In 2001 Australia introduced the world's first mandatory renewable energy scheme, under which new renewable energy generators earned a credit for each megawatt-hour of renewable energy created, and retailers of electric power were obliged to purchase and surrender to the regulator a number of these credits, according to a prescribed percentage of their electric power sales in each year, from 2001 to 2020.
In recent years there have been calls for the federal scheme's percentage to be increased, and several states have announced their own schemes to be introduced if the federal scheme is not expanded.
The Federal Government has today released an exposure draft of legislation to implement increase the federal renewable energy target (RET) to 20%of energy production, and extend the scheme to 2031.
The bill amends the thresholds described in the legislation to a new scale which peaks at 45,000 GWh of renewable energy in 2020 (was 9500 GWh), falling back to 23,000 GWh by 2030.
Included in the legislation is authority to permit the regulations to prescribe a multiplier of up to 5 times for small generation units such as domestic solar PV installations.
The draft bill proposes a 5x multiplier for the financial years 2009-2012, 4x for 2012-2013, 3x for 2013-2014, and 2x for 2014-2015.
The draft bill refers to "small generation units" generally, although the press release refers to domestic solar PV installations. The draft bill enables the regulations to cap the multiplier at a maximum of 1.5KW output.
That is, if the bill and regulations are implemented, domestic solar PV installations installed in 2009-2012 will earn 5 RECs per MWh of generation capability, rather than the usual 1 REC per MWh.
The exposure draft legislation is available here.
Comments (to the Department of Climate Change) close Friday 13 February 2009.
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