The dark forces lined up against renewables in Australia

By Giles Parkinson on 24 October 2013

The Australian renewables industry is under no illusion about the extent of the forces lined up against it following the election of a highly conservative Coalition government in Canberra.

The antipathy to renewables in large sections of the Coalition is deep set, as it is among some of the highly influential and ultra-conservative think tanks such as the Institute of Public Affairs, and various industry lobby groups.

But even battle-weary supporters of solar and wind energy – and those firmly in the middle of the road –  were taken aback by an extraordinary tirade against renewable energy delivered in Sydney on Wednesday by Burchell Wilson, a senior economist at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

ACCI is one of the most visible and influential lobby groups in Canberra, and its opposition to climate policy, carbon pricing, and renewables incentives, is well known. Still, no-one was quite ready for the “venomous rant” – as one observor described it – against the renewable energy target that Wilson delivered to the Eastern Australian Energy Outlook Conference.

Wilson’s approach was not atypical of the sort of rhetoric we have come used to hearing from conservative energy ministers – be they state of federal – and the incumbent utilities, who are threatened by the rise of renewables, and their cheerleaders in the conservative think tanks.

The trick for these people is to ignore the benefits of renewables – increased investment, more jobs, lowering emissions, delivering a  faster transition to low carbon economy, solar delivering cheaper alternative to homes and businesses – and instead paint a doomsday scenario.

There was no mention of the massive influence of network costs, or the $1 billion in annual subsidies paid to support the delivery of fossil fuel generation to customers in WA and Queensland. Instead, the focus is on inflated “abatement costs” using out of date technology prices, warnings about rising energy costs, collapsing industries and economies, and all the things that only a “green ideologue” would think were good.

Then you throw in hyperbole – the renewable energy target  was “crazy”, “an ugly baby”, and “bad policy” that could only be justified by an “ideological predeliction towards renewable energy.”