Page 1998 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 25 June 2008
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A feed-in tariff alone is not a cost-effective or efficient method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The ACT climate change policy should be broad and set meaningful and interim targets. It must have many other measures which incorporate better public transport and accelerate desperately needed retrofitting. While this feed-in tariff will support an increase in renewable energy production, we also need to simultaneously ensure that we encourage an overall reduction in energy use. We suggest that any installation of photovoltaic panels is accompanied by an energy audit and insulation installation.
Mounting photovoltaic panels on rooftops is an effective way to produce energy. The more PV arrays that are installed, the better the economies of scale in terms of reducing the production cost of electrical components. Like ACTPLA, I recommended that the roof of the data centre be filled up with solar panels. Even if it is not enough to power the data centre, it will make a very significant contribution to the grid and show that ActewAGL does have an energy conscience after all. Given that it is more economic to install larger arrays, we should be encouraging owners of large buildings, including government buildings such as offices and schools, to install PVs.
If its main purpose is to increase renewable energy production, this bill is not the best answer. However, I note that Mr Gentleman’s object is to promote it, not generate it.
The federal government’s mandatory renewable energy target has been increased to 20 per cent by 2020, which is a vast improvement on past government policy. The Greens’ target is for 10 per cent by 2010 and 25 per cent by 2020. In the long term, the better way to encourage renewable energy in a free electricity market is to either internalise the external costs and disadvantages of non-renewable energy sources, that is, carbon pricing, or to introduce market instruments such as a well-functioning system of tradable green certificates. In the meantime, a feed-in tariff may be the best alternative instrument, notably when this amount is still small.
We hope to see a successful take-up rate and to hear that installers are booked up for the next year. The solar industry has been growing in Canberra over the past few years, most probably spurred by the federal government’s subsidy for PV panel installation, and this bill will add the icing on the cake for the local solar industry. Unfortunately, a recent step backwards was the federal ALP’s means testing for photovoltaic panels which has, we have been told, been devastating for some local solar suppliers.
Most households could reduce their energy use, but the incentives and commitment are missing. The energy efficiency access and savings initiative, EASI, proposed by Greens Senator Christine Milne, would establish a system of free energy audits; advise householders of all efficiency opportunities with a payback period of 10 years or less; organise and pay the up-front costs of implementing cost-effective opportunities such as ceiling, wall and floor insulation, solar hot water systems, efficient lights, and shading of windows; and collect repayments as a proportion of savings on a home’s energy bills over a 10-year period. Repayments would be less than the savings on energy bills, so that no householders would ever feel out of pocket.
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