In big green push, Australia thinks too small on solar  

Reuters has an article on Australia's remarkably tentative attitude towards solar power - In big green push, Australia thinks too small on solar (via New Energy News).

At first glance, a new day seems to be dawning for the overshadowed solar sector in Australia, the world's sunniest continent.

The government is pushing through a carbon trading scheme that will penalise big greenhouse gas emitters; a major piece of renewables legislation is due for approval within months, setting a target of 20 percent green energy by 2020.

But supporters say these shiny targets may be undermined by policymakers who think too small -- limiting the most generous rebates for renewables to the first 1,500 watts of capacity, or about half the minimum of the 3,000-5,000 watts used by the average Australian home.

"The limit of something like 5 KW would have been a really useful driver," said Muriel Watt, chair of the Australian Photovoltaic Association. "But the limit being 1.5 KW, it's not going to drive the large systems we'd like to see."

Australia draws just about 5 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, mostly hydropower and wind. Solar power comprises less than one percent.

The Clean Energy Council, Australia's main clean-tech body, has urged the government to raise to 200 KW the limit for renewable energy installations eligible for generous rebates.

Instead, say campaigners, Australia needs to adopt a nationwide feed-in tariff structure that would allow users to generate revenue by selling excess power back to the grid.

Such "feed-in" tariffs in Germany, for example, led to the country's solar power installations increasing 11-fold since it introduced a generous gross feed-in tariff eight years ago.

China and Japan are also ramping up solar investment, with China last month announcing a subsidy of 20 yuan ($2.93) per watt peak for large solar projects. Japan offers a further $200 million subsidy to boost home solar panel usage for the year from April 1 after a $90 million outlay from January to March. ...

Solar, though, remains costly compared with wind power, and particularly with coal, which generates 80 percent of Australia's energy, making it one of the most coal-reliant nations in the world.

"That's one of the hardest things for us to compete against. There's a real inadequacy of government programmes and inconsistencies but whatever they do it's still competing against cheap brown coal," said Simon Troman, vice-president of the Australian and New Zealand Solar Energy Society.

He said coal-fired power generators had long enjoyed subsidies from taxpayers, with for example, transmission lines linking power stations being built for free.

The coal lobby -- together with other carbon-intensive export-oriented industries such as mining -- also wields tremendous political influence, not only because of the higher costs but for fear of unstable electricity supplies in a country that regularly faces sporadic shortages.

"Everyone knows perfectly well what's holding things back," said renewable energy policy expert Mark Diesendorf of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

"It's a group called the greenhouse mafia. It consists of the coal industry, oil, aluminium, iron and steel, cement and motor vehicle makers," he told Reuters.