The Greens say the Turnbull government’s national energy guarantee will be more detrimental to the renewables sector than if the Coalition did nothing.
The Greens’ climate spokesman, Adam Bandt, said a comparison of the analysis in the Finkel review of the national electricity market with the new advice provided by the Energy Security Board shows the policy the government has unveiled this week is detrimental to renewables.
Bandt says according to the modelling undertaken with the Finkel review, by 2030, under business-as-usual conditions, renewable energy would have reached 35% of Australia’s energy mix.
This week the Energy Security Board estimated in its advice to government that by 2030, the power mix of different types of generation would be “in the order of 28% to 36% renewables including hydro and solar photovoltaics”.
It said intermittent renewables would make up about 18% to 24% of the energy market, with dispatchable resources providing the remainder.
While Labor has criticised elements of the new government scheme while keeping its options open, the Greens have been quick out of the blocks in condemning the proposed investment framework.
On the day the government unveiled the policy the party leader, Richard Di Natale, said the policy meant the government had done a Donald Trump and “effectively pulled out of the Paris agreement”.
Bandt stepped up the attack on the policy on Thursday. “This scheme is worse than doing nothing,” he said. “At a time when we need more wind and solar to cut pollution, the national energy guarantee will likely mean less renewable energy.
“It takes a particular malevolence to not just cut support to renewables but to actively pull them out of the system.”
Labor on Wednesday zeroed in on the price impacts of the scheme, arguing estimates of reductions to household power bills in the order of $100 a year were little better than educated guesswork.
A number of energy analysts and industry players have also pointed out the national energy guarantee endorsed by the Coalition is effectively a regulated carbon price – a move that abruptly reverses the political hostility to emissions trading and carbon pricing the Liberal party has shown for a decade.
The analyst RepuTex say the design of the guarantee, which imposes reliability and emissions reduction obligations on energy retailers, “will in effect establish a de facto price on greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector”.
That observation was echoed by the chief executive of the Australian Energy Council, Matthew Warren. When asked whether the new policy was a carbon price, he said: “Well, yes, of course it is.”
RepuTex has also pointed out that the policy as released by the government has an emissions reduction trajectory below that required for Australia to comply with the Paris climate agreement.
It says a 26% cut on 2005 levels by 2030 “would not equate to Australia meeting its Paris commitment”.
It also points out that if a 26% target was applied across the economy, the burden of emissions reduction would fall disproportionately on the sectors of the economy which are recording growth in emissions – direct combustion of oil and gas and transport sectors.
“These sectors would be liable for 31 and 32% of all emissions reductions to meet the 2030 target, despite making up only 17 and 18% of all emissions,” the firm says. “Comparably, the electricity sector would contribute only 20% of all abatement.”
