Catching up on the global trend in renewables

The Clean Energy Council recently reported that renewable power output in Australia has doubled over the past John Martin from New Energy Solar recently to get his views on what it will take for Australia to catch up with the global trend underway. 

There are now nearly 15 Gigawatts worth of renewable projects being built in Australia, so the pipeline is strong too. However the council has warned that clear policy is needed to maintain this. Read on / listen to John’s views on what needs to happen first to break the gridlock and provide renewable power that is reliable, cheap and addresses global warming. 

Edited transcript 

“We've had so many goes at energy policy . We've been through a few Prime Ministers over the topic as well. There are vehement debates. People talk about culture wars. I think it gets back to this internal conflict between people in Australia, between businesses, over the role of fossil fuels and renewable energy.

I think that's really heavily influenced the energy debate. I would say, that National Energy Guarantee, the much-scorned National Energy Guarantee (NEG), wasn't perfect, but it would have helped at least to provide some guidelines... If we just accept the transition to renewables, it's good for the environment, but it's also going to happen for economic reasons….and provide a glide path that gets us there. That's what's missing. It's been missing for a decade.  

No policy or fights about policy or picking on one element of policy, like it's got to be cheap or it's got to be reliable. I think that the trilemma, as they call it, that it's got to be reliable, address global warming and cheap, they are the three things we've got to solve for.

So the NEG, despite being much hated, was actually a reasonable policy. Look, in the energy industry, literally nothing's ... This last collapse, your last change in government, changing energy ministers and approach, the renewable industry here has gone into a hiatus.” 

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