The Australian Solar Council will in the coming days unleash a massive ad campaign in Western Australia, where one of the key issues in the upcoming 5 April senate election is the cost of electricity. In what Climate Spectator’s Tristan Edis calls ‘a case of poacher turned gamekeeper’, the Solar Council has enlisted Geoff Denham, the public campaigner best known best know as the mastermind of the highly successful 2010 anti-mining tax campaign and anti-carbon pollution reduction scheme.
The campaign will consist of television and newspaper adverts setting the record straight on solar power, subsidies for which are being blamed for the rising cost of electricity in the state–and nationally. Seeing as how Australia’s solar industry is relatively small and new, it is the first time that a campaign of this magnitude for this cause has been waged. The budget for the campaign will be around $1 million, having been collected mainly through donors who are either participants in the solar industry or who simply support solar and other renewables as a matter of principle.
WA will act as a staging ground for the larger campaign that the Solar Council will later undertake on the national level. The federal government seems intent on diluting or eliminating the last-standing incentive scheme for renewable energy in the country: the Renewable Energy Target (RET).
Support for the RET will act as a political bellwether for how elected officials will approach renewables within the state senate chambers as well—and any candidates being elected a pro-RET platform will send a message to the federal government.
The WA election is extremely tight, and could be swayed by just a few votes, points out Solar Council Chief Executive John Grimes. In a poll conducted by the Solar Council, of 400 (of around 2000 total) solar workers in the state, 93% said that support for the RET will be a ‘very important’ or ‘quite important’ consideration in how they cast their vote. “When just 12 votes can decide a Senate seat, these votes count,” said Mr Grimes.
The RET is not, as it is frequently accused of being, responsible for the drastic electricity price rises that WA and most of the rest of Australia has suffered in recent years. This myth has been quite thoroughly rebutted by analysts throughout the energy industry, including in an in-depth analysis undertaken by the REC Agents Association.
“The Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme deserves a gold medal. It has helped five million Australians cut their power bills by installing solar and has created 15,000 jobs and will do so at zero cost to households or the Federal Budget. That is an extraordinary achievement,” said Fiona Hehir, vice president of the RAA.
On the topic of the RET, activist group Solar Citizens send a message to its followers that protecting the incentive scheme will be the organization’s primary focus for the year 2014. “The lack of understanding about renewable energy on [the RET review] panel is an ominous sign. But the good news is it ultimately won’t be this panel that determines the fate of the target. That decision sits within the government party room,” the group said. They have also started a petition to save the RET which those interested can sign: Solar Citizens – Save the RET Petition.
© 2014 Solar Choice Pty Ltd
Hi Team, below are two articles I tried to put into the Cairns Post discussion on the Mark McAddle persons announcement.
I am posting them here because they contain an argument, containing provable facts and figures.
I admit it to be a bit parochial, but still mainly true for elsewhere.
The first version was said to be too many characters, although their count showed still 4 available, the second was accepted but the whole article and discussion then suddenly disappeared, – I guess they felt it exposed the emperor’s lack of clothes. Cairns Post is owned by Newscorp
– Feel free to use any of the article.
Cheers,
Geoff Thomas
IF Ergon pays 8 cents to buy Solar generated power from folk in Cairns it will, selling that same power for 29 cents to folk in Cairns, make a substantial profit, and it does not have to pay the Wheeling charges, ie line costs to bring it up from Rockhampton, nor the variable and growing costs for coal and gas generated electricity down south as well, nor does it have to pay any local line costs as the Solar folk are already connected to the local network and buying 29 cents electricity at night time or cloudy days anyway.
So, our local Solar generating folk are selling power to Ergon cheaper than were it to come from down south, where most of it comes now. Ergon gets it’s electricity cheaply late at night, when it is better to keep the coal fired generators running than to start them up again in the morning, – that is when you find the cheaper deals, but pays top dollar down south during the day, particularly when it is hot, – refrigerators, fans and air-con all running full on, yet is only paying 8 cents for the local Solar electricity at the time Solar is most available.
That 8 cents also stays local rather than being shipped down south to Rocky so it helps our local economy. It is obvious that more people should get Solar and Ergon and Cairns should be grateful, so what is going on with these politicians? Could Minister McArdle have really looked at the simple facts? or has he another agenda totally nothing to do with what he speaks nor the facts.
IF Ergon pays 8 cents to buy Solar generated power from folk in Cairns it will, selling that same power for 29 cents to folk in Cairns, make a substantial profit, and it does not have to pay the line costs to bring it up from Rockhampton, nor the variable and growing costs for coal generated electricity down south as well, nor does it have to pay any local costs as the Solar folk are already connected to the local network and buying 29 cents electricity at night time or cloudy days anyway.
So, our local Solar generating folk are selling power to Ergon cheaper than were it to come from down south, where most of it comes now. Ergon gets it’s electricity cheaply late at night, when it is better to keep the coal fired generators running than to start them up again in the morning, – that is when you find the cheaper deals, but pays top dollar down south during the day, particularly when it is hot, – refrigerators, fans and air-con all running full on, yet is only paying 8 cents for the local Solar electricity at the time Solar is most available.
That 8 cents also stays local rather than being shipped down south to Rocky so it helps our local economy. – Probably true in most localities.