A complex clock of acronyms
If a clock can't keep accurate time, it is pointless describing how its cog wheels mesh together
As the Australia Institute rightly points out: “ If a clock can't keep accurate time, it is pointless describing how its cog wheels mesh together”.
That’s their way of describing the complex structure created around the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) and its inability to measure the amount of renewable energy being produced around the country.
The former Howard government introduced the MRET, which requires electricity retailers to “ source a growing quantity of their electricity from renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar and biomass”.
Under Rudd, the target for this ‘growing quantity’ is the nice round number of 20 per cent, by 2020. So, like any well-thought-out scheme, with a nice round-number target, you would think there is an even nicer system to measure just how much green power is being produced. Think again.
Enter Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). These tradable, almost imaginary permits, where one megawatt of power generated by a renewable source is worth one REC, form the basis of the MRET.
And, as the independent public policy research centre, The Australia Institute point out, RECs are administered through another body, called the Office of the Renewable Regulator (ORER), and based upon a wordy 137 pages of specific legislation with a further 56 pages dedicated to regulations. Yet the ORER website surprisingly fails to clearly show any increase in renewable energy generation.
“The ORER provides abundant data but there is no information on the actual electricity output from new renewables.”
The report also states: “ [The] MRET has been heralded as a success, yet data to evaluate that claim accurately do not exist. The ORER provides a mass of administrative data but it is not enough to learn that all the boxes are being ticked and all the regulatory requirements are being met.”
And it goes on to declare: “We need to know how much renewable energy is being produced....The implications for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), which will be an order of magnitude more complex than the MRET, are obvious.”
‘Obvious’, is an understatement. As the list of acronyms grow let’s just hope the government can get its complex clock to actually show the ‘time’. For it’s time we are running short on.
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- What Rudd and Wong should take to Copenhagen
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