Category: Climate Denier
The federal government’s plan to reduce Australia’s Renewable Energy Target (RET) could jeopardise billions of dollars in investment while giving a boost to the fossil fuel sector, experts have predicted.
Industry minister Ian Macfarlane and environment minister Greg Hunt have proposed a reduction in the target, from 41,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) of renewable energy by 2020 to around 27,000 GWh.
The ministers said the reduced target would represent “a real 20% of electricity production in Australia, as was the original bipartisan intent” of the scheme. Declining electricity demand means that the current target represents around 27% of Australia’s projected 2020 energy use.
The new proposals stop short of the measures recommended by the Warburton review, which set out a range of options to narrow the existing scheme, including ending all subsidies for new large-scale renewable energy projects and for rooftop solar panels.
Dylan McConnell, a research fellow at the Melbourne Energy Institute, said that “shifting the goalposts will decimate the large-scale renewable industry” and endanger more than A$10 billion of investment.
“Despite what Mr Macfarlane might think, Australia signed up for a 41,000 GWh Large-scale Renewable Energy Target,” he said. “Importantly, this is also what the energy industry signed up for.”
“The proposed “real 20%” target effectively reduces the existing target by 60% – a substantial disruption to a longstanding, popularly supported and (previously) bipartisan policy,“ he said.
“There is no technical limit preventing more than 20% renewable energy in a power system, and the fact that 27% might come from renewable sources is something to celebrated, not condemned. In addition, the Warburton review itself showed that the impact of the RET on prices is far from significant, and in fact will deliver lower electricity prices in the long term.
“I find it hard to believe that removing policy that decreases both prices and emissions and increase renewable energy generation is what Australians signed up for.”
Tony Wood, energy program director at the Grattan Institute, said a real 20% renewables “always seemed like a reasonable outcome”. “But I’m not clear on how this will avoid trashing existing and committed projects,” he said.
He also welcomed the government’s plan to protect emissions-intensive industries such as aluminium from having to pay subsidies towards renewable energy generation, although he said it was not clear how this would affect the scheme overall.
‘Free kick’
Andrew Blakers, director of the Australian National University’s Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems, described the new policy as a “free kick for fossil fuels”.
“The RET is a specific target: 41,000 GWh by 2020. It is not a percentage. A reduction from 41,000 to 27,000 GWh is a massive impediment to growth of the renewable energy industry, and a corresponding free kick for fossil fuels. Because of the resulting reduction in competition in the wholesale market, the price of electricity would go up, as would carbon emissions,” he said.
“In contrast, retention of the RET at 41,000 GWh by 2020 allows Australia to reach more than 90% renewable electricity by 2040 by natural attrition of existing fossil fuel power stations – the deployment rate of wind and solar required to achieve the 2020 RET target is readily achievable, and fast enough to replace each fossil fuel power station in an orderly fashion as it reaches the end of its working life.”
Solar subsidies to stay
Mr MacFarlane said the government would not change the financial incentives for installing solar panels, worth about A$2,500 for a typical 3 kilowatt system. The Warburton review recommended that this program, known as the small-scale RET scheme, be brought to an end.
Labor has said it will not support the changes to the large-scale renewables target, which was aimed at brokering a compromise over the RET’s future.
The situation will be clouded still further by the confirmation that the government-funded Climate Change Authority will go ahead with plans to produce yet another review of the RET scheme.
Tony Wood applauded the government’s move to reduce uncertainty over the scheme by scrapping the requirement for it to be reviewed every two years. But he said there would be a long way to go to reach a clear bipartisan policy.
“There’s quite a gap to close and I don’t see Labor in any mood to compromise. One has to wonder why we had to go through all the pain of the Warburton review to get here.”
Blessed Are The Stupid For They Shall Inhibit The Earth – Tony Abbott, Maurice Newman and What To Do About People Who Insist On Looking At Facts!
Maurice Newman has refused meet with scientists about his comments. After all, scientists are part of that whole conspiracy that began with the Age of Enlightenment. They probably even suggest that just transporting convicts to Australia won’t actually put an end to crime.
Mr Newman, like Tony Abbott, arrived in Australia by boat from England as a young boy, but neither were convicts as the English stopped sending their convicts here some time before either of them arrived. In the twentieth century, they only sent people who understood the superiority of the English class system while preferring the Australian weather.
Mm, perhaps there is a strong case for stopping the boats, after all.
The exception proves the rule is when a rule expresses a tendency or preference rather than a hard-and-fast delineation, and the difficulty encountered in going against that tendency demonstrates the force of the rule.
Most swans are white. I have seen a black swan.
For Andrew Bolt: The exception disproves the rule. He uses it to disprove Climate Science, Australian Immigration Policy, Asylum Seekers, Morality of Islam. Exceptions are Bolt’s 38 Magnum bullets of choice when having his ” Garry Cooper High Noon” fantasies.
The Rule: Australian Immigration screens out unsuitable immigrants
The Exception
TWO first cousins in an arranged marriage are being investigated for immigration and Centrelink fraud and rorting the baby bonus by returning to Australia from Lebanon for the births of some of their seven children.
The husband, 39, was granted citizenship in 2006 in circumstances which Judge Harman said troubled him since the couple had decided to live in Lebanon.
How could immigration officials possibly have thought it in the national interest to grant this man citizenship? 23/7/14
BOLT AUSTRALIAN Immigration Screening is inappropriate and needs to be changed.
The Rule: Afghanistan is an appropriate country for humanitarian intake.
The Exception
Afghanistan.How compatible exactly is that Islamic culture?:
It was bad enough that the alleged rape took place in the sanctity of a mosque [in Afghanistan] and that the accused man was a mullah who invoked the familiar defense that it had been consensual sex.
But the victim was only 10 years old. And there was more: The authorities said her family members openly planned to carry out an honor killing in the case – against the young girl. The mullah offered to marry his victim instead.
This past week, the awful matter became even worse. On Tuesday, local policemen removed the girl from the shelter that had given her refuge and returned her to her family, despite complaints from women’s activists that she was likely to be killed.
BOLT Afghanistan is an inappropriate country and Islam an inappropriate culture for Austarlia’s Humanitarian intake
“Some Afghans who worked with the Australian troops are nervously waiting to see if they’re able to gain residency in Australia.”
“Firstly the moral obligation that we have to these people needs to be fulfilled, because if we don’t do it, they run the risk of being killed or otherwise persecuted. Secondly, there’s a simple practical principle that comes into play – if we go into a future war overseas where we need to engage local people to help us as interpreters, you need to be able to assure them that if things go wrong, Australia will take steps to protect them from persecution or death. And so there’s both a moral obligation and quiet simply a practical advantage to having a policy of evacuating those who help you in overseas wars.”
Two of Bolt’s recent blogs He pretended to apply Deductive Logic to prove flawed Social Policies in our approach to immigration. Unless Bolt had an encyclopedia of these exceptions they far more likely to support our screening efforts as neither of these events are commonplace amongst Lebanese or Afghan Australians living here.
He doesn’t score well on Inductive Logic either because he would need to come up with scores of individual cases to prove that his generalizations have any merit. He loses out there as well if you look at police and other social agency reports. Hardly scientific reasoning just fluff, cherry picking and personal biased speculation. Failed on that score as well Bolt.
Grade: First Year Uni Failure
Doctors don’t use either Deductive or Inductive thinking when diagnosing a patient’s problems. They list the symptoms and realize that one diagnosis generally doesn’t explain or fit all symptoms. They select an make an intelligent guess often in conference with other professionals and apply the laws of probability. Juries are asked to do much the same having been presented with the evidence of a case.
Abductive thought an how probable is the result.
Isn’t it great that a principal in British law is that you are ‘Innocent until Proven Guilty’ If evidence leaves room for doubt the case remains ‘Unproven’ not for Bolt. All Muslims are guilty. Therefore there are no humanitarian grounds for a Muslim intake. Even asking why puts you on the opposite side of the barricade to Bolt.
Bolt can’t figure that his exceptions in so many ways prove the rule.
olddogthoughts 