According to a briefing paper released on August 30th,
2016 by the Clean Energy Council (CEC), innovation will be stifled
right across the clean energy sector if the Australian Parliament
supports legislation to remove future grant funding available from the
Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
Legislation to be introduced to Parliament includes an USD 1 billion cut to ARENA’s grants funding
Clean Energy Council Chief Executive Kane Thornton
said the organisation had funded hundreds of projects that would not
otherwise have gone ahead, bridging major knowledge gaps across the
renewable energy industry, reducing technology costs and supporting
home-grown Australian research and development activities.
“Legislation to be introduced to Parliament this
week includes an USD 1 billion cut to ARENA’s grants funding, and puts
everything that it has achieved at risk,” Thornton said.
“While we understand the government is looking for
savings, slashing grant funding for renewable energy massively
undermines the industry’s efforts to meet our national emissions
reduction targets, as well as the 2020 Renewable Energy Target (RET) and
beyond. ARENA is an investment by Australia in Australian technology,
and it is helping us to catch up in the global race toward clean energy
and energy innovation.”
ARENA funding has helped to leverage private sector
finance, and will deliver greater value for the energy sector in years
to come
The Clean Energy Council paper “The impact of
defunding ARENA: Plunging into the clean energy valley of death” says
ARENA is helping to overcome the capital-intensive and lengthy process
of developing exciting new energy technologies. Every energy technology
ever developed – including coal, gas, hydro and nuclear – has benefited
from a substantial government funding commitment, it says.
Thornton said ARENA’s use of capital grant funding
had a strong track record of success, and was able to deliver results
that would not have been possible using debt or equity – the tools
available to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the government’s
Clean Energy Innovation Fund.
“The cost reductions we have seen already in
Australia, in large-scale solar for example, have been remarkable. Every
dollar spent by ARENA has helped to leverage private sector finance,
and will deliver greater value for the energy sector in years to come,”
Thornton emphasizes.
“The renewable energy industry urges the major
parties to retain ARENA’s future funding as a crucial investment in our
energy future.”
The Clean Energy Council expects severe impacts of cutting ARENA’s funding:
- Cost
reductions seen in exciting near-commercial technologies will stall as
the capital grant funding necessary to cross the so-called “valley of
death” disappears. Major technology and project developers will leave
Australia and these opportunities will be lost.
- Also,
investment in Australia’s first-class renewable energy R&D could
wither and die. Innovation in all its forms benefits the national
interest and positions Australia for future prosperity in a rapidly
changing global economy.
- The level of investment
(domestic and foreign) in early-stage clean energy R&D and
demonstration projects will fall away as private sector investors take
their capital and intellectual property elsewhere.
International
investors in Australia’s renewable energy sector will again be rattled
by a perception that Australian policy support for clean energy is
uncertain or diminished, CEC concludes.
source: http://www.solarserver.com
