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30 June, 2008
ICEM affiliate Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) of Australia is demanding that the federal government stick to pledges made by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on renewable energy targets last year during his Labour Party campaign.
The demand comes as Federal Treasury and Productivity Commission officials move to sideline the government’s promise to supply 20% of the country’s energy from renewable sources by the year 2020 in favour of emissions trading schemes.
In a letter to Sen. Penny Wong, the Labour Government’s Minister for Climate Change and Water, CFMEU Mining and Energy President Tony Maher urged the government to implement policies that will stimulate low-emission energy technologies. And to do that, the CFMEU believes, is not to abandon the Minimum Renewable Energy Target.
CFMEU's Tony Maher
“What the Australian government does with its renewable energy target policy will affect the future resilience of the Australian economy in a low carbon future,” wrote Maher. “If we remove the renewable target, it will result in a substitution of gas for wind power and other forms of renewable energy. While that will result in a lowering of our average emissions, it does not help to prepare the economy and the energy supply industry for the medium to long term.
“The current 20% by 2020 policy needs to be further defined to ensure that the emerging technologies of geo-thermal and solar thermal are strategically cultivated, rather than placing all eggs in the basket of wind power.”
The CFMEU is seeking a government commitment to get at least three power plants that operate with carbon capture and storage methods by 2020. The costs of such start-ups might be high, but in the long term, as more such plants come on line and other renewable sources take hold, costs will decrease.
The CFMEU is in alliance with the Australian Coal Association, the WWF, and the Climate Institute in urging the government to stimulate investment for operable carbon capture and storage plants. CFMEU is certain that charges related to emissions trading schemes will not come close to equalling the investment needed for the new technologies related to carbon capture. It is that fear, and others, which threaten the reaching of Minimum Renewable Energy Targets.
CFMEU also believes reliance on emissions trading schemes, followed by an inevitable “dash for gas,” will mean gas-fired generation will eventually have to be fitted with carbon capture and storage technologies.
As Maher concluded in his letter to Climate Change Minister Wong, “We would be off to a bad start if the economic rationalists that have so long delayed action on climate change had their way and swept aside a good Labour Government policy on renewable energy.”