Extract from The Guardian
This will undermine competitiveness, destroy innovation and prop up a failed polluting fossil fuel industry
If you fail to remember the past you are condemned to repeat it. In the UK in the 1860s the horse carriage industry and new railways were threatened by the self-propelled motor vehicle. So the government swung into action on behalf of its supporters, sabotaging the new industry by requiring every motor vehicle to be preceded by a man waving a red flag. All it achieved was to deny the community the benefits of the new technology and transfer the innovative advantage to other countries.
When I see prime minister Scott Morrison announcing his intention to change the mandate of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, to redirect funds to carbon capture and storage (CCS), a subsidy to the fossil fuel industry, all I see is a red flag-waving saboteur in front of a sign that says LNP open for donations. This is the endgame of the Coalition’s ideological battle to destroy the globally recognised Arena and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) institutional framework for reducing emissions.
Go to the Arena website and it will tell you it precludes funding fossil fuels, its purpose is to “improve the competitiveness of renewable energy technologies and increase the supply of renewable energy through innovation that benefits Australian consumers and businesses.”
Go to Morrison’s latest announcement of rewriting the mandate of Arena and you will find his purpose is to do the exact opposite. Undermine competitiveness, restrict the supply of renewables by destroying innovation, prop up failed polluting fossil fuel industry and subsidise the research in industrial processes that industry ought to be compelled to fund itself if we had a world’s best practice regulatory framework.
Arena and the CEFC were the product of the multi-party climate change committee set up as part of the Labor and Australian Greens agreement to deliver government to prime minister Julia Gillard.
Bob Brown, Adam Bandt and I knew that the carbon price would not be high enough to drive the rollout of renewables at scale in the timeframe that was needed to meet the climate emission reduction imperatives, so we insisted on establishing and funding Arena and the CEFC to complement the carbon price.
I have been so proud over the years of their boards and staff who have had huge success bringing down emissions, creating thousands of jobs and leveraging billions in private sector investment. They covered the field from renewable energy research to pilot stage and then through to commercial rollout. They held the hand of the finance sector which had no experience dealing with renewable energy investment and leveraged billions of dollars into the sector .
They have been so successful that Tony Abbott through to Morrison haven’t been able to muster the political support to abolish them. So now the fossil fuel plutocracy have found another way to get around the parliament. First don’t renew contracts of proven advocates for climate action. Instead appoint mates or former staffers of the minister.
Secondly rewrite the mandate to remove the prohibition of funding fossil fuels, stab renewables and to support CCS, fossil hydrogen and anything else in the LNP grab bag of “moonbeams of lunacy” to borrow an Abbott turn of phrase.
Anyone who thinks this is anything other than turning Arena into a politically directed delivery vehicle for LNP policy is naive. Whatever they say, the limited resources will be directed to LNP electorates and donors.
It seems Kevin Rudd’s promising $500m for CCS and a Global CCS Institute in 2007 was not enough. After first class flights all over the world and sumptuous dinners cooked by an Iron Chef in Japan to banquets at Paris Opera, nothing was achieved. Nothing. The coal and gas industry don’t fund CCS because it is not economically viable, so why should the taxpayer?
In a climate emergency the world has no budget for more fossil fuel emissions of any kind so why spend money prolonging the life of an industry that is literally killing people? Why spend money on developing black hydrogen when green hydrogen is the only hydrogen that is acceptable in a carbon constrained world? Stop waving red flags and wasting money and time on technologies that don’t work or rely on a fossil resource that must be left in the ground.
In a world of uncertainty driven by the climate emergency, as fires ravage America’s west coast and a 110sq km chunk breaks off Greenland’s ice sheet, there is one certainty you can rely on in Australia. Namely the Morrison government’s championing of fossil fuels, relentless attacks on renewable energy, lies about its commitment to emission reductions, openness to fossil fuel donations and sabotaging any institutional framework that works in driving investment in the technologies desperately needed to get us to a zero emissions future.
• Christine Milne AO is a global Greens ambassador and former leader of the Australian Greens
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