Page 678 - Week 02 - Thursday, 20 March 2014
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However, I am confident that the direction that Minister Corbell has proposed in this legislation is taking us towards meeting the target using the large-scale auction process, again with a focus on doing it in a way that provides the best value for money for the ACT. When it goes to the position that we had advocated, right now the option of piggybacking on a federal scheme would not provide the certainty that we want, as we know that the federal renewable energy scheme is under some threat.
It is currently being reviewed, and the reviewer, Dick Warburton, is perhaps a very knowledgeable businessman but he is also a self-confessed sceptic about anthropogenic climate change. This is a fellow who I think comes to the review potentially with a sense of where the outcome should already be.
The other thing I would note is that when it comes to the federal renewable energy scheme, one thing that has been floated in recent times is that in fact the target should be dropped. The target is that 20 per cent of Australia’s electricity should come from renewable sources under the national renewable energy scheme. Some have suggested that that target should be reduced, that they should actually reduce it. And the reason for that is that there has been a general drop in energy consumption, and that is a well-known figure.
People in recent years have made a range of efforts, through energy efficiency, the installation of their own solar panels or through simply reduced consumption, to cut their own energy usage, and nationally we have seen a cut in the use of electricity across the country. So what that means is that, with the way the 20 per cent target was set before—it was set at a specific amount of energy; I cannot remember the figure exactly but it was a specific numerical value—and with a cut in national energy consumption, it is possible that when that numerical value is reached it will now be more than 20 per cent of the overall market. Heaven forbid that we should actually overshoot the target or even aim just that little bit higher! But that is what some would advocate that we should actually be doing.
It is sad and somewhat tragic in fact that the current Prime Minister seems so hell-bent on undoing positive action on climate change, not just the price on polluting carbon, although I am pleased that that attempt to repeal that legislation has been defeated in the Senate for now, but also the stimulus that drives the clean energy industries that we are going to need to reduce our emissions in Australia.
Organisations such as the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA, organisations that are funding and resourcing the development of clean energy in this country, that are creating new jobs, that are building new industries at a time when this country clearly needs them, are being attacked purely for ideological reasons, because they are performing. They are delivering for this country, but what we are going to see is the Australian government undermining the development of the renewable energy sector in this country by shipping those jobs and those economic benefits overseas to countries that do take seriously this issue and the provision of renewable energy.
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