Director of Energy Criticizes Australia’s Renewable Plan for Lack of Funding Source for Billions.
According to University of Melbourne professor Michael Brear, the current net zero plan is a work in progress and lacks details on how to achieve the transition.
An energy expert has highlighted that Australia’s net zero plan does not address funding sources for additional investments in renewable energy.
During a recent inquiry hearing, Professor Michael Brear from the University of Melbourne and director of the Melbourne Energy Institute expressed concerns about the lack of important details in the country’s net zero plan.
“The Commonwealth net zero plan is still a work in progress,” he informed a parliamentary committee. “The plan has not outlined how it will secure the hundreds to thousands of billions of additional investments required.”
The professor also pointed out that the plan does not clarify how Australia will identify the necessary technologies and innovations to carry out the net zero transition.
“This includes determining the need for controversial or non-policy permitted technologies, assessing the required workforce skills and locations, and establishing the planning process oversight by governments, communities, and industry,” he said.
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To address the immense challenge of the energy transition in the upcoming decades, Brear emphasized the need for Australia to excel in planning and implementing an integrated national-scale energy system.
Current Energy System Challenges
Brear elaborated that Australia’s current energy system, formulated during the competition reforms of the 90s, is incompatible with present-day developments.
“The existing institutional and governance arrangements were built on a highly prescriptive rule set for a market system with slow reform processes,” he explained. “These settings were not designed to accommodate the rapid changes in technology and the growing emphasis on emissions reduction.”
He noted that when these settings were established, climate change considerations were not as significant as they are now. The surge in technology costs and emissions reduction priorities have strained the current governance arrangements.
Brear highlighted that this strain has resulted in increased interventions from state and federal governments in the energy market since the black system event in South Australia in 2016.
Consequently, the professor stressed the need for updates in governance arrangements to align with the current realities of the energy system and regain faith in the energy settings.
