Don't dump the solar industry with Solar Bonus Scheme

Saturday, 07 May 2011 07:45

The NSW Solar Bonus Scheme is not a major cause of power price rises, the NSW Solar Summit was told yesterday - and any changes should be treated with great caution, said Total Environment Centre (which attended the Summit) today.

"It was clear that dismantling of the feed-in tarrif under the scheme won't stop power prices rising rapidly and that more stop-start programs will severely harm the solar panel industry, which should be an important part of our power supply.  Just because solar is the new kid on the block does not mean we should ignore the real causes which include absurd levels of spending to service peak power demand and weak energy efficiency policies," said Jeff Angel, Director of the Centre.

"While we support the NSW government's summit approach and intention to develop a long term plan over the next 2 months, we oppose knee-jerk reactions.  Rather any changes should merge with the longer term plan.  If you withdraw one level of support you want to know that the industry is also maturing and there are longer term drivers in place to keep it growing.  There's evidence this can occur but the Summit did not examine them in any detail."

"I would encourage the government to be cognisant of this and not rely on the short term thinking of Treasury officials who have irresponsibly driven up power prices through directions to electricity utilities and raided the Climate Change Fund to pay for the solar bonus scheme, when all the community is benefiting from the surge of private investment in solar energy through reduced carbon costs and infrastructure expenditures."

"If we took this penny pinching attitude to every new emerging industry and withdrew support when (often) vested interests criticised it, then we would still be in the dark ages.  You have to give a new industry the chance to mature and become mainstream and solar can certainly become that," Mr Angel said.