The Berejiklian government's Climate Change Fund has collected in excess of a quarter of a billion dollars more than it has spent in the past three years, delaying investment the Greens say should have gone on bolstering communities against the effects of global warming.
Details of the underspend of $252.9 million from 2014-17 are contained in the fund's latest annual report that was released without fanfare late last year.
 |
Outlays for the year totaled $160.6 million, with about $94.3 million going towards the Solar Bonus Scheme Reimbursement. The next largest item was $12.1 million spent on enhanced bushfire management.
Justin Field, the Greens Treasury spokesman, said the government continued to "short-change" the state by not using money expresses earmarked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and helping the community adjust to the inevitable impacts from a warming climate.
“We’re living with climate disruption now," Mr Field said. "Every day the NSW Government delays or under invests in action causes risk to people, communities and our environment."
“The money is there and has been allocated, they just aren’t spending it and there has never been a more critical time to take action to reduce emissions," he said, adding that the past three years had been the warmest since records began.
A spokeswoman for Environment Minister Gabrielle Upton highlighted the cost of the Solar Bonus Scheme but did not detail what the government was planning to do with surplus money accumulating in the Climate Change Fund.
The Solar Bonus Scheme "was an ineffective Labor policy", the spokeswoman said.
The program cost taxpayers $1.24 billion on 148,194 new solar rooftop systems between its start in 2010 and its closure at the end of 2016, the spokeswoman said.
Since the closure of the Scheme almost 235,000 solar systems have been installed by households across NSW – far exceeding the 148,000 installed when the Scheme was running.
As at December 2017, 400,000 households and small businesses, the equivalent of one in six houses, have solar PV in NSW.
This massive boost in uptake reflects price falls as solar technology develops, showing that households don’t need costly Government subsidies to invest in solar.
In addition to households NSW leads Australia in large-scale solar, with three of the country’s largest operating solar farms based here and a further seven under construction.
Links
No comments:
Post a Comment