The proposed National Energy Guarantee (NEG) aims to provide more reliable and cheaper power, but critics say that’s at the expense of renewable energy.
The Coalition party room has approved prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s plan and states will be asked to agree to the next step.
The NEG is aimed at cutting emissions in the electricity sector by 26%, helping to reduce energy bills and ensuring a reliable power supply by forcing power companies to buy some electricity from sources like coal, gas, batteries or pumped hydro, the ABC reports.
Some see it as a backward step for encouraging more large-scale wind, solar or battery projects from 2022 to 2030 which could otherwise help with electric vehicle uptake.
The Energy Security Board says the NEG would ensure zero investment in those fields, which could topple Australia from among one of the leading countries to adopt renewable energy, RenewEconomy says.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has expressed strong concerns about the NEG and is among those reserving their right to vote against it.
Abbott has previously spoken against the plan in relation to its commitment to ensuring Australia meets emissions targets agreed to in the Paris climate change accord.
He says that while there’s support for the plan, much of it is conditional.
Barnaby Joyce is also pushing for more guarantees that the NEG would bring down prices before he supports the plan and Nationals senator Barry O’Sullivan has major concerns, the ABC says.
The Labor Party has not announced a final position but has argued that the target of cutting emissions by 26% is too weak.
“Malcolm Turnbull presented an energy plan that will see not a single renewable energy project built for 10 years, will see the rates of rooftop solar on Australian houses halve, and will channel potentially billions of taxpayer dollars into building new coal-fired power stations that the industry itself says are un-investable,” Labor’s energy and climate change spokesman Mark Butler says.
Greens leader Richard Di Natale says Butler is right “when he said that this was a dud of a policy”.
“We don’t get more renewables in the system, we lock in coal, the targets aren’t based on science,” he says.
Turnbull told media on Tuesday the government would also pursue the ACCC recommendation to underwrite new “dispatchable” capacity – a move the Coalition hopes will result in a new coal fired generator, RenewEconomy reports.
Professor Ian Lowe, emiritus professors of science, technology and society at Griffith University, says the NEG’s most serious deficiency is its failure to meet “even our legal requirements” under the Paris agreement to slow climate change.
“Since the government has no plan at all to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from transport, agriculture or manufacturing, the lion’s share of our agreed reductions must come from electricity generation.
“The NEG’s target is totally inadequate. Modelling suggests that the current wave of investment in large-scale renewable energy generation will be stalled if the NEG is approved in its present form.”
