Opposition leader to dig in behind ETS and goal of sourcing 50% of electricity from renewables by 2030

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, will dig in behind his party’s goal of sourcing 50% of Australia’s electricity from renewables by 2030 and the party’s proposed emissions trading scheme, arguing they are vehicles to drive new investment in clean energy.

Shorten will use a speech at Bloomberg in Sydney on Thursday to hit back against the prime minister’s recent intensification of the energy debate, declaring Malcolm Turnbull, through his partisan attacks, is generating renewed investment uncertainty in the electricity sector and, as a consequence, undermining jobs.

The Labor leader’s intervention comes as a new report from the Climate Council to be released on Thursday finds solar power is now more affordable than new fossil fuel and nuclear power, with costs diving over the last five years.

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The new report says solar costs have dropped 58% in five years and are expected to continue to fall by a further 40-70% by 2040.

A Climate Council member and former president of BP Australasia, Greg Bourne, says Australia is currently undergoing a surge in solar, with more than 20 industrial-scale installations going ahead in Australia during 2017 and another 3,700 megawatts in the pipeline.

Shorten will meanwhile use the speech at Bloomberg to try and hit back after weeks of government bombardment about Labor’s energy and climate policies.

His intervention follows the publication of this week’s Guardian Essential poll, which found that 65% of voters supported Labor’s 50% renewable energy goal.

The new survey underscored broad-based community support in Australia for renewables. It also showed that most people believe recent power blackouts in South Australia are not attributable specifically to a comparatively high share of renewable energy in the state but to failures of the energy market in responding to extreme weather events.

Turnbull has repeatedly branded Labor’s 50% renewable energy goal as reckless and ideological but the policy won strong majority approval from both Labor and Green voters in the latest Essential survey. Coalition voters were also more likely to approve of the policy than disapprove.

The poll suggests the Coalition’s political campaign against Labor’s renewable energy schemes, which has been underway since South Australia was plunged into a statewide blackout last year, hasn’t moved the dial in any significant way. The Essential data suggests attitudes to Labor’s 50% by 2030 policy have changed little since it was unveiled by Shorten in 2015.

Shorten will say on Thursday when it comes to capitalising on jobs in the renewables sector: “Australia has got a dream barrier draw.

“We are the world’s sunniest continent, one of the windiest places on earth and our universities, research centres and firms keep producing leaders in the field.

“But, despite the prize on offer, despite all our natural advantages – we’re not just stuck in the gates, we are going backwards.

“When the Coalition came to office and declared war on the RET scheme, investment in large-scale renewables fell by 88% in one year. After being rated one of the four most attractive destinations in the world for renewable energy investment in 2013, we now don’t even crack the top 10.

“In the last three years, the world has added nearly 3m jobs in renewable energy and Australia has lost 3,000. If the Liberals had just stuck to the old conservative nostrum of first, do no harm, if they’d done nothing but keep pace with the global trend, we would have added 7600 jobs.

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“Instead, at every turn, they have chosen vandalism over pragmatism.”

Shorten will describe the 50% policy – which he struggled to answer questions about last week – as “Labor’s target, our goal, our objective and our aspiration”.

He will argue meeting that target will require more than the existing legislated federal RET scheme – it will require an emissions intensity scheme for the electricity sector to drive private investment in renewable generation and technology; support for research and investments in renewable energy technology; and a plan to modernise the national electricity market by making sure market rules reflect the imperative to reduce pollution.

Shorten will say that approach will deliver cheaper, cleaner and more reliable power. He will argue a trading scheme for the electricity sector will drive investment not only in renewables but in gas.

“Because gas produces roughly half the pollution generated by burning coal – an EIS will inevitably make gas a more attractive investment.”