Energy efficiency good (but no more Pink Batts disasters); Electricity Tax bad

08/10/10

The Coalition supports energy efficiency as a form of Direct Action to clean up our emissions and to improve Australia’s productivity.

There can however be good or bad energy efficiency programs. The Pink Batts and Green Loans programs were much-trumpeted energy efficiency programs which collapsed into disasters.

The last time the Labor Government ran an energy efficiency program it was called The Energy Efficient Homes Program. Australians remember it as the failed as disastrous Insulation Program.

That program was cobbled together and signed-off by Labor’s Kitchen Cabinet-of-Four that included Julia Gillard. Labor promised it would cut emissions by 50 million tonnes:

Overall, it is estimated that these new measures could result in the abatement of 4.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2-e) per year from the end of the program, and total abatement of 49.4 Mt CO2-e by 2020 (Swan ‘fact sheet’)

Add that to the broken promise of the carbon tax and the Citizens’ Assembly.

The Coalition will support good energy efficiency programs and oppose bad programs. An example of a good program is the NSW GGAS scheme (now called the Energy Savings Scheme) which was designed by Frontier Economics who helped with the Coalition’s Direct Action Program.

We will work with the Government in response to the Task Group on Energy Efficiency Report, so long as it is not a Trojan Horse for increasing power prices.

We will not, by contrast, be dragooned into the Electricity Tax Committee. There are better ways than doubling electricity prices for pensioners to clean up Australia’s emissions.

The test for Julia Gillard is to state if she supports a massive electricity tax on pensioners, seniors, low income families, farmers and small businesses.

Although she may try to hide behind the term carbon tax or carbon price, the purpose, the meaning, the effect of that phrase is a doubling of electricity prices.

In short: energy efficiency good, electricity tax hike, bad.