Labor to drop renewable energy target in favour of emissions scheme

Labor will abandon the renewable energy target after 2020 because an emissions intensity scheme will be sufficient to reach the goal of 50% renewable energy by 2030, Andrew Leigh has said.

Australia’s shadow assistant treasurer said
renewables accounted for the majority of
new investment in electricity generation
 in the last decade.

On Sky News on Sunday the shadow assistant treasurer firmed the opposition’s plan to reach the 50% goal without a hard target in comments that appeared to rule out extending the existing renewable energy target (RET).

“We’ve committed to getting 50% renewables but the mechanism that we’ve used in the past has been a renewable energy target. That comes to an end and we believe an [emissions intensity scheme] EIS can take us to the point of having 50% renewables ... without the RET,” Leigh said.

Read Paul Karp’s story on The Guardian - “Labor to drop renewable energy target in favour of emissions scheme.”

(Climate change cannot be confronted with an “either or” approach for we, humans, have caused it with an “all guns blazing” approach and only adherence to a similar ideology has any change of mitigating the damage we have caused - Robert McLean)