Everyone’s a winner if we make CEFC-funded projects additional to the Renewable Energy Target
Making renewable energy projects funded by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation additional to the Renewable Energy Target would be great for jobs, would bring on gigawatts of clean power and would cut the pollution that drives global warming, all at zero extra cost to electricity consumers, according to a report released today by WWF and the Australian Solar Council.
The $10 billion CEFC is a key plank of the carbon price agreement negotiated by the Greens, who consistently argued that it should be additional to the Renewable Energy Target.
“This modelling shows that there is absolutely no reason not to make the exciting large-scale solar projects that the CEFC will fund additional to the renewable energy target. The only losers from doing so would be coal and gas companies, Joel Fitzgibbon and Ron Boswell,” Australian Greens Leader, Senator Christine Milne, said.
“At the same time, the latest World Energy Outlook from the International Energy Agency concludes that existing climate and energy policies around the world have us on track for 3.6C warming, bringing more devastating extreme weather, extinctions of species, destruction of farming land and infrastructure and more.
“We are running out of time to tackle global warming and have to pull out all stops to move from polluting power to clean, renewable energy.
“The CEFC is an excellent innovation that will deliver top-of-the-range renewable energy, bringing down prices much more rapidly than would otherwise happen. But it isn’t appropriate that we do that at the expense of technologies that are cheap already, like wind and bioenergy.
“I argued long and hard in the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee that the CEFC should be additional to the RET, but the government refused to do so – perhaps worried that renewable energy would prove too successful and start to seriously challenge coal’s dominance.
“It’s time to recognise that solar and wind are already threatening coal’s dominance and we should celebrate that and bring on the transition as quickly as possible, since it will save us money while protecting our precious environment.
“With the cancellation of the Solar Dawn project, thanks to Campbell Newman’s coal-blinded intervention, the other main renewable energy fund, ARENA, has an extra half a billion dollars to invest. Working together, these funds could make a huge difference to bringing on more world-leading clean power, and an even bigger impact if they are additional to the renewable energy target.
“We should lift the Renewable Energy Target to at least 50% by 2030 and make the big projects the CEFC delivers additional to the target.
“I congratulate WWF and the Solar Council on this excellent report and look forward to the government taking it much more seriously than Joel Fitzgibbon’s fact-free campaign.”
Senator Christine Milne, Greens Leader
