Feed-in Tariffs in Australia - Proposed Federal Gross Feed-in Tariff Scheme

Proposed Federal Gross Feed-in Tariff Scheme

The Federal Parliament has not yet enacted a national gross feed-in tariff scheme for renewable energy. However, a capital grant/rebate was offered of up to $8,000 per household for domestic installations and 50% for school installations up until June 2009.

In July 2008, a bill was introduced by Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne, (Tasmania), called the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment (Feed-In Tariff) Bill 2008. The bill is the subject of an inquiry by the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts.

More than 23,000 people have signed an online petition for a national gross feed-in tariff.

In a speech, the Federal Minister for Energy, Martin Ferguson, said that feed-in tariffs are technologically prescriptive and ideologically based, rather than being a market based mechanism. In response to the German feed-in tariff for solar, he suggested that Germany's solar subsidy meant German consumers paid more than €1 billion in additional power bills in 2007 to generate around 0.5% of Germany’s gross electricity consumption, suggesting that the policy does not deliver value for money. He also suggested that an Australian solar feed-in tariff may lead to greater PV panel imports rather than a significant expansion of Australian production. However commentators have suggested that Martin Ferguson's comments are ideologically driven and do not take into account the Merit Order Effect which in some instance negates or almost negates the cost of funding FiTs and in other instances shows funding FiTs delivers a net dividend to consumers.

Read more about this topic:  Feed-in Tariffs In Australia

Famous quotes containing the words proposed, federal, gross, tariff and/or scheme:

    It has been proposed that the town should adopt for its coat of arms a field verdant, with the Concord circling nine times round.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    There are always those who are willing to surrender local self-government and turn over their affairs to some national authority in exchange for a payment of money out of the Federal Treasury. Whenever they find some abuse needs correction in their neighborhood, instead of applying the remedy themselves they seek to have a tribunal sent on from Washington to discharge their duties for them, regardless of the fact that in accepting such supervision they are bartering away their freedom.
    Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)

    I am haunted by interrupted acts,
    introspective as a leper, enchanted
    by a repulsive clew,
    a gross and fugitive movement of the limbs.
    Is this the love that shook the lights to flame?
    Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)

    After so many historical illustrations of the evil effects of abandoning the policy of protection for that of a revenue tariff, we are again confronted by the suggestion that the principle of protection shall be eliminated from our tariff legislation. Have we not had enough of such experiments?
    Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)

    Television programming for children need not be saccharine or insipid in order to give to violence its proper balance in the scheme of things.... But as an endless diet for the sake of excitement and sensation in stories whose plots are vehicles for killing and torture and little more, it is not healthy for young children. Unfamiliar as yet with the full story of human response, they are being misled when they are offered perversion before they have fully learned what is sound.
    Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)