Climate Council report: new investment into renewable energy down by 70%

The Climate Council has reported that new investment into renewable energy projects has dropped by 70%.

The report, Lagging Behind: Australia and the Global Response to Climate Change, reports that, while most countries around the world had accelerated action on climate change over the last five years with China and the United States two of the global leaders on the issue, Australia has “moved from a leader to laggard”.

In addition, the Climate Council said the federal government needed to make its position on renewable energy clear, before Australia lost even more investment in new energy projects.

Earlier this year a government-commissioned review of Australia’s Renewable Energy Target (RET) recommended it be scaled back or wound up. The review also suggested closing the scheme to new companies involved in larger renewable energy projects.

The Climate Council’s Professor Tim Flannery said because of the uncertainty in Australia, investors were going to countries such as China and the United States.

“We are lagging behind the rest of the world [and] this year particularly has seen a big drop.

“We’ve had a loss of 70% of new investment in renewable energy in this country, and when you compare that with the US and China, which are powering ahead - China particularly at record levels - it’s a pretty sorry state of affairs,” he said.

“The big international companies are just looking across the board and saying “there’s a favourable environment here in Texas or there in Europe or China, we’ll put our money there”.

Professor Flannery said the breakdown of bipartisan support had cost Australia a significant number of projects.

“We’ve had five electoral cycles where we’ve had bipartisan support for a policy which has served us very well. The breakdown this year has started to cost us. Unfortunately, that damage, you can’t undo that.

“We’ve started the process of reducing [emissions] but with the abolition of the carbon tax we’ve seen a very large increase in carbon pollution. If it continues for a year, it will wipe out the gains of the last four or five years.

“So I think that if you look across the board there’s a whole series of regional communities where these projects have been permitted and are waiting, but will not be built under current circumstances.”

The Climate Change report said emissions in Australia had been falling since the start of 2012, but the achievements in the electricity sector had effectively been cancelled out since the repeal of the carbon tax in July.

“We’ve had a reduction [in emissions]. In fact, last year we were about 0.8% down, which was our first decrease in many years - at a time when the economy was growing,” Professor Flannery said.

“To put that in context, the US is about 12% down now on where it was during its peak.”

Source: ABC News