A plan by the New South Wales Government to force electricity retailers to note the cost of the upcoming carbon tax and renewable energy schemes on electricity bills has created an uproar as the plan doesn’t appear to include showing the massive costs of fossil fuel subsidies and damage coal fired power generation has wreaked.
According to the NSW Liberal Party web site, Premier Barry O’Farrell says Minister for Energy and Resources Chris Hartcher has written to the State’s three major electricity retailers to inform them of the NSW Government’s plans.
“The public have a right to know how much all these schemes and taxes are adding to their bills,” according to Mr O’Farrell.
That is certainly so, but various parties have pointed out if that should occur, then the costs of subsidies to the coal industry and the financial damage caused by coal-fired power generation should also be noted – and they would dwarf the costs of renewable energy schemes.
Drawing on an overseas example, Professor Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment, states that when all the subsidisation and negative effects of coal are taken into account throughout its life cycle, the final bill to the USA economy is a third to over half a trillion dollars each year.
Electricity price rises are often disproportionately blamed on solar, but back in March last year, Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson warned delays in replacing ageing electricity infrastructure were “coming home to roost“. It’s for this and many other reasons Australia, like other countries, experienced an era of cheap energy that never really was.
It’s also an often glossed over but crucial point renewable energy subsidies are needed to offset the impact of fossil fuel subsidies. Remove fossil fuel subsidisation and renewables such as solar power can stand on their own two feet.
Even given the challenges the solar power sector is experiencing in New South Wales in terms of support from the State government and misinformation continually bandied about, many households are realising solar panels are still a very good investment in order to buffer against rapidly increasing electricity costs.
One rebate the NSW government hasn’t been and won’t be able to squash under its heel unilaterally is the Federal Solar Credits rebate, which reduces the up-front cost of acquiring a solar power system by thousands of dollars.
Past the rebate, even a good quality entry-level 1.5kW solar power system installed in New South Wales can generate electricity bill savings of around $500 a year under current arrangements in the state according to national solar solutions provider Energy Matters.
