Australia’s electricity grid reached a 19 per cent share of renewable energy in the year to June 30, and with a host of new wind and solar capacity to be added in the next two years will meet its 2030 target for emissions in the electricity sector nine years early.

The latest analysis from The Australia Institute, in its regular energy market audit, is just the latest in a string of reports that highlight how ineffective the Coalition government’s emissions target are.

The TAI suggests that the NEG will inspire just a 4 per cent cut in emissions between 2020 and 2030, but in effect this will all be met in the first year or two because of the wave of current investment.

After that, the emissions component of the NEG will be all but useless, because it will already be met. That will make it a ready partner with the reliability obligation, because that will not be triggered – according to the Energy Security Board – because there is no impending reliability issue.

As an argument of progress over business as usual, the NEG looks fairly hopeless. Indeed, many argue that it is worse than nothing because of the potential barriers erected by its sheer complexity, and possibly by the push within the Coalition to build one, and possibly three, new coal-fired generators.

“On current policy settings, the 26% target will be achieved in 2021-22,” the report author Hugh Saddler says.

“It begs the question of ‘what next’? Are we really going to see no emissions reduction from the electricity sector for almost a decade? Unless we adopt more ambitious targets the renewable industry will enter another period of great uncertainty.”

Saddler, like so many others such as Green Energy Markets and Reputex, argues that the NEG could and “must” do much more. He notes that if Queensland meets its renewable energy target of 50 per cent by 2030, the country’s electricity sector emissions would have fallen 36 per cent by 2030.

The problem is that the Coalition government’s failure to aim for a higher target – because of unrest in the Coalition ranks – passes up an opportunity for cheap abatement in electricity, thanks to the plunging cost of wind and solar, and imposes unneccessary and heavy costs on other industries.

“In the absence of stronger emission reduction targets, the currently booming wind and solar generator construction industry is at risk of completely collapsing after 2021,” the report says. (Although RE would add that the corporate and state markets may take up some slack).