CEC joins with business lobbies to try and seal compromise on RET

The Clean Energy Council has enlisted the help of other major industry organisations as it tries to convince the Federal Coalition government to accept or negotiate around its compromise offer on the renewable energy target.

The joint letter has been signed by the heads of the aluminium, business, cement, energy users and Tasmanian mining peak bodies, in a bid to resolve the deepening crisis around the RET.

All these organisations had sought big cuts in the renewable energy cut, and are now looking to lock those in for the sake of certainty. The CEC last week proposed to split the difference between the Coalition and Labor parties and suggested an agreement around 33,500GWh, compared to the current target of 41,000GWh.

The letter calls on both parties to show “leadership”, but the call has already fallen on deaf ears, with industry minister Ian Macfarlane entrenching his refusal to entertain any number above 32,000GWh – and in apparently no hurry to resolve the impasse that has brought large-scale renewable energy investment in Australia to a halt in the last 18 months.

“I’m not going to accept a number higher than 32”, Macfarlane told Fairfax Media late last week, adding that the government thought it still had “plenty of time”.

“The Coalition has moved three times on this, it’s simply ridiculous to ask us to go further,” Macfarlane said. “It’s not going to happen.”

Macfarlane says he is hopeful of gaining approval from six of the Senate cross benchers, although this seems problematic. Senator Nick Xenophon, for instance, will insist on “banding” to guarantee a certain amount of the target is satisfied by other technologies such as solar.

Xenophon is anti-wind, and his views are reflected in many key Coalition members. However, Macfarlane, and the wind industry, have fought against any such banding.

The CEC and the other industry bodies say the crisis around the RET will deepen unless a solution can be found. However, they suggest that any deal with cross-benchers would not be useful because it would not encourage substantial investment.

“We believe that a negotiated outcome that is acceptable to each side is both essential and achievable and call on the Government and the Opposition to immediately resolve this issue,” they said.

Labor has argued that only a target in the mid-to-high 30,000sGWh is acceptable.

Meanwhile, representatives of the solar industry continued to voice their frustration at the compromise proposed by the CEC, saying.

Brian England, the chairman of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said he was “appalled” at the events of the last couple of days, and said neither his nor other solar bodies were consulted on a possible compromise.

“The offer made has all the hallmarks of a wind industry agenda, and I am happy for them, but not if it comes at the expense of the solar industry.”

Renate Egan, the head of the Australian Photovoltaic Association, wrote that suggestions the CEC represents the majority position of renewable energy industry are misleading.

“As a solar industry association, we’ve taken a position to our membership and in our representations to various parties that there is not a case for a change in the RET.”

She said the uncertainty being suffered by major players was an argument for no change to the RET, rather than a compromise. “We need a greater vision and decisions made on the facts rather than the politics,” Egan wrote. The Solar thermal industry had previously rejected the proposal as a “betrayal.”

The peak bodies that joined with the CEC in calling on the major parties to compromise were the Australian Aluminium Council, the Business Council of Australia, the Cement Industry Federation, the Energy Users Association of Australia, and the Tasmanian Minerals & Energy Council.