Communities making renewable power work for them

The federal election campaign has highlighted the very different visions of Australia’s renewable energy future held by the major parties. The Coalition government supports the present Renewable Energy Target (RET) of 33,000 gigawatt-hours from large-scale projects in 2020, which it negotiated with the Labor opposition in 2015.

It’s expected to deliver just over a 23% contribution of renewables to the Australian electricity sector in 2020. There is, most likely, only one more federal election before then.

For the longer term, the Coalition proposes no change to this target before 2030 which, given future demand growth, might well see renewables' contribution to Australian electricity supply actually fall.

By comparison, Labor has a target of 50% renewable electricity by 2030 and the Greens a 90% target. Complicating the situation further are the ambitious targets of some state and territory governments.

Read the story on The Conversation by a PhD Candidate from the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Science at the University of NSW, Franziska Mey, and the Co-director for the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets, also at the UNSW, Iain MacGill - “Power to the people: how communities can help meet our renewable energy goals.”