Office of the Renewable Energy Regulator Annual Report 2002
Office of the Renewable Energy Regulator, 2002
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Two years down and eighteen to go. It might seem as if we have completed ten percent of our task but in reality only 1.4 million renewable energy certificates (RECs) have been surrendered out of an expected total of over 138 million over the full twenty year life of the legislation. That is only about one percent of the RECs. There is a long way to go.
Yet in terms of achievement I think we, the participants in the scheme, have changed not one percent, and not ten percent, but about one hundred percent in our ability to see a new way for renewable energy in Australia. A vibrant, healthy and competitive market is emerging with differing views appearing from the differing perspectives of market beneficiaries and those who bear the cost. We see amongst others active campaigns for bigger and smaller targets, higher and lower shortfall charges, wider and narrower eligible renewable energy sources. These are all signs that this measure means a significant change in prospects and thinking for the renewable energy industry in Australia. The long term progressive decline in the percentage of renewable energy in power supplies has now been arrested. We are beginning to turn the historic decline into an increase in, not only the amount of renewable energy in electricity supplies, but also the renewable energy market share of the growing electricity market.
Many of you will be aware of the review of the operation of the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 (the Act), as required by Section 162 of the Act. As I write, the review has commenced and I encourage all interested parties and participants to be involved in this review. The review is an independent process and the review team can be contacted through their own web site www.mretreview.gov.au . The review has quite wide terms of reference and will look at most aspects of the operation of the Act.
The second year of operation of the Act has been completed and the first full cycle of accreditation, certificate creation and surrender, and compliance has occurred. All participants are again to be congratulated on their ability to adapt to and adopt this new way of encouraging renewable energy. We see similar national schemes now well established in the United Kingdom(1 April 2002) and just getting underway in Japan (1 April 2003). Will this remain as a hat trick of national renewable energy certificate schemes or will there be another starter on 1 April 2004? We have contacts with all the existing schemes and field regular enquiries from other countries that are showing interest in Australia's experience with market mechanisms.
All our systems have now been well and truly 'live tested' and as many participants will be aware we have been working with you to ensure the systems are understood and progressively refined and improved. We keep in close touch with other similar national schemes, and those State based schemes such as the NSW Benchmark Scheme and the Queensland Gas Energy Certificate Scheme, so that we can draw on the wider and developing pool of expertise around certificate mechanisms. We hope to continue refining our operations over the coming years to ensure the market continues to operate with full integrity, and is as efficient as possible for the participants as well. We welcome your help in this aspiration and note that the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) Review provides an ideal vehicle for current issues and ideas to be raised and discussed.
I would like to congratulate all those participants who have and are actively working to make sure this measure meets its legislated intent and see its full potential continues to be revealed and reached in the coming years. I must thank all participants for providing assistance to the officers of the Office of Renewable Energy Regulator (ORER) throughout the year and making their tasks more readily achievable.
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