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Renewable Energy and other national climate policies

CANA Policies

Policy overview

Renewable Energy

CANA groups welcome boost to renewable energy target (26/02/10): The Rudd Government’s Renewable Energy Target (RET) had key design flaws which has meant that no new renewable energy projects have proceeded since the legislation was passed in 2009. On February 26 2010, Minister Wong confirmed a change to the Target that would see 41,000 Gwh (out of 45,000 Gwh) targeted at large scale RE technologies, although further details have yet to be released. This change is expected to provide greater investor certainty needed for large-scale renewable energy projects, such as wind. While CANA's member groups have welcomed this change, they have highlighted the need for a stronger mix of policies:

  • ACF: “This announcement is a step in the right direction, but we need to see more detail about how these changes will work. [For example,] a strong price on greenhouse pollution is also essential to make sure coal-fired power doesn’t have an unfair advantage.”
  •  The Climate Institute: “The RET alone would achieve the equivalent of just one twelfth of the total emission reductions needed to achieve the 25% emission-reduction target, that both parties agree is in Australia’s national interest”.
  •  Environment Victoria: “A guaranteed Renewable Energy Certificate price of $40 MWh for household solar electricity and hot water will mean that prices will not fluctuate wildly from month to month and make consumer investment more attractive”.
  • Greenpeace Australia Pacific: “These changes mean that people will still be able to install small-scale solutions around the home and at the same time a green light is being given to wind and other technologies.
  • CANA RET Submission Feb 09
  • CANA Media Release on 2020 RE Target (Dec 08)
  • CANA policy on wind farms 

Energy Efficiency

  • Garrett's green schemes paused: ACF welcomes (19/2/10): Environment Minister Peter Garrett has announced that a new household renewable energy bonus would replace the insulation program and the solar hot water rebate.The Australian Conservation Foundation has welcomed the decision to pause, fix and re-start the program of Government support for household insulation, but criticised the reduction of the solar hot water rebate and the green loans scheme. Insulating houses cuts greenhouse pollution, helps people save money and is very popular. But cutting the rebate for solar hot water will slow down the solar roll out of solar across the country and the ending of ‘green loans’ means the Government will not be providing any support for people to implement the recommendations from household assessments.

Fossil fuels

 

  • Polluting brown coal plants get the green light in Victoria...: After 18 months of negotiations, the long-term contracts until 2036 to supply electricity from Loy Yang to Alcoa's two Victorian smelters have been finalised. The Alcoa and Loy Yang entities will not release the "carbon reduction agreement" that forms part of the contracts to supply about 820MW of baseload power to Alcoa's Point Henry and Portland smelters, but we know it requires Loy Yang Power to provide an annual report to Alcoa on opportunities for the generator to cut emissions. The contracts will take effect in 2014 for the Point Henry smelter near Geelong and in 2016 for the Portland smelter. Loy Yang Power chief Ian Nethercote said he did not believe the certainty provided by the contracts weakened the case for providing coal-fired generators with more money to compensate them for asset value loss associated with the introduction of the proposed CPRS. But ACF said that Alcoa and Loy Yang Power should make it clear that they had factored in a carbon price and that they did not expect government to underwrite any carbon price, and Environment Victoria called for clarification on whether taxpayers would be exposed "if the deal falls through at a future time when we get serious about climate change". Discussions among CANA members have suggested that maintaining brown coal on the grid could be a terrible precedent and that it is now very difficult to imagine how we can be achieve serious emissions reduction targets by 2036. Surprise has also been expressed that either side would agree to anything fixed over such a long timeframe, given the current uncertainty over the CPRS. Under most forward projections Loy Yang has to be looking at retiring one or both of their power stations around 2030, so perhaps they are looking into replacing that capacity with gas generation (or perhaps some renewable energy?) to fulfill the contract.
  • ...while black coal gets going in NSW: The NSW government has approved two concept plans for new 2,000 MW power plants at Mt Piper near Lithgow and Bayswater in the Upper Hunter. The Greens and conservation groups doubt that further power is required for baseload electricity, noting that the latest data from the Australian Energy Market Operator shows that NSW has sufficient baseload capacity for reliable supply beyond 2016. CANA member, Institute of Sustainable Futures, has used the latest projections of NSW’s electricity use by Transgrid to demonstrate that there is no need for new power stations and that energy efficiency,demand management and renewable energy can easily satisfy NSW's energy needs. They also note that more coal-fired stations will increase the state’s greenhouse gas emission by 15.1 per cent and gas by 7.1 percent as carbon capture and storage will not be available in the time scale needed to respond to global climate change. The NSW Nature Conservation Council has stated that the decision to fuel new power stations by coal or gas has huge consequences for NSW’s emissions, and is a decision that should be made by government, not left to the market.
  •  Australian Energy Resource Assessment released:  CANA and other member groups attended the consultation events and made a submission to Minister Ferguson's Energy White Paper. They've just released the 'national prospectus for energy investment and exports'. The coal chapter of this report offers some intriguing statistics, including "major increases in production over the past 40 years has seen the resource life of Australia’s black coal resources fall from about 300 years to around 90 years" - and this is over a period of only three decades. It's not hard to see why: in the last thirty years, we've gone from exporting around the same amount of black coal as we consume domestically to exporting three times as much (as they get much more money per tonne that way). Another item to note is that "Coal’s share of domestic electricity generation is projected to decline from around 75 per cent in 2007–08 to 43 per cent in 2029–30", which amounts to a small net decline in total consumption, while world consumption is still set to grow over that time. Although they state they are looking for more coal resources, if exports continue to grow as they have done, there might not be much coal around to burn in new (black) coal fired power stations in twenty years' time. That would be a neat way to achieve the goals of the 'no new coal' campaign!. The assessment is available at: https://www.ga.gov.au/products/servlet/controller?event=GEOCAT_DETAILS&catno=70142.

 

  • New coal fired power stations: Greenpeace has compiled a list of all of the proposed new coal power stations around the country - as well as an estimate of their greenhouse emissions. If they are all built they will increase Australia's emissions by around 39M tonnes/year - around 7 percent of Australia's total emissions. Of course some of them are probably speculative - others definitely aren't. The NSW Government is proposing to approve two massive coal-fired power stations, one in the Blue Mountains and the other in the Hunter Valley.  If built, they will churn out over 20 million tonnes of emissions into the atmosphere every year. Greenpeace is coordinating a No New Coal campaign. To kick off the campaign, they're holding a rally at NSW Parliament on Thursday 25 February at 1pm at the NSW Parliament House (main gate) Macquarie St Sydney. Also, a petition for No New Coal is being circulated to be signed and sent to Greenpeace to be tabled in NSW Parliament.
  • CANA: No Coal National Statement

Fuels

 

 

Electricity

Technologies

Biodiversity protection

  • EPBC Review: Greenhouse trigger not adopted: The Final Report of the Independent Review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) (EPBC Act) – ‘The Australian Environment Act: Report of the Independent Review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999’ was released on 21 December 2009. The most striking omission from this review is the 'greenhouse trigger', first drafted by Government officials in the late 1990s, and recommended in many submissions to the Review, including that by CANA. A greenhouse trigger is an important mechanism for assessing and approving or rejecting major projects that contribute to carbon pollution. The ALP promised a greenhouse trigger before the last election and than delayed while the Hawke report was done. Friends of the Earth condemned the trigger's omission, stating "Coming on the back of the Kevin Rudd's Copenhagen debacle, we again see the fossil fuel industry rules the roost in Canberra." The Report is available on the Review website at: http://www.environment.gov.au/epbc/review/index.html.

  • EPBC Review Submission Climate Action Network Australia (Dec 08)
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