Australia needs to do more to support the roll out of large-scale renewable energy technologies such as solar PV, wind power and concentrated solar power (CSP) in order to meet its stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 2000 by 2050.
This is the conclusion of a controversial new report from the Grattan Institute that examines the pathway to Australia’s clean energy future, focusing on the prospects for seven technologies that could generate electricity with near-zero emissions.
The report, entitled “No easy choices: Which way to Australia’s energy future?” identifies these technologies as wind, solar PV, geothermal, nuclear, CSP, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and bio-energy.
Under current market and regulatory conditions, the report finds that although large-scale renewables may contribute to the future overall energy mix, it is possible they would be unable to produce power at a cost comparable to today’s fossil fuel-generated electricity.
It recommends a market-based approach to reducing emissions, pointing out that Australia’s carbon pricing scheme – although a good start – is not enough on its own, and deployment of more renewable power would benefit from the removal of “subsidies to incumbent technologies.”
Various claims in the report have drawn fire from the non-profit lobby group Beyond Zero Emissions, which says the Grattan Institute’s analysis of Australia’s renewable energy issues is fundamentally flawed, containing “glaring omissions” about the cost of wholesale fossil fuel electricity and the cost of solar photovoltaic electricity; which currently competes in the retail electricity market.
“We do not expect a suburban Woolworths to compete with food prices at the Footscray Wholesale Fruit and Veg market. Yet this is what the Grattan Institute has done by ignoring the differences between the wholesale and retail electricity markets,” says Matthew Wright, Executive Director of Beyond Zero Emissions.
Mr Wright accuses the Institute of laying out a plan for “eliminating” feed-in tariffs for solar power, which global evidence has shown are more effective than a carbon price in driving deployment of renewable energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“If feed-in tariffs were eliminated as suggested by the Grattan Institute, Australia would lose one of the only two successful, significant scale, zero carbon policies it has,” Mr Wright says in a statement.
“Last year feed-in tariffs achieved over $5 billion dollars in new energy investment in Australian distributed solar, more than was invested in any other electricity source.”
