MELBOURNE, Aug 6, 2018 – Seventy-seven percent of Victorians want Australia to embrace a high renewable energy target, ramping up the pressure on Premier Daniel Andrews to vote against the Turnbull government’s National Energy Guarantee (NEG).The results, from a Reachtel poll commissioned by Greenpeace Australia Pacific, serve as a timely warning to the Victorian leader, who has been under pressure to reject the NEG at next week’s COAG meeting, ahead of the upcoming Victorian election in November.
“Victoria has concrete plans to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 through the VRET, Australia’s only legislated state Renewable Energy Target. But it risks destroying its legacy as a leader in renewables by toying with the destructive idea of passing the NEG,” Greenpeace Australia Pacific Head of Research and Investigations, Nikola Casule, said.
“Australians want lower electricity prices and the way to achieve that is to get more renewables in the energy mix. The Australian people know it and expect governments to act on it.
“If Daniel Andrews ignores more than half of the people he represents, then he will not only be responsible for kneecapping the renewables industry, higher electricity bills and more coal pollution, but he will pay the price at the November election.”
The overwhelming endorsement for an ambitious RET is backed up by a recent Reputex report on the impact of the NEG on wholesale power prices. It concluded that by 2030 wholesale power prices would be 25 percent lower under a more ambitious 45 percent renewable energy target than under the government’s proposed 26 percent emissions reduction target.
The poll also found that more than 76 percent of Victorians believe the best way for the government to ensure low cost reliable electricity supply is to invest in renewables, along with dispatchable storage solutions like batteries: another rebuke of Turnbull’s do-nothing NEG that will cripple the growth of renewables and entrench dirty coal power for decades to come.
In a further worrying sign for Turnbull and the NEG, the poll confirmed that the vast majority of Victorians, 74.5 percent, want renewables to receive more government support than fossil fuels such as coal.
“It is clear that Victorians love renewable energy and want more of it. They want the Andrews government to champion the industry, as this polling clearly shows,” Casule said.
“Daniel Andrews was on the right track with his pro-renewable policies that make sense environmentally and economically. He now risks undermining his own legacy, but worse still, presiding over the crippling of the renewables industry across Australia and delivering the higher power prices and pollution that entails.”
The poll conducted last week surveyed 1,118 residents across Victoria on their views on renewable energy and the NEG, which states will be asked to vote on at next week’s COAG meeting in Sydney.
To see the poll results:
https://www.greenpeace.org.au/research/poll-victorians-want-renewables/
For interviews:
Martin Zavan, Greenpeace Australia Pacific Communications Campaigner
0424 295 422