Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott seems determined to press his state back decades on environmental policy . In his latest scheme , Abbott has order Australia ’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation to stop investing in wind and low - scale solar energy .
The mandate come up after Abbott tried and failed ( twice ) to altercate the CEFC , a unripe banking concern that lends money to promising green energy initiatives . And it could interfere with the ontogeny of an entire energy manufacture , expert sources tellNew ScientistandThe Guardian .
This is but the latest in a seemingly endless string of attacks on fair energy initiatives and environmental rule since the select rector ’s button-down Liberal Party make headway a landslide election in 2013 . After assume office , Abbott cursorily moved to dismantle Australia ’s limited carbon reducing system , lower the land ’s renewable Department of Energy prey , and disband a climate advisory soundbox . In September of 2014 , Abbottwas notably absentfrom a UN climate summit that included more than 120 world leader .
Australia is one of the world ’s big per capita C emitters , but it ’s also a global leader on modest - weighing machine solar : Roughly15 percentof Australian households have set up solar PV , compared with 0.5 per centum of households in the United States . In parts of Brisbane and Adelaide , house solar rates exceed 50 percent . It ’s a shame that Abbott seems driven to abbreviate off such a bright energy market at the knee , but that ’s just what his recent actions could do , asSamantha Hepburnfrom Deakin University in Melbourne distinguish New Scientist :
“ If you connect the acid , it looks like interfering , block up and trying to obturate the flourishment of the wind [ and solar ] industry , ” she says . “ He ’s using regulation and impose restrictions to try and interfere with the procession of the diligence . ”
TheCEFCis currently draw profits on the money it bring to immature energy initiative . bewilderingly , in the same breath that Abbott consecrate the group to cut off wind and solar , the prime pastor is now mandating that the green bank increase its profits . These clearly contradictory directives seem design for no purpose other than to set the corporation up for failure .
Last calendar month Abbott call winding turbine “ visually awful ” and raise concerns about their likely wellness impacts . Meanwhile , his treasurer Joe Hockey has called them “ utterly nauseating . ”Heavily subsidized new ember plantson the other manus ? Beautiful .
[ New Scientist ]
Top image viagermanborrillo / Flickr
australiaClimateEnergy policyGreen get-up-and-go
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