Roundup of RET review submissions

I’ve been through every submission to the Climate Change Authority review of the Renewable Energy Target (RET), and categorized them by their recommendations (background on the review here).

The categories are as follows:

• “Increase” = increase the 2020 Large-scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET). This category includes recommendations that the Government recognize the urgency of climate action, set targets of up to 100% renewable energy by 2020, make complementary policies and voluntary action additional to the RET, replace the present Renewable Energy Certificate scheme with a feed-in tariff, and/or limit the scope of future reviews to strengthening the RET. My submission (here, with commentary here) falls into this category.
• “Strengthen without changing 2020 target” = strengthen the RET without necessarily increasing the 2020 LRET. This category includes calls to increase targets beyond 2020, make Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) investments additional to the LRET, revise the trajectory so it goes up each year, index the shortfall charge, and/or improve the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES).
• “Status quo” = no change. Usually the justification given for this recommendation is to give investors certainty.
• “Weaken” = weaken the RET, usually enough to significantly sabotage the policy goal. This category includes proposals to adjust the LRET to lower demand forecasts, abolish or cap the SRES, reduce the solar multiplier to less than 1, expand the definition of “renewable energy” to include low-emissions technologies or carbon capture and storage, link to international renewable energy targets, phase out the RET after 2020, and/or abolish state-level renewable energy policies.
• “Abolish” = terminate or phase out the RET. The typical justifications were that the carbon price makes the RET redundant, that the RET is inefficient and costs consumers, and/or that it should be replaced with funding for R&D.
• “Other” = does not quite fit into any of my categories. Submissions in this category may advocate particular technologies, may communicate pertinent facts or discuss issues without making specific recommendations, may be too technical for me to judge, or may just be plain incomprehensible.

Why the RET review matters

Last week, I made a submission to the Climate Change Authority review of Australia’s federal Renewable Energy Target (RET). In August, the Climate Change Authority released an Issues Paper on the review, inviting public submissions (which closed on 14 September, but you can still have your say in a poll by the Australian Youth Climate Coalition). A discussion paper with draft recommendations will be released in October, followed by final recommendations by 31 December. The Government must respond within six months.

The RET review is the first in a series of independent reviews of climate policies, intended to allow them to be strengthened, secured by the Greens in last year’s Multi-Party Climate Change Committee negotiations in return for agreeing to initially inadequate and potentially ineffective policies. However, a number of businesses and business lobby groups invested in fossil fuels are using the review as an excuse to demand the RET be weakened.

An internal document obtained by the Australian Financial Review in April showed the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network is lobbying for the RET to be to scrapped or weakened. Meanwhile, TRUenergy has joined Origin Energy in its more public campaign to weaken the RET. These two “gentailers” (companies who both generate and retail electricity) argue the RET should be adjusted downward so that it accounts for no more than 20% of 2020 demand. Such a move would cause renewable energy deployment in Australia to stop completely in 2016, with only gas-fired electricity generation built post-2016:

Projected new and retired electricity generation capacity under the reduced Renewable Energy Target advocated by TRUenergy. Green and purple bars are renewable energy sources; dark blue and red are gas-fired; light blue are retirements. (Image source: Renew Economy.)