Planets Align as Dick Warburton – RET Slayer – appointed to head RET Review

NOT Dick Warburton?#%!%*

“Apoplexy”: informal, extreme anger: the decision has aroused apoplexy among greentard bloggers.

In the week just gone, greentard bloggers, wind weasels and their parasites have gone into meltdown over the Head Boy’s decision to appoint 4 business and energy market experts to head up the long awaited RET review.

In charge will be Dick Warburton – former Reserve Bank board member and all-round friend of business and industry:

Dick Warburton – RET Slayer – out to save Australia from economic ruin.

Dick will be joined by Matt Zema, the chief executive of the Australian Energy Market Operator:

Matt Zema – keen to get Australia running on gas.

Brian Fisher, the former executive director of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics:

Brian Fisher – can’t stand giant fans.

And Shirley In’t Veld, the former chief executive of Verve Energy in Western Australia:

Shirley In’t Veld – sees the RET as an unnecessary market distortion.

None of the members of the panel have any time for intermittent, unreliable and insanely expensive wind power.  It’s no wonder then that the wind industry and its parasites have reacted in apoplexy – and have been reduced to screaming “climate change denier” at the RET review panel – as if it were some kind of hex that might help them protect the most heavily subsidised rort on the planet.

Here’s The Australian on the beginning of the end for wind power in Australia.

RET reviewer Dick Warburton: I’m not a climate sceptic
The Australian
Sid Maher
18 February 2014

BUSINESS groups have called for dramatic changes to the Renewable Energy Target after the federal government announced a review of the scheme that will focus on its size and impact on electricity prices.

As electricity demand falls, the review opens the way for the possible reduction of the mandated target of 41,000 gigawatts an hour of renewable energy by 2020. As the Minerals Council of Australia and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry called for the RET to be phased out, the solar industry warned that the review would create uncertainty and abolishing the RET would put 8000 jobs in jeopardy.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt and Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane named businessman and former Reserve Bank board member Dick Warburton as the head of the review panel.

Environment groups attacked Mr Warburton as a climate change “sceptic”.

Mr Warburton told The Australian last night he was not a climate change sceptic.

“I am not a denier of climate change,” he said. “I am a sceptic that man-made carbon dioxide is creating global warming.”

He said with that in mind the RET review was broader than this and he would bring an open mind to the economic issues surrounding the costs and benefits of renewable energy.

Mr Warburton was an adviser to the Coalition on direct action and a strong critic of the carbon tax, predicting it would cost jobs. He led Manufacturing Australia, a lobby group that opposed the introduction of the carbon tax.

During the first Rudd government Mr Warburton was appointed by then climate change minister Penny Wong to head its emissions-intensive trade-exposed industry review.

The RET review will be run from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and report in the middle of the year. It will focus on “the economic, environmental and social impacts of the RET scheme, in particular the impacts on electricity prices, energy markets, the renewable energy sector and Australian households”.

Government sources said last night that was no predetermined outcome for the review.

However, in light of the falling demand for electricity over the past few years, there will be a strong push to reduce the 41,000GW/h target for renewable energy towards a “true” 20 per cent with the 41,000GW/h target pushed back to be achieved over a longer time frame. This would lower the impact of renewables on electricity prices and safeguard existing investments.

Tony Abbott said the review would focus on the impact of renewable energy on electricity prices. “Just as the carbon tax is massively boosting power prices, the renewable energy targets are also having an impact on prices — not as great, but still not insignificant,” the Prime Minister said.

“What this government wants to do is bear down on prices. Now, we have got to do it in ways which respect the decision that companies and individuals have made in good faith.

“We cannot do anything that would add to impressions of sovereign risk that the former government created for our country. Nevertheless, we do need to do everything that is reasonably within our power … to bring power prices down.”

Other members of the panel are: Matt Zema, the chief executive of the Australian Energy Market Operator; Brian Fisher, the former executive director of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics; and Shirley In’t Veld, the former chief executive of Verve Energy in Western Australia.

Opposition climate change spokesman Mark Butler said the review would demonstrate the RET had been a policy success.

“Previous reviews of the Renewable Energy Target have shown the policy is delivering clean energy such as solar and wind, while providing thousands of jobs and significant investment across Australia,” Mr Butler said.

“Renewable energy accounts for just 4 per cent of the average electricity bill and this is expected to fall to 3 per cent through 2014.”

Australian Solar Council chief executive John Grimes said he was concerned nothing had been taken off the table in the review and declared it would create massive uncertainty.

He said the solar PV industry employed about 18,000 people and 8000 jobs could the jeopardised if the RET were abolished.

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry acting chief economist Burchell Wilson said the consumer subsidy propping up inefficient renewable generators far exceeded the support received by the car industry.

“The direct cost of the RET was $1.6 billion across the economy in 2012,” he said. “It’s completely incongruous that no one bats an eyelid at industry support when it’s directed towards notionally green industries.”

Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Brendan Pearson said the RET, the carbon tax and a range of other energy policy interventions at the federal and state government level were imposing steadily higher electricity costs on households and businesses.

“No other country has adopted such a unilateral assault on its comparative advantage,” Mr Pearson said. “These policy mistakes can be reversed by urgently repealing the carbon tax and phasing out the Renewable Energy Target — a $20bn subsidy to the renewable energy sector to 2020, a cost that is borne by householders and industry.”

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said circumstances had changed markedly since the current RET target was set at 20 per cent of projected electricity demand by 2020.

“In particular, projections of demand have fallen so that the legislated target is now well in excess of the 20 per cent of projected demand,” Mr Willox said.

Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott said the review should be comprehensive and consider the cost of abatement under the scheme and independent expert advice from bodies such as the Australian Energy Market Commission and the Productivity Commission.

Clean Energy Council chief executive David Green said the industry welcomed the review, which could now decisively demonstrate the scheme’s low cost and massive benefits and debunk critics’ “misleading” claims.
The Australian

The Clean Energy Council should be careful about what it wishes for. The ONLY misleading claims that will be debunked are those tossed up by Muppets like the CEC’s Dave Green.

In our recent post on the ridiculous Ceres project – approved by SA Labor for SA’s agricultural Heartland on the Yorke Peninsula – we looked at the obscene subsidies that are drawn by wind farm operators under the mandatory RET and tacked on to all electrical consumers power bills (see our post here).

The wind industry and its parasites are unable to point to any significant and lasting employment generated by Australia’s hugely expensive wind-rush.

And, worse, these scammers are unable to provide any proof that wind power is in fact reducing CO2 emissions in the electricity sector (see our post here).

In other words, the wind industry is all cost and no benefit.  But – with Dick Warburton heading the charge to scrap the RET – STT thinks that their glory days are over.

With Dick Warburton in charge – it looks like it’s last drinks boys.