ATA members joined over 200 concerned residents, industry groups and environmental organisations on the steps of Parliament yesterday, to protest the state government’s proposed new feed-in tariff law.

Damien Moyse, ATA’s Energy Policy Manager, said the government has completely missed the point of having a feed-in tariff for solar power.

“A feed-in tariff is the most effective mechanism for driving large-scale uptake of solar power, under the government’s proposed scheme Victoria will only see a very limited increase in the uptake of solar power.”

“The government’s solar policy is no where near strong enough to deliver the amount for solar power we need to get installation costs down over time. The government has completely missed the point of what a feed-in tariff can deliver.”

The rally called on the Liberal party, Greens and Nationals to improve the bill when it goes to the upper house next month, to ensure rapid large-scale uptake of solar panels in Victoria.

Mike Harris  from the ATA said the solar industry is growing rapidly and has huge potential to grow more.

“In Germany, where they have a decent feed-in tariff, there is more than 50,000 people employed in the industry.”

“If we had the right feed-in tariff we could be growing at the same kind of rate.”

Mr Moyse said Victoria needs a strong gross metered feed-in tariff that pays small-scale energy producers for all the clean energy they contribute to Victoria’s power supply.

“We need the tariff to apply to more than just households. We need community organisations, small businesses and farming enterprises to be included so we can get a wide take-up of solar power and distributed energy generation across the state.”

Under the Victorian government’s scheme, solar homes will see none of the 60cent per kilowatt hour owed to them and instead the payment will be in the form of a credit on their electricity bill, that will be cancelled out every 12 months.

“The government’s decision to cancel any remaining credit at the end of each year will leave solar homes either having to forgo their credits, or deliberately increase their energy use,” says Mr Moyse.

The government also plans to exclude solar systems larger than 3.2kW from receiving the tariff.

Media enquiries: Bojun Chiswell  T  (03) 9631 5409 E bojun@ata.org.au

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 5:12 pm and is filed under Feed-in Tariffs, Media Releases, News, ebulletins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.