Rally for renewables, save solar campaign in pictures

The renewable energy industry and NGOs in Australia staged a series of rallies across the country on Friday to protest against mooted changes to the renewable energy target – which threatens the rollout of large scale renewables and the future of the rooftop solar industry.

The rallies capped a week of activity designed to raise renewables as a serious political issue. It is expected the Abbott government next week will reveal its position on the renewable energy target, following the report from the controversial Warburton review that recommended the RET be stopped at its current level, or allowed to expand to around 26,000GWh at best.

The current target is 41,000GWh by 2020. Labor has said it will not negotiate on this number, but has indicated it may be flexible about the target date. It says it wants no changes to the small scale target, which affects rooftop solar and solar hot water systems (which the gas industry is now trying to close).

It was too early by the time RenewEconomy sent its newsletter to get an exact feel for numbers, but here are a few photos sent through by our readers.

The first is one of the placards at the Sydney rally, held outside Abbott’s electoral office in Manly. Our favourite.

And there was this about wind energy ….

Below, supporters and organisers get ready for the rally for renewables outside the electoral offices of  Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is currently in New York working up a Coalition to fight the terrorism of ISIS, while his Coalition MPs work on a campaign to fight eco “terrorism” at home.

As the SMH reported on Friday, Abbott told the UN general assembly that the world faced four major crises – but climate change wasn’t one of them. That contrasted with what US Barack Obama told the UN earlier this week, when he said Climate change was the biggest threat.

And here’s the scene later (below) as the rally for renewables got into full swing in Manly’s Corso ….

And in Melbourne, about 200 people rallied outside the offices of Trade Minister Andrew Robb in suburban Bentleigh. Robb once claimed climate change is a “leftist fad” and has constantly complained about the “dodgy” investments that would be pursued by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.