Looks like the renewable energy fund will be announced in perth!...

Looks like the renewable energy fund will be announced in perth!

And Fergusson obviously needs to suggest a nice alternative to home solar systems. You'd have to say we are in with a very good shot at hosting the announcement out at Rous Head, even if there is no grant on the table just yet.

I wont get my hopes up for a grant until my mobile beeps with an ETrade "trading halt" sms!


Let's not pick renewable energy winners, says Ferguson

SOLAR feed-in tariffs inflate power costs and crowd out potentially cheaper forms of renewable energy, according to Energy Minister Martin Ferguson, contradicting Rudd government support for nationally consistent feed-in tariffs and criticising schemes already legislated by most state governments.

Launching the Government's $435 million renewable energy demonstration fund in Perth today, Mr Ferguson will say feed-in tariffs are an inferior way to promote renewable energy and Australia should instead use only its mandatory renewable energy target.

"As a government, we cannot predict which renewable energy technology will best deliver the economic and environmental outcomes we desire throughout the coming decades, and nor at this stage should we try," he will say. "It is too early to be picking winners."

In comments that will anger environmentalists, Mr Ferguson will say a solar feed-in tariff, which pays households for generating energy from solar cells on their roofs, artificially prices solar power 300 or 400per cent higher than other renewables and potentially pushes cheaper renewables out of the market.

He said German consumers had paid E1billion ($1.9billion) more on their power bills in a single year to cover the costs of their solar feed-in tariff.

"That is the price of picking winners," he will say.

Mr Ferguson will argue Australia should use a renewable energy target to make sure consumers get the cheapest possible green power.

The Rudd Government supported nationally consistent solar feed-in tariffs at the last election and has agreed to national rules for solar feed-ins with state governments, most of which have already legislated solar feed-ins that will operate alongside the federal Government's renewable energy target.

Queensland, Victoria and South Australia have embraced net feed-in tariffs, where households are paid only for electricity fed back into the grid. Western Australia and the ACT have announced German-style gross schemes, where households are paid for all the energy they generate.