Labor to launch huge RET

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From Fairfax:

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is set to unveil a bold climate policy goal requiring half of Australia’s large-scale energy production to be generated using renewable sources within 15 years.

Fairfax Media has learnt that despite Labor’s humiliating 2013 election defeat caused in part by voter contempt for its carbon tax, Mr Shorten will use this weekend’s ALP national conference in Melbourne to announce the even more ambitious goal, dramatically beefing up Labor’s renewable energy target.

…The new target for baseload energy represents a more-than-doubling of the green sector in just over a decade.

It would slash domestic coal consumption while simultaneously improving Australia’s overall emissions performance and allowing Labor t to introduce a significantly milder starting carbon price for its yet-to-be-outlined emissions trading scheme.

This is a big shift from Labor’s previous position of 40% renewables by 2050. Decarbonsiation is inevitable and this approach ought to be cheaper for households than the Government’s “Direct Action” program given it will ensure an energy glut during the implementation phase of the policy and will not burden the Budget through huge giveaways to polluters.

However, it is far from the best and cheapest option which is simply to have a carbon price, scrap the RET, and let the market sort out winners and losers, helping boost energy sector productivity that has been nothing short of disastrous for years.

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But that path seems now to be the third rail of Australian politics. At least this way some form of carbon trading will be possible to help smooth the economic transition.

Having said that, investing into this extraordinary push and pull political environment is not the for the faint of heart!

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.