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| The full moon sets behind a wind farm in the Mojave Desert in California, Januray 8, 2004. (Toby Melville: Reuters) |
The bickering between state and federal governments on
renewable energy targets is creating massive uncertainty, according to
climate change and energy specialists.
David Blowers from the
Grattan Institute says investors, utilities, industry and householders
are in the dark about what to expect in 2017.Mr Blowers said the only certainty was that electricity prices would rise for everyone.
"Electricity prices have already been factored into next year and they're going to be higher," he said.
"Tackling a new energy system makes that inevitable.
"Replacing a lot of generation stock and infrastructure with a whole lot of new stuff is expensive, so prices will rise.
"What we'll see, if there's no agreement around Australia's climate change policy, is that for the foreseeable future, price increases will be greater than they need to be."Mr Blowers said it might be unpalatable, but there must be give and take on both sides if politicians are to reach consensus and enable investment.
"At the moment, on the federal level, we have two sides of politics, both arguing two separate things," he said.
"It's a battle between the Federal Government and the Opposition on what they want policy to be, and at the end of the day both parties are going to have to give a little.
"Then there's the situation where state governments have introduced their own renewable energy targets, so it's hard to see [consensus] happening and I guess you'll see more of the same going forward.
"But if we have certainty and clarity around climate policy, that will give those involved in the electricity sector the confidence to make the investment that we need to have a reliable and reasonably affordable electricity sector.
"At the moment all we have is stagnation."CSIRO stresses urgent need to have carbon change policy consensus
The CSIRO and Energy Networks Australia have submitted research called the Electricity Network Transformational Roadmap to the Finkel Review on electricity, which is scheduled to be handed down by April this year.
Paul Graham, CSIRO's chief energy economist, said policy certainty, including a price on carbon, was needed urgently.
"The reason it is so urgent is because by 2030 we want to have meet our Paris climate target, [which] will involve shifting to using a lot of low emissions electricity, he said.
"But low emissions electricity costs more. Electricity bills will rise because of the deep decarbonisation trend.
"And we want to make sure we don't spend any more than we have to. We've got to have a clear, stable carbon policy."
Electricity only one third of emissions
Mr Blowers is concerned that there is too much focus on electricity as a means of reducing emissions and decarbonising.
"I think this is a major problem," he said.
"We're spending a long time focusing on electricity generator sector, which only accounts for 30 per cent of our emissions.
"It's the biggest, but we've still got two-thirds of your emissions to deal with.
"I'm yet to see someone come up with a method of making steel or cement without burning carbon or how to stop methane gas coming off cows, pigs and sheep."
Links
- What can we expect from Australian climate politics in 2017?
- Climate change could be behind growth of bird's wing length, researchers say
- Climate change could increase number of cyclones during El Nino years
- NASA climate scientist and astronaut Piers Sellers dies at 61
- Australia's greenhouse gas emissions rising
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