The decision to stop the Clean Energy Finance Corporation from investing in wind and roof-top solar is just the latest in a line of attack by this Government against renewable energy, writes Greg Jericho.

The Abbott Government may be many things, but a friend of renewable energy is clearly not one of them, and it will take more than Greg Hunt professing his love for it to convince anyone otherwise.

The decision to stop the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) from investing in wind and roof-top solar is just the latest in a line of attack by this Government against renewable energy, and it comes as global temperatures continue to set new records.

The first five months of this year has been the warmest start to any year on record. According to NASA, the average global air and sea temperature from January to May was 0.77C above the mean temperature from 1951 to 1980:

If June to December temperatures just average what occurred over the past five years, then 2015 will break the record for the hottest year. As it is, the 12 months from June last year to May this year was the hottest such period on record.

There is some good news: the past 12 months were not the hottest 12 months on record. The 12 months to March set a new record, which was then broken by the 12 months to April. The 12 months to May were just the third hottest on record.

But if we take a longer-term view, the past 10 years, and the past 20 years to May were both the hottest on record:

If the earth was an athlete you'd be testing it for drugs, because it keeps breaking records so frequently, something unnatural must be affecting its performance.

Which brings us to fossil fuels and renewable energy.

This week it emerged that the deal done between the Government and the cross-benchers last month to provide passage of the renewable energy target would see the CEFC directed to no longer provide loans for wind or roof-top solar projects.

It was peculiar timing for the news given it came a little over a week after the OECD issued a report recommending governments move away from fossil fuel derived energy - namely coal - and to pursue "low-carbon alternatives".

The Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, was not pleased on Sunday with the report in the Fairfax papers by Adam Gartrell that suggested the CEFC decision had "angered" Mr Hunt.

And so on Sunday morning Greg Hunt took to Twitter.

It turned out Hunt was not angry at all with the decision. In fact, he tweeted:

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He followed up by suggesting that far from this occurring behind his back by the Finance Minister Mathias Cormann and the Treasurer Joe Hockey, "this agreement was extensively discussed between and jointly approved by Minister Cormann and myself".

It's not surprising that Hunt would wish to have everyone know that he was part of the decision. Most people would assume that Hunt's role as Environment Minister in this Government of climate change sceptics is to sit quietly in the cabinet room and go out in front of the cameras whenever the Government needs to pretend to look like it cares about climate change.

He's about the only one in the Government who can stand before cameras and say, as he did on Monday, "I love large-scale solar and I love renewable energy", without breaking out in hives.

He may love it, but his actions are hurting it, and he is being very disingenuous while doing so.

He suggested that the decision to force the CEFC to stop investing in wind and roof-top solar, rather than killing the CEFC, was actually returning it to its original purpose.

He told reporters on Monday that the "purpose" of the CEFC was "to support innovative and emerging technology".

He suggested that "I think if you go back to the original debate in parliament, if you go back to the Hansard, there was a focus on emerging and innovative technology".

So let us go back.

Greg Combet was the responsible minister.

But his second reading speech made absolutely no mention of emerging technology and only referred to innovation in a broad sense saying that, "the clean energy future plan, along with the Renewable Energy Target, will cut carbon pollution and drive investment and innovation in clean energy technologies".

He also mentioned innovation in his conclusion when he noted that:

As a part of the clean energy future plan, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation will complement other Australian government policies and programs. This includes the Renewable Energy Target, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), the Clean Technology Investment Program and the Clean Technology Innovation Program.

At this point we should pause and ask if innovation is so important, why did the Abbott Government shut down the Clean Technology Innovation Program?

Despite what Hunt or Chris Berg yesterday might argue, the CEFC was never intended to be only or primarily about investing in emerging or innovative technology other than in the broad sense that all renewable energy involves such technology.

Combet, echoing the legislation's explanatory memoranda, noted that the purpose of the CEFC was to "help mobilise private investment in renewable energy, low-emissions and energy efficiency projects and technologies in this country".

At no stage was the CEFC about funding renewable energy R&D. Indeed, Combet noted "the corporation will apply a commercial filter when making its investment decisions. It will focus on projects and technologies at the later stages of development".

"Later stages of development" is clearly not talking about funding "emerging and innovative technology".

The whole point of investing in such "later stages" projects meant that, as Combet noted, the CEFC would "invest responsibly and manage risk so it is financially self-sufficient and achieves a target rate of return".

The CEFC has been doing this quite well. Its latest annual report notes that it current investment portfolio "is presently expected to earn a return of approximately 7 per cent" a figure double the 3.5 per cent benchmark cost of the Australian Government five-year bond rate.

Hunt, along with Hockey and Cormann are now in essence trying to force the CEFC to achieve that target rate of return by only investing in high risk ventures.

That Hunt is eager to be the front man on this is rather curious as normally one would assume an environment minister would be more willing to push the type of measures proposed by the OECD in its report.

Significantly, the first item in the OECD's report on ways to ensure "better policy alignment for a better climate and better growth" was to "scale up sustainable low-carbon investment and finance".

The report noted that shifting to a low carbon future would "require mobilising of all sources of public and private sector investment and finance, including institutional investors". It suggested that "governments need to use their scarce resources to trigger large-scale private sector investment in activities otherwise unlikely to attract sufficient private funding".

Which is what the CEFC was attempting to do.

But the OECD argued that investment in low-emissions technology would only occur "if the investment landscape is supportive". To achieve this, the OED asserted it is "essential" that there are "coherent climate policies and good framework conditions for investment".

Coherency has been something the Abbott Government has drastically failed to achieve given the ructions to the RET and now these moves to drastically alter the operations of the CEFC.

But while promoting investment though CEFC type activities was important, the OECD also noted that one thing was especially important: "A robust and stable CO2 price signal".

And a stable CO2 price signal is the last thing an Abbott Government will consider. Indeed, if we had a robust and properly set CO2 price, the CEFC would not be needed as the true costs of fossil fuel investments would be reflected in the financial decision making process.

But the climate continues to warm, and the Abbott Government continues to ignore advice, both scientific and economic about the risks of climate change.

Instead it is content to send out Hunt to profess his love for renewable energy. But as the front man for climate change sceptics, Hunt's desperate declaration of his love sounds like a man not so much hoping to convince us that is the case, than to convince himself.

Greg Jericho writes weekly for The Drum. He tweets at @grogsgamut.