Over the weekend, details emerged of a Government issued directive to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
In a nutshell, they have universally re-classified what “Clean Energy” actually means and apparently, it now actually excludes large scale wind or solar up to 100kW. Who knew, right?
They have asked the CEFC to consider and respond to their directive which was “to stop investing in wind and small-scale solar projects and focus on new and emerging technologies”. When you look at what new and emerging clean energy projects are happening in Australia and abroad, that actually doesn’t leave you with very much. At all.
So, I can only assume that that thankfully the Federal Government is going instruct the CEFC to get on with funding “other” new and emerging clean energy technologies like perpetual motion machines. Google it; there are people who can sell you the plans for these wonderful, emissions free, do it yourself devices that are virtually cost free. This is clearly the type of technology that our Prime Minister would like to support, and makes a whole lot more sense than wind and solar. And of course, the Government is innovating; I can see a new dictionary definition coming for the term “Cleanenergymyarseaphobia”.
In all seriousness of course, this announcement is simply just another stunningly blatant and exclusionary anti-renewables policy directive from the Government. Their utter disdain for solar and wind and their obvious attempts to destroy investor confidence is at such a boggling level, I’m lost for superlatives. I know; weird.
The irony of course is that by trying to drive yet another nail into the clean energy space, the Government is going to further alienate those who need support the most to go solar – low-income households, renters and the public housing sector for example (voters). Amongst others, these are just the types of sectors that the CEFC had the potential to assist, by helping to reduce risk and financing costs and yet the Government is trying to exclude them for accessing support. And of course, we also know that by reducing the amount of renewables being injected into the grid at marginal cost, wholesale electricity prices are more likely to rise than fall, although the Prime Minister continues to infer the opposite. This will alienate, well, everyone, when electricity prices inevitably do start to rise again.
On Sunday the Prime Minister insisted that his government “supports renewables” but wants to “reduce the upward pressure on power prices”. My eleven year old can work out that these statements are both outrageous lies and he doesn’t even read the newspaper yet. Around the fringes of the debate and at school, with no prompting from me, he has learned what our Government’s real intentions are. “Dad, why does he keep cutting support for renewable energy, like the solar your are involved with?” he said the other day. “I just don’t understand it and it doesn’t make any sense to me. Solar helps heaps of people like us save money on their bills, right?. I’m getting the feeling he doesn’t really like solar energy and that’s just weird.”
I have watched the interplay of solar and politics for more than twenty years, so a little political gamesmanship and leverage is no great surprise. However, the profoundly audacious attacks on renewables are something new to me. I have never witnessed, anywhere in the world, such a persistent, sustained and orchestrated attack on a future industry.
The CEFC is profitable, forward thinking and innovative entity that has been delivering great results. Should this directive proceed, it will be a blow to this organisation and the projects it has and could be involved with and I eagerly await their response. It will be another blow, but our industry will survive.
I thought long and hard about what my response would be to this new Government policy on renewable energy and got it down to eight words: “F%$k you, we’re going to do it anyway”
