With a growing clamour of voices warning about the disincentives for renewables embodied in Australia's National Energy Guarantee (NEG), a new poll shows most Aussies want clean power to play a greater role in the country’s energy mix and say they should be used as the sole guarantee of lower electricity prices.
The poll, conducted by ReachTEL for Greenpeace Australia Pacific, suggests 70% of respondents want an ambitious renewable energy target, and more than 67% agree renewable energy should receive more government support than fossil fuels.
Those figures do not align with the policy settings of the NEG, which envisage only a 2% increase in renewable energy's share in the national electricity market over the next decade.
Although the NEG is said to offer a promise of AU$150 (US$111) of savings per year, it is not clear how this is calculated, due to a lack of modeling information in the final design of the NEG, released by the Energy Security Board last week.
According to the poll, Australians have no doubt investment in renewables would pay off. Some 66.7% of respondents agree the best way for the government to ensure low cost reliable electricity supply is to invest in renewables, along with dispatchable storage solutions such as batteries.
Solar remains a safe haven in terms of energy costs, think 78% of the people polled, who believe installing rooftop PV is an effective way of reducing electricity bills.
“It is clear that Australians love renewable energy and want more of it,” says Nikola Casule, Greenpeace Australia's Pacific Head of Research and Investigations. “They want government to champion the industry, as this polling clearly shows. Unfortunately, [Australian Prime Minister Malcolm] Turnbull’s NEG goes against both market realities and the desire of the Australian people – why attempt to strangle such a popular technology?”
ReachTel conducted the phone poll among 3,999 Australian households on the evening of July 30.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
2 comments
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.