Angus Taylor taken to task over sudden drop in renewable energy investment
Angus Taylor has defended the government’s record on renewable energy as Labor and the Greens ambushed the minister over a sudden drop in investment in clean energy.
Labor’s climate spokesman, Mark Butler, told a Clean Energy Council gathering in Canberra the sector had withstood a “full frontal assault” from the Coalition and “some in the media”, while the Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, said the current investment cliff was “no accident” but a deliberate policy of the government.
On Wednesday Guardian Australia revealed that lack of policy certainty beyond 2020, when the renewable energy target would be phased out, had resulted in new investment committed to the clean energy sector falling in the first half of 2019 back to 2016 levels when Tony Abbott invited an investment strike by trying to abolish the RET.
Taylor, the energy and emissions reduction minister, who has presided over steadily increasing greenhouse gas emissions, said that when “people tell me there is not enough investment happening, I tell them ‘that is not right’”.
“In fact we invested more per person than any other major country in the world – almost double most, nearly all, other countries,” he told the CEC.
“In fact in total it was more than the UK, Germany and France combined on a per capita basis in 2018 – an extraordinary number.”
Taylor said that integrating renewables was creating “real challenges”, warning that when dispatchable power falls below peak demand poor reliability results.
Taylor said Australia needed a “balance between dispatchability and intermittency; a balance between the past and the future … [that] will get us through what is going to be a continuing series of tough years”.
Butler said there was “a lot to celebrate” in achieving the RET of 33,000 GWh despite “quite a lot of adversity”.
In a thinly veiled jab at Taylor, Butler said that some in the right wing of the Coalition, “one of who you might’ve seen recently”, had sought to abolish the RET, while some in the left suggested Labor not do a deal with the Coalition to cut the target and instead let “the cards fall where they will”.’
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Butler said the success of renewable energy was a bright spot in what is otherwise the worst energy crisis since the 1970s.
“Your industry has been subject to the most full frontal attack by a political party and by some in the media we’ve seen in recent years, yet the community support for your industry is unbent: it’s broad, it’s deep … [and] if anything, it’s growing.”
Butler said that given investment was “dropping sharply” Labor would persist in search of bipartisanship on energy policy, although the prospect was “not bright” and urged industry to force the Coalition back to the bargaining table.
Di Natale said Taylor was “determined to destroy” the wind sector, citing praise for the minister from the anti-wind group Stop These Things as evidence.
The Greens leader called on the renewable energy industry to “start playing hardball” because they were fighting the fossil fuels industry that was “supported no end by this government”.
He suggested when blackouts occur over summer due to “old, unreliable coal power generators” breaking down, the clean energy industry should have its voice heard, and blame lack of certainty for the difficulty in getting finance to replace fossil fuels with renewables. “We can’t afford another decade like the last decade, this is the last decade before irrevocable environmental breakdown.”
Energy policy in Australia has been in a state of profound uncertainty since the dumping of the national energy guarantee (Neg) last August, when conservatives moved against then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
The renewable energy sector supports reviving the Neg, as do the Liberal governments in New South Wales and South Australia. If the Neg cannot be revived, the industry is calling on the Morrison government to extend the RET beyond 2020, implement a clean energy target, or revisit carbon pricing.
Earlier on Wednesday the shadow agriculture minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, called for renewed debate on the need for a carbon price – the opposite tack to former environment spokesman Tony Burke, who has suggested Labor pursue a Green New Deal instead of a market mechanism to reduce emissions.
In a speech to parliament Fitzgibbon noted Australia was not on track to meet its 2030 Paris targets and pollution reduction auctions, the centrepiece of the Coalition’s policy, could cost up to $80 per tonne of greenhouse gas abatement.
“I know some members will be thinking: ‘Do we have to talk about the carbon price again’?,” he said.
“Of course we do. It has to be part of the mix if we are to meet our Paris targets.
“We do need to start talking more about the elephant in the room.”