No ill winds blowing for renewables spending in budget
The federal climate minister responded to speculation of budget cuts to clean energy policies by likening it to cutting funding from health and education.
Chris Bowen dismissed reports of cuts to new clean energy funding in the federal budget in May.
“You could also say there won’t be any major new funding for hospitals or schools,” he said on the sidelines of Sydney Climate Action Week on Monday.
It is said that tax discounts on electric cars will also end.
He said the waiver of fringe benefits for electric vehicle leases was undergoing a long-planned review and described much of the budget speculation as “wrong.”
Asked about potential savings from the home battery programme, which has recently received a budget boost and adjustments have been made to prevent households from buying oversized systems, he argued the subsidy was “extraordinarily popular”.
Australia’s potential as a climate technology center was also evaluated at the event by David Hochschild, chairman of the California Energy Commission.
Promoting the Australian pilot of the California project, which is credited with attracting nearly $500 million in investment to the US state, Mr Hochschild said AusTestBed should help more Australian ideas reach commercial reality.
The trial, which would ideally attract federal support to expand, would eliminate the cost of testing promising technology on laboratory equipment and give startups hard data they can take to investors.
“You might have an entrepreneur with a great idea, but they don’t have the resources,” Mr Hochschild told AAP.
“You end up leaving a lot of good ideas aside.”
Mr. Hochschild said his country’s clean energy and climate agenda had taken a hit but had not stalled under the Trump administration.
He likened the Republican government led by Donald Trump to a “political COVID-19” pandemic.
“It really hit all of us hard,” he said.
“But at the same time, just like with COVID, we will get through this.”
The reality was also catching up with management grappling with the massive energy needs of a rapidly growing data center industry.
Solar power and batteries are being built much faster than fossil-fuel plants, Mr. Hochschild said.
“You want to build a new natural gas power plant in the United States? That’s seven years.”
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