Australia's farsighted Renewable Energy Target, commonly known as the RET, is in trouble. The Australian Government has appointed a special RET review panel, reporting to Prime Minister Tony Abbott, and its recommendations could see the RET target of 20% renewable energy by 2020 reduced or even abandoned. Tomorrow (Friday, May 16th before 5pm), is the last chance to make individual submissions to the RET review before it brings out its findings in July. 1 Million Women's written submission is reproduced in full below, and it's easy to have your say too by going to this link and choosing one or more of the options provided: http://www.savetheret.com/
Dear RET review panel members
Re: the future of renewable energy in Australia
We are writing to you in support of the Renewable Energy Target (RET) as an Australian movement of women and girls who are committed to taking practical action on climate change through the way that we live.
Founded in Sydney in 2009, 1 Million Women has built from scratch to over 100,000 members, with a large, vibrant social media following and a powerful collective voice.
Sunshine is Australia's greatest natural gift, and Australians love solar energy. They like wind, hydro, large-scale thermal solar and other emerging renewable energy sources too, but they absolutely love rooftop solar panels.
At last count over 1.2 million Australian households have voted with their rooftops to show that. Opinion polls consistently demonstrate overwhelming popular support for renewable energy, and especially solar. Barring some extreme measures or serious policy reversals interrupting the current trajectory, we expect that over 3 million Australian homes and many businesses will have 'gone solar' by 2020.
We were delighted in recent days to see a major commercial organisation, IKEA, announcing a breakthrough solar project for its stores and other facilities in the eastern states of Australia.
Media reports said: 'Swedish furniture giant IKEA has announced it will install 3.9MW of rooftop solar PV systems across all of its Australian east coast stores and warehouses, a project that will result in the nation’s largest commercial solar development so far. The project – which will see more than 16,000 panels installed across IKEA Australia’s five stores in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales, as well as two merchandise pick-up locations – will have an annual output of 5,495 million kilowatt hours (MWh) of electricity; enough to power 778 family homes for a year.'
1 Million Women looks forward to the time when every Woolworths, every Coles, every IGA, every shopping centre, every service station and every government building have installed solar panels on their roofs. With the right policies, governments can ensure this becomes a reality.
We know this issue is important to many of our members, who reflect the wider Australian population, because they tell us so constantly. 1 Million Women celebrated in 2013 when Australian households collectively broke the 1 million women mark for rooftop solar installations, and taking solar hot water into account as well, we know that over 5 million Australians live in homes that draw energy from the sun for clean electricity generation and/or heating water.
1 Million Women does not pretend to hold special technical expertise in regard to renewable energy, especially solar, so we look to widely recognised experts like leading solar industry analyst Warwick Johnston, the founder of Sunwiz, and what he is saying. We've edited the below a bit, with our additions in italics , but the overall message is clear:
- Increased renewables are desirable - clean energy is a fantastic opportunity for Australia, not a liability
- The RET is the best way of delivering increased amounts of renewable energy - harnessing market forces actually works
- The RET is achievable - we really can make 20% of electricity come form renewable sources by 2020, and we can keep going to 100% within several decades
- High proportions of renewables are possible - they most certainly are, but only if we expand the RET, not cut or abandon it
- Externalities exist within the existing system that must be considered and accounted for - that's technical talk, but means that everyone has to start paying for the pollution they cause
- There are further benefits of distributed generation that make it particularly worthwhile - we can build a far better system, but not as rapidly as many may hope, so market-based measures such as the RET remain very important
- The RET is still needed - we need successive governments to stay the course and make the changes we need, not change course every time an administration changes
- There would be unintended consequences of reducing the RET - for starters, the faith of a nation would be undermined and major new investment would be discouraged
- Adjusting the RET is unwise due to future uncertainty - uncertainty is dealt with, as long as the RET stays how it is, because small-scale solar PV in particular has huge potential for further expansion
1 Million Women urges this review to recommend the retention of the RET as it currently stands to send a strong message that the Australian Government is committed to stable policy settings for renewable energy.
We submit that there should be no further review of the RET until 2020, and that beyond that time it should be expanded further to an increased target consistent with overseas best practice, in the order of at least 40% renewable energy by 2035 and 100% by 2050.
Yours truly,
Natalie Isaacs
Founder
1 Million Women