Saturday, 11 October 2014

Bill Shorten vows to fight to save renewable energy target

Extract from The Guardian

Labor leader says opposition is not prepared to help gut a scheme which has delivered investment and jobs
Bill Shorten
The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, is digging in on defending the renewable energy target. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP
Bill Shorten says Labor will offer a helping hand to aluminium by exempting the sector from Australia’s renewable energy target – but he says the opposition is not prepared to help the Abbott government gut a scheme which has delivered significant new investment, and created jobs.
Shorten used an interview with Guardian Australia on Friday to dig in behind the renewable energy target. The Labor leader said the renewable energy sector had communicated very clearly to the opposition that reducing the current target to a “real 20%” would kill future investment in solar and wind power in Australia.
“A real 20% would be a massive cut,” Shorten said in an interview on Friday. “The renewable energy industry has made it very clear that it wouldn’t have a future under a real 20%.”
This week Labor made its first concession on the RET, acknowledging that aluminium was a special case. “We get that some of the aluminium smelters are under a fair bit of pressure from a range of factors, and so we are happy to talk about that,” Shorten said Friday.
“But the government has failed comprehensively in making the case to vandalise the RET. The industry says the real 20% is not viable for future investment.
“We are interested in what the market thinks and what works in the real world – and we think the real 20% is unreal.”
The RET requires that 41,000 gigawatt hours of Australia’s energy is derived from renewable sources, such as solar and wind, by 2020.
Because energy demand has dropped, the existing requirement means more like 26% of energy will come from renewable sources by 2020 – not 20%.
In the wake of the Warburton review – which recommended gutting the scheme, and closing it to new entrants – business groups have called on the Coalition and Labor to work towards a compromise position on a “real” 20%.
Shorten’s comments do not close off movement altogether, but they indicate Labor is unwilling to make a substantial concession on the target.
Australia’s renewable energy sector is lobbying strongly against any diminution of the scheme. It claims that more than $10bn in investment and 20,000 jobs will be put at risk if the RET is scrapped or downgraded.
The Labor leader said the last 12 months of uncertainty surrounding the future of scheme had been damaging to investment, investor confidence and jobs.
He said he had asked three of his colleagues: Mark Butler, Chris Bowen and Gary Gray to have discussions with their government counterparts concerning the future of the scheme.
Shorten said the Coalition had shown an unproductive “rightwing ideological obsession” about any policy involving mitigating the risks of global warming.
The Coalition had exhibited an “unreasoning, ideological dislike” of solar and wind power. “The Warburton inquiry is not the framework for these negotiations,” he said.

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