How to get clean energy racing again

You would be hard-pressed to find any official in the land who would suggest putting the Melbourne Cup on hold every second year so that all aspects of the race could be reviewed.

We just want to make sure the people of Australia are getting value for money, they would say. We want to get some bureaucrats involved to make sure Flemington Race Track is the right place to hold it. It’s important that the stables are really world-class and that the food in The Birdcage has enough gluten-free options.

There’s a lot of international horses and jockeys who want to be involved – I mean, it really is a great race – but they can all hold off until the next year. We’ll spend the downtime doing a bit of important navel gazing to take stock. What about if we moved it to Sydney?

It sounds a bit loopy. But this is what is happening right now with clean energy. The good news is there is an easy way to unleash the sector’s economic potential if the Federal Government could make a very small change to legislation that is about to go before Parliament.

Every two years Australia’s 20 per cent Renewable Energy Target goes in for a comprehensive review. The last one was finished at the end of 2012 and the new Federal Government is doing another one early in 2014.

Which is all fine, except that every time it happens the wallets of the financiers snap close until it’s all over. We know there are billions of dollars that can be generated by the Renewable Energy Target, but those who are willing to invest the money need policy stability before they feel confident to sign it over for a project with a lifespan of 15 years or more. No-one likes the idea of constantly shifting goalposts.

Last time the review sucked thousands of hours of productivity out of a sector that would much rather be spending it building wind farms and bioenergy plants, installing solar panels or working on some promising new form of technology. The final recommendation was: Don’t change it. Yet here we go again.

None of this is the present government’s fault. All the deals were done long before it was voted in and the two-year reviews were an initiative of Labor and the Greens. It was well-intentioned perhaps, but the massive potential of this sector is now being held back by seemingly endless rounds of review.

As part of the legislation that is being changed to dismantle the Climate Change Authority, there is one little clause that could see the compulsory reviews and all-too-frequent abandoned altogether, or at least pushed back to every four years. That would give our solar, wind, bioenergy, hydro, geothermal, marine and other companies the chance to secure finance and get projects built.

It is a tantalising prospect, and one that would benefit our economy through creating additional investment and jobs in regional areas. Clean energy produced about 13 per cent of Australia’s electricity last year and to date it has delivered more than $18 billion worth of investment. Analysis by SKM last year found that there was just as much investment again that we have up our sleeve. The energy sector right now is in a state of transition and many key policies have an uncertain future. The Renewable Energy Target is the one bipartisan policy that has the potential to continue driving the transformation of the energy sector.

Clean energy is now big business and it can make a big difference to the lives of many people across the country at very low cost. The new Federal Government has a chance to unlock all this economic potential and end the cycle of frustration with one small stroke of the pen. Let’s get renewable energy racing again.

David Green is Chief Executive of the Clean Energy Council