Graph of the Day: Tony and Malcolm’s solar report card

As the two main parties prepared to enter a debate about climate change and clean energy policies, the Australian Solar Council, the industry’s principal lobby group, released a report card on the Coalition’s efforts on renewable energy to date.

The Coalition did not fare well, receiving an F in all subjects, apart from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, where it got a D after deciding to keep the institution it had spent three years trying to dismantle, but allocated $1 billion of its funds elsewhere.

report card

“(Tony and Malcolm’s) joint project gets an overall F because it continues to smash renewables jobs, reduce electricity market competition, stop regional investment in large renewables projects, and keep all consumers locked into ever increasing power bills,” the council concluded.

The council has launched a Vote Solar campaign to target marginal seats in a push for stronger solar and renewable energy policies.

Comments

7 responses to “Graph of the Day: Tony and Malcolm’s solar report card”

  1. Alastair Leith Avatar
    Alastair Leith

    yep, keep this lot down to repeat their year until they show they can actually learn anything. if not get them into the green army for some shovel and spade work.

  2. Stewart Rogers Avatar
    Stewart Rogers

    Glad ARENA is being defunded. Absolute junk investments, how a lot of these companies are receiving funding is economic vandalism. I’ll be happy to see RET cut next. Time to end this chaotic subsidy spendthrift.

    I want to see renewables succeed on their own merits, those merits should be largely limited to pricing within the market. Just remember if we didn’t spend billions on FITs, LGCs and STCs back in 2009-2015 we could have installed much more capacity today at a much much cheaper price.

    1. Rurover Avatar
      Rurover

      Stewart,
      Happy to see renewables succeed on their own merits, but it DOES need to be a level playing field., ie The true externalised costs of fossil fuels needs to be reflected in their price, not just the costs of extracting and burning them.

      1. Alen T Avatar
        Alen T

        Even on an unequal playing field, RE (wind) still beats FF generators on a $/MWh basis: new-built generation,i.e. the [originally taxpayer/government built] coal-fired power plants that are now fully depreciated are excluded.

        Reason why no RE would be built without RET, however, is simply the demand-supply relationship in the energy market is heavily tilted to the supply side, >6 GW oversupply in NEM from memory.

        1. Stewart Rogers Avatar
          Stewart Rogers

          That is true however soon solar + battery will be cheaper for most residential stand alone houses due to retail rates. This will displace more coal power plants.

      2. Stewart Rogers Avatar
        Stewart Rogers

        Coal gets the diesel rebate as the tractors are on private land. I don’t see what’s unfair about that. I don’t think the government should invest in the carmichael mine.

  3. Ed Avatar
    Ed

    Equal playing field requires ending fossil fuel subsidies ($7B per year to the taxpayer)

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