Deal reached on RET cut — but not everyone's happy

The long-debated legislation to cut Australia’s Renewable Energy Target (RET), and to list native wood waste as a possible fuel source, passed an extended sitting of the Senate on Tuesday night.

Initially created in 2001 by the Howard government, the RET was strengthened in 2010 by the Labor government to “at least 20% by 2020” — calculated at the time as being 41,000 GWh of electricity.

But the Abbott government has sought to reduce the target for over a year, initially proposing a figure of 32,000 GWh. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten announced in April that the ALP would reluctantly support a compromise deal of a 33,500 GWh.

The Coalition and Labor parties eventually agreed that the target would be reduced to 33,000 GWh, to reflect lower overall energy demand. Additionally, trade-exposed industries will be exempt from the target and two-yearly reviews would be scrapped; instead, the Clean Energy Regulator will provide an annual statement to the government of the day on progress towards the target and its impact.

The legislation passed the Senate with 41 votes to 14.

Controversially, the Parliament also approved inclusion of native forest biomass into the RET. According to the CEO of Markets For Change, Peg Pug, the practice of native forest logging to feed furnaces and produce electricity is “not clean energy, not carbon neutral and not environmentally friendly”.

“The Renewable Energy Target is meant to be promoting forms of electricity that do not emit greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, not propping up destruction of priceless forest ecosystems whilst releasing large amounts of carbon,” Putt said.

 “This is a lifeline for the continued unsustainable logging destruction of Australia’s native forests in the wake of collapse of woodchip exports from those native forests and could reach volumes on a similar scale to those for export woodchips, which were also categorised as a waste product.”

Australian Greens Deputy Leader Larissa Waters similarly expressed her disappointment in the biomass allowance, as well as the fact that the RET deal retained a ban on state Renewable Energy Targets.

“Federal Labor has sold out Victoria by stifling the state’s ability to create the clean energy jobs of the future,” Waters said.

Australian Solar Council CEO John Grimes was meanwhile grateful for the fact that the council has successfully led a campaign making domestic and commercial solar untouchable, with “no change at all to the small-scale solar PV and Solar Hot Water scheme”.

However, Grimes was sceptical of a letter tabled by the government in the Senate outlining its support for large-scale solar.

“While the letter is long on rhetoric, it is short on tangible support for solar,” said Grimes. He claimed if the government is serious about supporting large-scale solar, it would restore the $750 million it slashed from ARENA’s funding last year.