Page 2792 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 17 September 2014
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to heating our homes and offices more effectively and using less greenhouse-polluting fuels. Minister Corbell has spoken about this already. The energy efficiency scheme is certainly one measure, again a very concrete measure, that is actually addressing that and ensuring that ACT households are better prepared for the future and are having their electricity and heating costs reduced as a result of the measures that have been put in place.
I would like to turn specifically to the renewable energy target. This was a Howard government policy designed to give the sector a kickstart. It was only a two per cent target. It was a pretty unambitious program. Certainly at the time I was working for Greenpeace, I was urging federal parliamentarians to take a more ambitious target. But at least we got a target underway. We saw the ALP lift the target to 20 per cent by 2020, and the Greens would have taken that target even higher, because our policy is firmly one of 90 per cent renewable energy in Australia by 2030.
The irony is that the reason the Abbott government is being asked to tear the renewable energy target down is that it is working. Generators, big electricity companies, are lobbying for government to cut the renewable energy target, and what they are saying is that Australians are actually using less electricity; people have taken the energy efficiency message seriously; the growth is not there in their sector; the renewable energy sector is producing too much; and therefore we need to get rid of the target, when in fact it is doing exactly what it is designed to do.
Strangely enough—and I am sure that our Liberal colleagues in the Assembly will be interested in this—the federal government’s own modelling indicated that consumers would be better off if the target was kept intact. The Warburton review of the renewable energy target commissioned ACIL Allen Consulting to undertake detailed modelling of the impact of the renewable energy target on the Australian electricity market. That modelling found that the best financial outcome for electricity consumers would be to increase the renewable energy target.
There is an inconvenient truth, and I think it flies in the face of the comments Ms Lawder made today that the RET is the high-cost option and that the costs imposed are not justifiable, when in fact the detailed modelling undertaken for the Warburton review found that the best financial outcome for electricity consumers would be to increase the renewable energy target. The modelling found that the second-best option for consumers will be to leave the renewable energy target as it was, and the modelling found that the worst, most expensive, outcome for consumers would be to scrap the renewable energy target. Yet that is exactly what the Warburton review chose to recommend.
So once again, we see the evidence being ignored because it is a little inconvenient for the ideology and the rhetoric that we are seeing put forward by the federal government. It is a really fascinating finding actually, and one worth reflecting on. I am happy to share with colleagues the link to the detailed modelling if anybody would like to have a closer look at that, because it really is worth a read.
At the other end of the spectrum, a May 2014 report by Bloomberg Energy Finance warned that any decrease to Australia’s renewable energy target would risk more than
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