Ministers could split energy bill

www.theaustralian.news.com.au
August 14, 2009

RENEWABLE energy plans, including subsidies for domestic solar panels, could be in place much earlier than expected because the Rudd government is considering altering its climate change plans in the Senate. Even as the government's carbon pollution reduction scheme was blocked in the Senate yesterday by the Coalition, the Greens and independent senators, ministers were considering breaking the legislative links between the emissions scheme and the bill covering renewable energy targets.

Until now, the government has insisted that the CPRS bill and the RET bill, which is designed to set renewable energy targets for Australia's electricity generation of 20 per cent by 2020, had to be linked and to be voted for together. The Coalition, Greens and independent senators have urged the government to break the link between the bills so they could vote for the renewable energy targets, which they support. The government has been accused of delaying subsidy schemes and new energy projects for purely political gain.

The government has said the bills have to be linked because common compensation claims make them inseparable. Yesterday, however, government sources suggested the defeat of the CPRS bill meant the government could consider its strategic options of breaking the link between the bills, or decoupling them.

The proposed legislation on renewable energy has been delayed but is expected to be introduced to parliament next week. If the government agrees to decouple the energy bill from emissions trading, the bill can be debated, amended and passed this session, otherwise it will be voted down and only reintroduced with the CPRS bill in November.

A compromise on renewable energy plans would allow the government to maintain the pressure on the Coalition to support the ETS in the Senate and pass it before the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December. Last night, the opposition's spokesman on climate change, Greg Hunt, told The Australian the Coalition's proposed amendments on renewable energy would be given to the government "by the close of business on Friday".

The Coalition claims it is seeking only "minor amendments" to the RET bill, involving more help for the aluminium industry, funding for the use of waste coalmine gas emissions and the "decoupling of the bills". "Jobs and investment in renewable energy will be lost unless the Prime Minister agrees to unchain the renewable energy target legislation from the government's failed ETS plan," Mr Hunt said last night.

"With the Senate rejecting Mr Rudd's flawed and unpopular ETS, it is now imperative that the Prime Minister decouples it from the renewables legislation. Unless the government releases the renewables legislation from the grip of its ETS plan, crucial investment in solar, wind, geothermal, tidal power and wave energy will stall."

If the government would not decouple the legislation, he said, "mums and dads won't be able to access a new scheme to subsidise the cost of putting solar panels on their roofs. It will mean that hundreds of millions of dollars in investment in major new renewable energy projects could stall. "The result will be jobs lost in the renewable energy industry across Australia."