Greens MPs

Yesterday the Rudd Government demonstrated very clearly where its climate and energy priorities lie - not with the proven renewable energy solutions, but with the geosequestration pipe-dream that Al Gore has recently called "too imaginary to make a difference in protecting either our national security or the global climate".

Fresh from burying Christine Milne's feed-in tariff Bill with a majority Senate Inquiry report saying it's a "great idea, but let's not do it", the Rudd Government went on last night to push through a Bill which gives a huge benefit to those who seek to bury CO2 under the sea floor - letting them make profits without having to carry the liability. This is a recipe for a new sub-prime crisis, telling industry that they can make significant profits safe in the knowledge that they will not need to carry the can for more than 20 years.

The debate on this bill is worth reading in its entirety if you have time. It exposes quite how blinded by industry rhetoric the Government and Opposition both are. Perhaps the pinnacle of this is to be found in

The thing I’ve found most fascinating about the responses to the Treasury’s ETS modelling
released yesterday is how, all of a sudden, a pile of big coal’s
biggest fans are agreeing with us that coal with geosequestration isn’t
going to come cheap!

Malcolm Turnbull, for example, told the media yesterday
that “The cost of carbon capture and storage is probably the biggest
single assumption in this whole analysis… There is no full-blown
demonstration plant employing carbon capture and storage so estimates
of its costs are speculative.”

Well-known climate naysayer, Brian Fisher, writes in today’s Australian
that “The Treasury’s assumptions on the capital cost of construction of
a CCS-ready coal-fired power plant appear to be about half those
estimated by well-qualified industry experts.”

The Senate Inquiry into Christine Milne's Private Member's Bill for a national, comprehensive, gross feed-in tariff for renewable energy is closing its call for submissions this Friday, August 15.

Those of you who would like to see a strong, supportive policy framework for renewable energy in Australia, I would strongly recommend that you put in a submission to the inquiry as a matter of urgency.

Christine's last post on the issue, setting out what the Bill would achieve, is here, and you can find all the details about the Bill and how to make submissions here.

So the day after tomorrow (ah that hoary old Hollywood chestnut...), Penny Wong will finally release the government's Green Paper, to which Professor Garnaut is one of many 'inputs'. Most of the others being big business.

While it won't be anything like final design, and it won't include any emissions targets or trajectories, the paper should give us a much better idea of what the government's thinking is on emissions trading. We'll have more of an idea of whether it'll be something The Greens can support with amendments. The signs thus far are that it should be supportable, but there is still the chance that it'll be so full of holes that we'd be better off without it.

Here's some notes we've put together on some of the key issues with emissions trading that we'll be looking out for.

The Senate Environment Committee is calling for submissions to an inquiry into my renewable energy feed-in Private Member's Bill, which we negotiated and were successful in having referred earlier this week.

Very pleased to announce that the Private Member's Bill for a comprehensive national feed-in law for renewable energy that Christine introduced last month has been successfully referred to the Senate Environment Committee for a formal Inquiry.

I've been meaning to post since last night on the crazy Garnaut submission the Productivity Commission released yesterday, but simply haven't had the time.

In the interests of having something on the blog about this important piece of work to undermine climate action, I thought I'd just post Christine's comments from yesterday.

ABC Online kindly published this piece of mine today here. It's very encouraging to see the overwhelmingly positive comments thread thus far.

Against the backdrop of several appalling Rudd Government Budget decisions that will undermine the renewables industry in Australia even further (some of which are detailed here), Christine Milne introduced a Private Member's Bill in the Senate this morning to establish an comprehensive national feed-in law.

Feed-in laws support the rapid and unlimited growth of the renewables sector by giving certainty to investors, guaranteeing them a market at a set price.
This feed-in differs from others proposed or legislated in Australia thus far in several important ways, as discussed in a previous post here.

The four key points are:

It's great that feed-in laws, regarded globally as one of the most effective mechanisms for boosting renewable energy and long-time Greens policy, are finally getting somewhere in Australia.

But it is deeply troubling that, in Victoria, they are being perverted in such a way as to make them greenwash rather than real, effective emissions reduction policies.

Feed-in laws as originally designed in Germany, and responsible in no small part for the boom in renewables that country has delivered, are about guaranteeing market access at a given price for new technologies so as to provide investors with certainty. They ensure that householders or businesses that produce renewable energy receive a fair price for that energy, a price determined by an independent authority and locked in for a period of time. The level of support for each technology is set by regulation on independent advice about the status of the particular technology and is intended to help the technology leap over financing barriers by giving investors certainty of retail price for the energy created. The support scales down over time as the technology matures and there is less need for artificially creating investor certainty.

Feed-in tariffs are fundamentally about providing support for emerging industries and we see them as complementary to mandatory renewable energy targets. Complementary because while the MRET supports the cheaper, most established renewable energy options, feed-ins give the next generation of technologies a leg-up. They are needed to ensure that our renewable energy portfolio can be diversified.

The policy has been extremely effective at bringing down the price of a range of renewable energy technologies (most notably solar PV) through boosting manufacture and driving market penetration. It gives new, sunrise industries the chance to compete against entrenched coal, and, by diversifying and decentralising generation, it actually stabilises the electricty grid, reducing the strain at peak times by generating more energy close to where it is used. All round a very sensible policy.
Now, what we are seeing in Australia is the distortion of true feed-ins, firstly to limit them to solar PV and secondly to provide support for only net solar generation, not gross.

Last year, South Australia's Mike Rann announced that he would introduce a feed-in law restricted to solar PV and to the net energy generated by the solar panels, not to gross generation.
Now, most people who install rooftop solar do not install enough to completely meet their demand. Quite reasonably, they feel they are making a strong contribution by installing enough to meet a sizable chunk. You would have thought they should be rewarded for doing so. But, no. Under this scheme, you only get the reward if you generate enough to be a net generator. If you work at home, or are elderly or a young stay-at-home parent, you have no chance of being a net generator unless you install a pretty large system, which is still out of most people's price range. This will barely do anything to bring forward payback for the panels. The real benefit comes when you get a higher tariff for the total energy generated by your panels and pay the lower, standard rate tariff for the energy you use.

Net generation should be irrelevant to the feed-in, since the benefits to the grid and to our emissions profile exist regardless of whether the particular house the panels are installed on is a net generator or user. While we encourage people to save energy and be as efficient as they possibly can, of course, this is hardly the way to do it!

Greens SA MP, Mark Parnell, successfully improved the legislation by extending the timeframe of the support offered, out from ten to 20 years. This, at least, means that the mechanism should help the panels get paid off slightly faster. Parnell decided, reasonably, that, since Rann wouldn't change his mind on net vs gross, he was better off improving the legislation as best as he could.

This issue has hit the bigtime now, with Victoria's John Brumby announcing a net feed-in in yesterday's Budget.

As if the net issue wasn't bad enough, Brumby's feed-in also limits the feed-in's application to systems of no more than 2kW! So, if you thought that the scheme might effectively encourage larger-scale uptake such as happened in Germany, where entire factory and warehouse roofs have been solarised, you've got another think coming. Not only do you not get the benefits of the feed-in unless you generate large amounts, you also don't get the benefits if you do generate large amounts.

Effectively, Brumby's feed-in is a sham. It is good for a few press releases but will benefit almost nobody.

Environment Victoria's strongly-worded press release is worth a read, as is this article from the Age.
On the brighter side, the ACT has legislation currently before the Assembly to introduce a gross metred feed-in law. Greens MLA, Deb Foskey, is putting amendments forward to broaden the application of the scheme to other renewables, but, since the government has a majority in the single chamber, the legislation will pass as it stands. This is disappointing, but at least the feed-in will be effective. Moves are, apparently, also afoot in Queensland, although I don't know if the details are publicly available.

And, do watch this space, as Christine will be introducing a Private Member's Bill for a comprehensive national feed-in law into the Senate next week. Will post the draft bill as soon as I can.

There has also been some interesting discussion of the issue over at Larvatus Prodeo in the last week.