Renewable Energy Target.

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mottrain said:
https://retreview.dpmc.gov.au/panel-members

I do. Also if you want to go down the vested interest path then tell me why they haven't turned to solar if it is more likely to be better profit wise for the ones who have association with electricity bodies?
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They are!

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/origin-energy-revitalize-solar-strategy-including-storage-evs-18188

Origin Energy says it is looking to “revitalise” its solar strategy, and will look at products that include installing modules on rooftops for no cost, as well as options for the emerging battery storage and electric vehicle market.

The announcement from Origin appears to be a bit of a turnaround in the utility’s thinking – given that it was once the biggest solar installer in the market – for choosing to focus on its export gas terminals in Queensland.

But Origin managing director Grant King says it is clear that rooftop solar PV will soon “stand on its own feet” – and may already do so in parts of Australia. He says it is important for Origin to act on this and other distributed generation, before other competitors steal market share.

Indeed, as Origin Energy starts to bring its massive LNG investment on-line, and starts to reap revenues from that investment, it has cited renewable energy as one of its four main strategic priorities in coming years.

This includes large-scale renewables such as solar, geothermal and hydro, but only in overseas markets. In Chile, King says, geothermal and solar are now competing without subsidies; in New Zealand, its Contact Energy subsidiary is now 80 per cent renewables and it can now switch off its gas-fired generation completely at times; while geothermal also looks promising in Indonesia.
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http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/agl-energy-looks-at-solar-storage-and-home-energy-solutions-47629

AGl Energy says it is in talks with a number of battery storage suppliers at tries to ready itself for the emergence of a new decentralized electricity model.

The company – one of the three biggest retailers in Australia, and now the largest generator – says it is clear there will be rapid changes to technologies and the incumbent business models of energy utilities.

It said in its annual results presentation on Wednesday that is looking to deliver more “in-home” energy services, including smart meters, solar PV and energy storage. And it is looking to develop strategic partnerships.

“This new business model will also give AGL a capability and future growth opportunity,” it said in its report.

It is clear that incumbent utilities are facing massive pressure from the emergence of solar, and storage, and a range of software solutions, and new home energy providers. Just how quickly incumbent utilities can respond to that will be a key to their future.
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http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/utilities-wake-threat-mass-grid-defection-29631

As Australia’s major retailers and generators push back against the renewable energy target, and the carbon price is also unwound, some are also recognising that their business models will be quickly redundant unless they make some rapid changes.

Utilities admit the new technologies, particularly solar and storage, and the resulting “democratisation of energy” is changing the game. Not only can households and business generate their own energy on-site, they will soon have the ability to defect from the grid en masse. And save money.

“Two years ago “grid defection” had to be explained as a concept,” says UBS utilities analyst David Leitch. “Now every electricity business and player from generators, retailers, networks and regulators are adapting to a world where demand falls, customers can be competitors, network owners are generators and the only constant is change.”

Leitch says that for large players, this means one of two decisions – whether to resist …. or work out how to profit from the change.

At the conclusion of utilities conference held in Sydney by UBS last week, which heard from most of the major Australian and New Zealand listed utilities, Leitch suggested that Origin Energy appears to have decided to resist.
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http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/ubs-time-to-join-the-solar-ev-storage-revolution-27742

Leading investment bank UBS says the payback time for unsubsidised investment in electric vehicles plus rooftop solar plus battery storage will be as low as 6-8 years by 2020 – triggering a massive revolution in the energy industry.

“It’s time to join the revolution,” UBS says in a note to clients, in what could be interpreted as a massive slap-down to those governments and corporates who believe that centralised fossil fuel generation will dominate for decades to come.

UBS, however, argues that solar panels and batteries will be disruptive technologies. So, too, will electric vehicles and storage.

By the end of the decade, it says, the combination of will deliver a pay-back time of between six to 8 years, as this graph below shows. It will fall to around 3 years by 2030. Right now, the payback is probably around 12 years, enough to encourage the interest of early adopters. You can read more here on Why EVs will make solar viable without subsidies.
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mottrain said:
The same can be said subsequently for the guardian.
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As I read a number of their articles, this could quite possibly be true, but then I can decide whether to accept or not and if I am really interested, look to other news outlets for more information.
 
http://www.businessspectator.com.au..._content=889808&utm_campaign=cs_daily&modapt=
Dick Warburton, chair of the government’s review of the Renewable Energy Target, had a horror interview with Fran Kelly of ABC’s Radio National a day after his report was released. In just under 10 minutes, Warburton found himself tied up in knots as he tried to justify his recommendation to shut the renewables scheme.

The trouble started at the beginning of the interview, with Warburton disputing Kelly’s suggestion that coal generators would be big winners out of his recommendations. Kelly promptly responded: “But doesn’t your own modelling estimate the value of the existing coal-fired power generators would increase by $9.1 billion?”

“Um ... yes,” Warbuton replied. But he then bizarrely asserted this $9.1 billion windfall was of “neutral benefit to them [coal generators]”.

Subsequently, after Warburton admitted the RET would act to reduce retail electricity bills and was also successful at decarbonising electricity supply, the discussion moved to the nub of the review panel’s argument. Warburton explained that even though the RET might be effective at reducing emissions, the government’s proposed Emissions Reduction Fund – the centrepiece of its Direct Action policy – “would be a far less expensive” way of doing the same thing.

What followed was almost farcical.

Kelly, rather puzzled, pointed out that we don’t actually know the cost of reducing emissions under the ERF because the government is yet to release any costings of the scheme (see Hunting for Hunt’s Direct Action costings for background). She then noted that Warburton’s recommendation to cut the RET would pass costs onto, via the ERF, taxpayers to fund achievement of the 5 per cent emission reduction target.

Warburton then appeared to reveal he doesn’t understand the ERF is funded by taxpayers, and oddly disputed her assertion. He then continued to argue that there were “less expensive means of reducing emissions [than the RET].”

Kelly then asked the obvious: “What are those less expensive means, have you modelled those?”

Warburton: “Well, we just said the Emissions Reduction Fund.”

Kelly: “But we don’t know yet how much that’s going to be.”

Warburton then gave the game away, admitting “we don’t know the figure” for the abatement cost of the ERF. But he then confidently asserted it would be way short of the cost of the RET.

While the discussion seems farcical, this is actually quite important.

Basically, Warburton is proposing that the government make a drastic change to a policy that his own review acknowledges is unlikely to save energy consumers money, which will undermine the value of several billion dollars in investment and considerable project development effort, and send a large proportion of renewable energy businesses bankrupt, with their staff made redundant.

This should all be done on the basis of an assertion that the ERF scheme will be cheaper than the RET, yet neither the RET Review team nor the government has actually costed the ERF.

Now, to be fair to Warburton if you refer back to the actual review report, it references work by ClimateWorks to support its assertion that the RET be abolished, or at the very least cut by 60 per cent, because there are cheaper options for reducing emissions. Unfortunately for Warburton, ClimateWorks have rejected his review panel’s interpretation of their research. Yesterday they sent out the following statement:

The panel cited ClimateWorks' Low Carbon Growth Plan as evidence that there are lower cost abatement measures available than renewable energy. However, our research also clearly shows that we need all of those measures plus renewables if we are to achieve the emissions reductions that scientists … have advised are necessary. In looking beyond 2020 to 2050, ClimateWorks' new research … shows that ultimately full decarbonisation of the electricity system is necessary. And the most cost effective way to achieve this is with a majority of our electricity coming from renewable energy. For this transition to occur, the RET or an equivalent should be retained and increased over time, not reduced.

One wonders how Warburton can be so confident the ERF will achieve anything meaningful when it is still an unlegislated skeleton. Evan Stamatiou of sustainability advisory firm Net Balance echoed the views of a number of carbon market analysts and lawyers, observing:

While some overarching design elements [of the ERF] have been laid out, the detailed design has not been agreed upon, and there are still numerous and fundamental design challenges that technical experts and bureaucrats are trying to understand and resolve.

The one analyst that has been imaginative enough to attempt to cost the ERF, RepuTex, believes it will involve a cost per tonne of abatement that isn’t cheaper than what the RET Review estimates for the large-scale Renewable Energy Target.

The Abbott Government will be fooling no one about the insincerity of its concern for climate change if it chooses to substantially cut the Renewable Energy Target while arguing that it will all be taken care of by the uncosted, unlegislated and underfunded Emission Reduction F
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And we're meant to believe this guy knows what he's talking about?
 

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Gough said:
http://www.businessspectator.com.au..._content=889808&utm_campaign=cs_daily&modapt=

And we're meant to believe this guy knows what he's talking about?
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And;

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/why-were-ret-modellers-instructed-to-ignore-commercial-reality-72447

Why were RET modellers instructed to ignore commercial reality?
By Giles Parkinson on 2 September 2014

The firm hired by the Abbott government to conduct the modelling for its controversial review of the Renewable Energy Target has admitted it was instructed to ignore commercial reality – particularly around coal-fired power generation.


Buried in its voluminous report, leading consultant firm ACIL Allen says it was instructed by the RET Review panel, headed by climate skeptic Dick Warburton, to ignore commercial realities around coal-fired generation.


ACIL Allen is one of the country’s leading modellers, providing analysis for many of the country’s biggest companies. Normally, it says, it would take into account the risk of a carbon price, financing issues and community views when assessing the prospects for coal-fired generation.

But in its notes to its report, it says is was instructed to ignore all those commercial realities when assessing the cost of coal generation – an equation that was crucial to gauging the costs and the benefits of the RET scheme.

This is how ACIL described the situation:

“ACIL Allen’s standard assumption when undertaking market outlook studies is to restrict conventional coal (i.e. coal-based technologies which do not employ carbon capture and storage) from entry. This is due to:

 Community views and corporate sustainability policies

 Potential difficulty obtaining generation licences from State and Territory governments

 Long-term risk of explicit carbon pricing being reintroduced

 Difficulty in securing financing on a commercial basis due to these risks.

As requested by the Expert Panel, conventional coal entry will be permitted in the policy scenarios based purely on the economics of the technology within the market. As ACIL Allen’s modelling assumes perfect foresight though, it ignores the risk of future carbon policies which may have a negative effect upon the commercial performance of such plant.”

Any analyst and financier will tell you that it would be impossible to finance or build a new coal-fired generator in this county, but the RET Review panel wanted the modelling of the RET costs to be done on the basis that coal generators could be built. This was a key component in their efforts to try to paint the RET scheme as costly and ineffective.

The admission by ACIL Allen is crucial when assessing the credibility of the RET Review panel’s findings – which are essentially that the RET be stopped immediately, or best that renewables should be allowed to account for only 50 per cent of new demand, up to a maximum of a “real 20 per cent”. This would reduce the amount of wind and solar generation to be built in the country by more than two thirds, to the benefit of coal-fired generation.

The modelling has been criticised on a number of counts, including highly conservative estimates of the cost of solar and wind generation; and benign forecasts about the cost of coal and gas. But an explicit instruction to ignore commercial reality – on top of dismissing climate change as an issue – is the most egregious.

As one senior banker told RenewEconomy: “It is extraordinary that the modellers were asked to ignore commercial reality. You couldn’t take these recommendations to a company board. It would be irresponsible. It would be like doing modelling for a company on the basis of the Australian dollar being worth 12 US cents. It’s ridiculous.”

The fact that corporates include a carbon price in their investment decisions is not new. Even major resource companies such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto do exactly that, which is possibly why they have moved to reduce their exposure to thermal coal generation.

A report in 2013 found that ExxonMobil assumes a cost of $US60 per metric ton by 2030. BP currently uses $40 per metric ton. Royal Dutch Shell uses a price of $40 per tonne. The US government operates with a “shadow” carbon price of $US43/tonne. The Australian RET Review completely ignored it.

Despite all of this, the ACIL Allen modelling actually found that a scenario of 30 per cent renewable by 2020 would deliver the greatest benefit to consumers, jobs and the industry, and would be the most economically efficient. But it would also cause most pain to the incumbent fossil fuel generators. So what did the panel recommend? Immediate closure of the scheme to new entrants.​
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madmug said:
It still begs the question, What is the future shape of the Australian economy. Where are the jobs coming from?

The future is not in the 1950's. Just knocking the rest of our manufacturing out of business is no way to progress. Gas & mining is just narrowing us back down to the same narrow 'dig it up or shear it' type of economy that put us at risk back in those days.
This Government would never have started the Snowy mountain scheme or anything of note had they been in power back then.
So where is our future in the modern world. 15%youth unemployment needs an answer.

Now.
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Renewables won't help either. Australian solar cell manufacturers can't compete with Chinese manufacturers already. Putting even more uncompetitive measures on Australia companies is the height of the stupidity.

We need to find industries that we have a competitive advantage in. We have two key advantages, minerals and space.

Mining is an obvious one the other has not been explored as much.

Food and water will probably be two key markets going forward. While a water supplies are not huge we do have plenty of space for agriculture.

I am personally less worried about immigration and more concerned about the mass foreign purchase of Australian farming land.
 
Northalives said:
http://www.smedg.org.au/Tiger/Hogarth.htm
To begin with.

If you are interested, do a bit of research yourself.
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Why not go to the ATO itself next time?

https://www.ato.gov.au/General/New-...ng-deductibility-for-exploration-expenditure/

Its a tax deduction. The company actually has to have a mine that makes a profit first before it can be taxed. Unless there is something to deduct from there is no deduction.

Which was my point all along.

The legislation changes it from an immediate tax deduction to one spread out over 15 years or the life of the mine (basically short term budget tricks).
 
A renewable energy target is simply silly.

we should look at an energy strategy that achieves a pollution outcome, an economic outcome, an employment and industry outcome along with other considerations and then decide how this will be achieved. deciding on the outcome separate from the strategy is simply ludicrous.
 
Power Raid said:
A renewable energy target is simply silly.

we should look at an energy strategy that achieves a pollution outcome, an economic outcome, an employment and industry outcome along with other considerations and then decide how this will be achieved. deciding on the outcome separate from the strategy is simply ludicrous.
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A target though makes a great soundbite. Plus its easier for the plebs to understand.

Half the people in this thread don't know what a tax deduction is or how electricity works so you can't make it too complicated.
 
Power Raid said:
A renewable energy target is simply silly.

we should look at an energy strategy that achieves a pollution outcome, an economic outcome, an employment and industry outcome along with other considerations and then decide how this will be achieved. deciding on the outcome separate from the strategy is simply ludicrous.
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It's called an Emissions Trading Scheme.
 
swingdog said:
It's called an Emissions Trading Scheme.
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again, that is a rubbish idea as it is like using a hammer for everything rather than a tool box.

I can't help but smile at such a moronic suggestion. Why? different jurisdictions need different solutions.
 

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swingdog said:
It's called an Emissions Trading Scheme.
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then again, it would be a great way for merchant bankers to arbitrage industry and pocket free money.

yep, changed my mind......let's do it.
 
CLUBMEDhurst said:
^^farcical
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Its hardly farcical.

"Any analyst and financier will tell you that it would be impossible to finance or build a new coal-fired generator in this county"

Only due to the carbon tax / uncertainty. See Germany re coal power for what can happen when the political situation changes. The UK has also realised it has a massive power issue hence the interest in shale gas.

"But an explicit instruction to ignore commercial reality"

There you go. Misleading at best. The nonsense sprouted by the renewables lobby is staggering. Even worse is that some people fall for it.
 
Northalives said:
Is mining exploration in this country subsidised by the Australian taxpayer or not? It's a legitimate question.
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there are subsidies available for exploration where there is a R&D involved but given this is rare, very few properly run companies would accept these grants. the cowboys of the industry generally do but you may find they don't even drill.

States and territories have flown VTEM, gravity and IP but the spacing is too large to be useful. so the work was more about government hand outs rather than productivity.

In regards to the fuel rebate, if the fuel was used off road or power generation they received a rebate.

So yes, they received subsidies.

but proper companies don't accept the grants, fly their own remote sensing and the fuel rebate is for a tax not designed for these industries.

what is your point?
 
The point I'm making Power Raid is that mining companies have very, very favourable conditions within which to make a buck but it seems that the new, modern technologies are being thwarted by not being "looked after" as the dig-it-up-and-flog-it mob are.

It seems that we subsidise us being nothing more than a great big hole in the ground and yet, those at the cutting edge of sustainable energy into the future are being pilloried and dismissed because, "it costs too much" and it's not just short sightedness, in my opinion, it's straight out protectionism for those making billions out of 19th/early 20th century technologies.

We must start to ween ourselves off what are becoming scarcer and scarcer resources and start investing in our future where coal and oil will be the proverbial hen's teeth.
 
Northalives said:
The point I'm making Power Raid is that mining companies have very, very favourable conditions within which to make a buck but it seems that the new, modern technologies are being thwarted by not being "looked after" as the dig-it-up-and-flog-it mob are.

It seems that we subsidise us being nothing more than a great big hole in the ground and yet, those at the cutting edge of sustainable energy into the future are being pilloried and dismissed because, "it costs too much" and it's not just short sightedness, in my opinion, it's straight out protectionism for those making billions out of 19th/early 20th century technologies.

We must start to ween ourselves off what are becoming scarcer and scarcer resources and start investing in our future where coal and oil will be the proverbial hen's teeth.
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1) the fuel rebate is the only big ticket item but it is hardly a free kick given the underlying tax should not exist. we should not tax inputs into business such as payroll tax or fuel
2) primary industry is what drives economies. underlying 90% of production is grow it, dig it and the value adds of think it, move it and assemble it. we do not have a competitive advantage on the last three and nor should we strive for the last two.
3) Australia does not have the culture or framework for cutting edge technology. We have become too risk adverse evidenced by our need to legislate for all negative potential outcomes, overspend during a GFC in case we have a recession, our financial services legislation (which means good technology ideas can't be funded) and our IR laws.
4) Even if we did come up with a good idea, managed to fund the R&D and commercialised the concept. We would build the product overseas.

I am all for giving things a go but you would have to be pretty brave to take on the people of Australia to change that mess.

5) resources are not scarce. we will never run out of oil, coal, iron, uranium or gold.
 
Power Raid said:
1)
3) Australia does not have the culture or framework for cutting edge technology. We have become too risk adverse evidenced by our need to legislate for all negative potential outcomes, overspend during a GFC in case we have a recession, our financial services legislation (which means good technology ideas can't be funded) and our IR laws.
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Just on this, I agree we are risk averse, but not necessarily for those reasons. For some reason, we just lack vision and the leaders (in business and politics) to recognise innovation and see it through.

We do innovate (wi-fi etc.) but don't value it (e.g. cut funding to wi-fi inventor, CSIRO). I don't think that's to do with risk, it's more about being scared to be out in front of the pack in anything other than sport.
 
swingdog said:
Just on this, I agree we are risk averse, but not necessarily for those reasons. For some reason, we just lack vision and the leaders (in business and politics) to recognise innovation and see it through.

We do innovate (wi-fi etc.) but don't value it (e.g. cut funding to wi-fi inventor, CSIRO). I don't think that's to do with risk, it's more about being scared to be out in front of the pack in anything other than sport.
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sorry, may be I worded it poorly. I gave those as evidence of our risk adverse society so they are the symptoms not the cause.

however, as we continue to wrap ourselves in cotton wool, the next generation will be brought up in an environment where they do not learn to deal with risk and will avoid it rather than manage it.

so we should be doing what NorthaLives suggests and building a new industry but that will take 20 years and will require changing not only our financial framework but also our culture. This change of culture will not happen organically, it requires leadership and it is a fight our politicians simply won't tackle.
 
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