Retain MRET, urges union

Australian
Monday 23/6/2008 Page: 2

THE coal workers union has written to Climate Change Minister Penny Wong urging her to stick with the Government's policy for a Mandatory Renewable Energy Target against a rising tide of advice that the emissions trading regime could make it superfluous.

The MRET, which requires 20 per cent of energy to come from renewable sources by 2020, is intended as a way of boosting renewable technologies to commercial scale in the medium term, while the price imposed on carbon is still so low that they would not be otherwise competitive.

But both the Productivity Commission and the government's adviser on climate change policies, Roger Wilkins, have suggested the Government would be better off relying on the Emissions Trading Scheme alone, rather than such "market distorting" initiatives.

Now the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) has written to Senator Wong urging her to ignore this advice, arguing that a low initial price on carbon would encourage energy supply from gas, but do nothing to develop technologies that were necessary to deliver the tar deeper cuts in emissions that will have to be made in the future.

If we remove the renewable target it will result in a substitution of gas for wind power and other forms of renewable energy," wrote CFMEU mining and energy division general president Tony Maher.

"While that will result in a lowering of our average emissions it does not help to prepare the economy and the energy supply industry for the medium to long term." Mr Maher said the Government might even need to be more interventionist than the present plans for the MRET assume, assigning specific targets for emerging renewable technology such as geothermal and solar thermal, which would otherwise be squeezed out by proven and cheaper renewable technologies like wind power.

Mr Maher's industry does not stand to benefit from the MRET, but is lobbying Government to set up a separate target for electricity generated with Carbon Capture and Storage technology. The Government has not responded to this suggestion. As The Australian reported recently, Mr Wilkins, who is reviewing Labor's climate change policies to complement an Emissions Trading Scheme, has questioned whether the MRET is the best way to force a shift to renewable technology.

His comments came after the Productivity Commission also questioned the wisdom of an MRET operating alongside an emissions trading regime. And the Government's climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, has emphasised the need to phase out an MRET quickly, once an Emissions Trading Scheme is up and running. The federal Opposition wants the MRET to be replaced with a Clean Energy Target, which would include clean coal technology and gas, but the CFMEU does not support this approach.