Clean Energy Council Acting Chief Executive Kane Thornton said that the recommendations proposed by the review could bankrupt the industry and put thousands of workers out of a job, while terminating competition and innovation in the Australian energy sector.
“It is inconceivable that the review could objectively recommend slashing the RET when its own economic modelling showed this would lead to higher power bills in the long run, while at the same time smashing billions of dollars of investment” Mr Thornton said. “The review panel has clearly misunderstood the devastating effect of many of its recommendations. It is particularly naive to suggest that slashing the target would not have a massive impact on businesses that have invested on the basis of a legislated policy scheduled to operate out to 2030, and with over a decade of bipartisan support to date.”
The review panel, led by Dick Warburton, released its report today (28th August), recommending a number of scenarios for large-scale renewable energy technologies such as solar and wind farms and smaller domestic systems such as solar power and solar hot water. Each of the options would be devastating for the Australian renewable energy industry and would result in significant job losses.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance has also found that closing down the RET would result in the destruction of billions of dollars invested in the Australian electricity sector, including significant write-downs and potential bankruptcies.
“These recommendations would create a major sovereign risk issue, sending a very clear signal to international investors and financial markets that Australia’s energy sector is not open for business” Mr Thornton added. “The review has clearly ignored the vast majority of the 24,000 submissions to the review process, 99 per cent of which called for Australia's renewables target to be maintained or increased. On top of that, slashing support for solar would make it harder for Australian households and businesses to install the technology as a way to protect themselves from higher power bills. This would result in the immediate and significant damage to the solar sector and the loss of up to 5800 jobs.”
Mr Thornton said that the only winners from winding back the Renewable Energy Target would be a handful of old coal power plants which were decades past their retirement date. The recommendations would stop renewable energy in its tracks, stifling competition within the Australian energy market and ultimately putting electricity customers at severe disadvantage. The recommendations, if adopted by the Abbott government, would take Australia backwards in the global renewable energy race now being contested by over 144 countries with increasingly ambitious targets.
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