RET DEAL THROUGH, WIND FARMS START BEING BUILT AGAIN

Media Release

Mark Butler MP.

Shadow Minister for Environment

 Climate Change and Water

Date:  24 June 2015

Overnight, the Senate passed legislation for the revised Renewable Energy Target (RET), providing the much-needed certainty for the renewable energy industry to get back on track. 

While Labor would have much preferred Tony Abbott stick to his election promise to retain the RET at 41,000GWh, this legislation provides the bipartisanship required to have investment once again roll in for Australia’s renewable energy industry. 

In bad news for Tony Abbott, this means those wind farms he finds so utterly offensive can start being built again, despite his best efforts to drive them from our shores. 

Fortunately, almost everyone else in Australia – except maybe Joe Hockey – will be pleased with this news. 

The RET underpinned billions in investment and helped create thousands of jobs in the renewable energy sector before Tony Abbott began his reckless campaign against the industry early last year. 

Labor has been able to secure a deal that will see around 25 per cent of Australia’s energy generated from renewable sources by 2020, no changes to the small-scale solar scheme, a full exemption for emissions intensive trade exposed industries and the removal of two-yearly reviews of the RET. 

The Clean Energy Council has said this legislation is a “huge weight off the shoulders of the 20,000 Australians currently working in the industry.” Under this agreement, renewable energy in Australia will nearly double, new projects will come on line and carbon pollution from the electricity sector will reduce. 

Labor’s ultimate end game has been to return certainty to the renewable energy industry. This deal does that. 

We did not make this deal with any sense of joy, but with relief that it will bring an important industry back from the brink, even in the face of Tony Abbott’s senseless verbal attacks in recent days.