THE Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) came out this week calling for the Renewable Energy Target to be abolished, arguing it has cost producers millions of dollars in electricity prices – but not everyone agrees.
VFF president Peter Tuohey said the RET was unsustainable because it meant everyone was paying more for electricity to subsidise things such as solar power stations and wind farms.
He said VFF analysis had shown horticulture, dairy, chicken meat, egg and pig producers were shelling out up to 10 per cent more for electricity as a result of these charges.
“The RET is a high cost approach to reducing emissions, given it simply focuses on electricity generation, not efficiency,” Mr Tuohey said.
But the Victorian Wind Alliance - a community-based, non-profit organisation that promotes clean, wind energy - has slammed VFF’s comments.
Andrew Bray, who is the group’s national coordinator, said he was disappointed to see the VFF was calling on the Federal Government for the RET to be abolished.
He said a number of farmers, who were also VFF members, were looking forward to seeing the RET contributing to building wind farms in their area.
“They are advocating directly against the interests of their members,” he said.
As evidence of their analysis about the RET causing dearer power bills, the VFF published a bill (date August 2012) on social media.
On the bill the added charges, including the Small Scale Renewable Energy Scheme, the Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target and the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target, equated to an extra cost of $1304.
But Mr Bray said one power bill did amount to satisfactory evidence.
“I think for a number of rural areas, and for hundreds of farming families across the State, new wind farm projects are the brightest light on the horizon,” he said.
More than 100 farmers wrote to the RET Review in support of the RET because of the drought-proof income it brought onto farms and the economic activity it supplied to rural businesses, Mr Bray added.
“It’s puzzling that the VFF would choose to ignore the benefits to farmers that flow from wind farms and line up behind the polluting power plants instead,” he said.
Don Kosch, who runs a mixed farming operation at Dundonnell, near Mortlake, was also shocked to learn the VFF was pushing for the RET to be abolished.
He is a VFF member and says getting rid of the RET will place uncertainty on the future of a local wind farm project.
The producer is currently going through the process of having turbines built on his farm, which will provide him with a significant financial boon.
“I think renewable energy isn’t the whole answer, but it is part of the answer and we should be using all forms of power,” he said.
“And for those people lucky enough to have wind turbines on their farm, it’s a great bonus.”
He said coal power was not an infinite resource, and it would eventually dry up, so the Government needed to seriously look at alternatives.
Graeme Purches is the community relations manager for Trust Power - the company behind the Dundonnell wind farm project.
He says if the RET was overturned, it would decimate the renewable energy sector.
“The issue is in the political arena and we don’t want to get involved in Australian politics, but overturning the RET would be not be in the best interest of Australians,” Mr Purches said.
Bit if the RET was eradicated, he was also confident something else would replace it.
“We’ve got a long term view though, and our projects will get built in the long term,” he said.
Mr Purches said he found it “fascinating” that the VFF, who represented one of the sectors that were most at risk from climate change, were pushing to eliminate the RET – simply on the basis of an additional cost.
But Gippsland dairy farmer Lindsay Anderson disagrees, and said RET should go.
He is an advocate for renewable energy, after having installed about four five-kilowatt solar arrays when higher feed-in tariffs were on offer in 2011.
Today the system supplies power for the farm and Mr Anderson also received money back for feeding power back into the grid.
A premium payback of 60 cents was locked in until 2025.
“I was lucky, because I saw the opportunity set this up, but not everyone was able to do this,” he said.
Mr Anderson says the RET has failed to do its job as far as agricultural businesses were concerned.
“It is taking money from us to fund other green projects that have no link to us - and farmers can’t tap into to the funding that is being generated…the Government paper surrounding it is horrendous,” he added.
“I think we should be considering alternatives to the RET and asking ourselves - is there something else we can do?”
He said one of the biggest issues with RET the cross-subsidisation.
“I probably sit on both sides of the fence because targets are necessary, but it has to be funded and all industries need access to those funds,” he said.
“In Germany, they offer rebates for doing energy storage. They know if they fund this sort of storage it will become economical and take-off…people will invest.”
He said this scheme was set up so each industry received funding for the money they put in, so it was fairly distributed.
“This is something our Government could look at,” he said.
