Good news for Renewable Energy
Government to fix the RET – now let’s look to expand it!
Last Friday the Federal Government announced proposed changes to the Renewable Energy Target (RET) that will unlock billions of dollars of investment into renewables in Australia.
When the government introduced the RET last year to guarantee that Australia would source 20 percent of it’s electricity from renewable energy by 2020, a number of design flaws were built into the scheme meaning billions of dollars of investment in large scale renewables like wind farms could be delayed for up to five years. In fact, the hold-ups were so serious that renewable energy companies in Australia looked like they may have to lay off workers to get by.
For the past 6 months Environment Victoria has been campaigning for improvements to the scheme, and thanks to the changes now proposed by the Rudd government, Australia should start to see a rollout of renewable energy projects across the country.
The new deal, that still needs to pass through parliament, would effectively split the RET in two with the majority of the target reserved for large scale projects, and the remaining share for small-scale investment. This means that investing in small scale renewables will no longer crowd-out the large scale projects, as was previously the case. Even better, the section reserved for small scale renewables isn’t capped – meaning that if households across Australia want to invest in solar panels on their roofs above and beyond the government’s target amount, they’ll still get support through Renewable Energy Certificates.
So, as long as the Coalition and others support the legislative changes through the parliament, things will be looking up for renewables in Australia!
Comments
Investing for a good environmental outcome
Our understanding is that with the proposed changes to the RET, there would no longer be any cap on the amount of renewable energy generated by small scale renewables such as solar PV. A small part of the overall 20% target will be carved out for small scale renewables, but if investment exceeds this, energy retailers will still be obliged to purchase the associated RECs at the set price of $40. Our guess is that the chances of investment in small scale renewables exceeding the target are pretty good - over 50% of REC this year have come from solar hot water alone. Basically this means that you can now sell your RECs, and assuming investment exceeds the target, you'll be having an enviromental outcome by contibuting to renewable energy in Australia above and beyond the 2020 target! Good news for all.
Great News
We have been doing our little bit at our retail flower distribution company FlowerBunch.com.au with our packaging, distribution and production.
We wanted to do a reasonably sized privately funded project with government assistance and getting full tariff credits for feed into the grid. In Victoria this was not feasible under the current scheme and capping situations - I am hoping that if this comes to fruition we can turn waste products in a horticultural production area into a positive energy production unit and increase returns to our battling farmers at the same time.
Let's hope the new sisutation will assist with funding for reneable energy production units, more in line with where we were heading a few years back.
Capping the return for mid-sized renewable enrgy projects when feeding back into the grid within Victoria is a real blow to trying to get a lot of generation plants crecting enough power to get rid of much of the "dirty" power currently in use in Victoria.
Solar panels and renewable enrgy certificates
Under ther new Target to pass through goverment will purchasing solar panels and cashing in your renewable energy certificates still be bought by energy retailers to offset there emissions, if so why do we still promote is being beneficialo to the environment?
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