Although Labor’s $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) would likely be broken up under a Coalition government, Jillian Broadbent remains optimistic the initiative can make an impression on Australia’s clean energy sector.
So far, the Reserve Bank board member and former investment banker has been appointed by the government to chair the body – which is designed to channel private sector investment in renewable energy, low-emissions technology and energy efficiency – but the CEFC is without a CEO and has yet to make its first investment.
Broadbent, who is interviewing potential candidates for the CEO spot this week, said she remains very enthusiastic about finding the right candidate for the job.
“Although the opposition has said they don’t see a place for the CEFC… I certainly see a place for the facilitation of funds into clean energy,” she said on a panel discussing clean energy policy levers at the Solar Cities conference in Brisbane.
The objective of the CEFC is to “apply capital with a commercial filter to facilitate an increased flow of funds into clean energy to position and prepare Australia for a clean energy future,” she added.
“I think it’s worth taking a step back to realise the challenge the government has here in dealing with something as important as energy policy, because it is so integral to the economic positioning of Australia.
“We have always been a big energy exporter, so we have taken for granted low-cost energy. There has always been lot of resistance to taking on the global issue of the environment.
“We are very long in energy, but it Broadbent said, pointing to Denmark, which in comparison imports 95% of its energy needs but has an extensive renewable energy industry.
She pointed to the Solar Cities program as representing excellent value for money. “I think there have been a lot of good things coming out of a relatively small investment.”
Another policy measure that will go under the Coalition is the price on carbon, but as Gary Richards, assistant secretary at the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency’s energy branch, explained the “biggest energy efficiency policy we have” is in fact the carbon price.
“We must not think about energy efficiency as technology… but [instead] a suite of measures that work with the carbon price,” he said.
Richards said the ongoing reviews of the Renewable Energy Target and of complimentary measures are part of the government’s effort to make sense of the “dog’s breakfast” of policy measures already in place.
“Now that we have a price on carbon as the central platform and a key energy efficiency measure, how do the rest fit around that?
“We are not saying is it the carbon price versus energy efficiency measures, we are saying if the most important energy efficiency measure is going to be the price on carbon where do the other things we do fit in?”
