Australia Overhauls Troubled Renewable Energy Incentives. By Rob Taylor, Reuters, February 26, 2010. "Australia moved to help unlock billions of dollars in stalled wind and solar energy projects on Friday, with the government reshaping a troubled scheme requiring 20% of energy to come from renewable sources by 2020. The government will split its clean energy scheme to separate the household market from large renewable project investments, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said on Friday, in a move business said would drive investment in clean energy. 'These changes are expected to deliver more renewable energy than the original 20% target and will ensure we build the clean energy future Australia needs,' Wong said."
"Australia, one of the largest per-capita emitters of greenhouse gases, last year introduced a scheme to lower reliance on coal-fired electricity and set a target 45,000 gigawatt hours of clean power, or 20% of energy, over the next decade. The scheme required major energy companies to buy tradeable Renewable Energy Certificates, or RECs. The market for these in turn would help the financial viability of around A$22 billion ($19.5 billion) worth of planned wind farms and other large-scale renewable energy projects. But the value of RECs has plummeted because the government used the scheme to reward households that installed solar hot water panels and heat pumps, flooding the market with cheap certificates and reducing their worth to large-scale projects... The scheme failed to support a single major project in the six months since it was passed by parliament, prompting calls for the 20 percent to apply to large-scale plants only. The government's solution is to split the programme into the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES) and the Large-scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET). These would go into effect from Jan 1, 2011."
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