feed in tariff extended to fuel cells...?

Came across this news article.

If true am surprised that now formal announcement has taken place as this sets in place the needed tariff for Blue Gen to work in Australia. Is it because the liberals are not in power yet?

GREEN DEALS: State of play
Published 7:45 AM, 25 Nov 2010
Updated 10:57 AM, 25 Nov 2010
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Developers of emerging energy technologies are taking renewed interest in the Victorian state election after the Liberal Party unveiled its renewable and low emissions policy document this week, promising to extend tariffs to fuel cell and other low emission sources, change the tariff from a net system to a gross system, and to reward those that can feed in to the grid at peak times and from regional areas with higher rates. Other features of the proposal include cash payments for energy fed into the grid rather than credits, and for extending the tariffs to businesses, farms, community organisations and even vacant land.

The Liberals also propose a doubling of the Energy Technology Innovation Strategy grants to $82 million, removing regulatory barriers to co-generation and tri-generation plants (it notes the progress of Sydney City in this regard), and a promise to match the Labor target of 5 per cent solar energy component by 2020. However, the Liberals continue their dislike of wind farms, promising to impose 2km barriers and restrictions to large corridors of land.

One group that is particularly pleased with this prospect is Ceramic Fuel Cells, which has long railed against the lack of tariff assistance for its stand-alone fuel cells. CEO Brendan Gow said the Liberal policy promises were ?spot on? and good news for distributed generation. At the moment, if a normal house exports power from a BlueGen to the grid, there is no requirement for the energy retailers to pay them for that power. ?We don?t think that makes much sense, or recognises the social benefits of highly efficient distributed generation,? said chairman Jeff Harding.

?Without a feed-in tariff, our sales are likely to be constrained to commercial buildings or other high energy users, unless we can persuade the retailers to extend a feed-in tariff to all customers,? Harding said. ?A feed-in tariff is not to be confused with a subsidy ? it is merely paying us for what we have saved the supplier having to generate themselves. A feed-in tariff will get us into the volume residential market ? and deliver very high carbon savings as a very valuable bonus."

Regards
Andy