can be grouped into four key themes: assurance, reporting, penalty provisions and recovery of reasonable administration costs. These key themes provide a broad general framework for the legislative amendments. In addition to the information that Evoenergy and other reporting entities such as electricity retailers must provide to the ACT government each year, the amendments will enable the minister to request other information that is reasonably required to ensure the accuracy of the reported information.
This may, for example, include information about how data is recorded or information about internal systems that a reporting entity has in place to ensure data accuracy. This will provide assurance that reporting entities have robust processes in place to manage scheme data.
The amendments make clear that it is an offence for a reporting entity to fail to provide the required information. It will also be an offence for a reporting entity to provide information that is false or misleading, where the entity knows or is reckless about it being false or misleading. The maximum penalty for this offence is 30 penalty units.
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