Office of the Renewable Energy Regulator Annual Report 2004
Office of the Renewable Energy Regulator, 2005
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About the document
Year four of the operation of the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 has had yet another very full agenda. Not only have we seen the results of the statutory review of the Act and the Government's statement on the implementation of that review, but also we have seen the total number of RECs created exceed 10 million and targets being met even more completely by REC surrender as opposed to paying of penalty charges.
The year opened with the release of the MRET Review report Renewable Opportunities on 16 January 2004. The report covered the review of the operation of the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 conducted in 2003 in accordance with section 162 of the Act.
On 15 June 2004 coinciding with the release of the Government's energy policy white paper – Securing Australia's Energy Future – a statement was made on the MRET Review. The statement indicated the measure would continue to operate and some improvements would be introduced to increase operational and administrative efficiency.
The improvements included publication of baselines, encouragements to create all RECs in the registry within a limited time of generation, publication of more statistical data on eligibility and liability matters, clarification of eligibility of some forms of biomass, changes to deeming arrangements for photovoltaic small generation units and solar water heaters, the addition of a ‘provisional accreditation' and limiting the time for accreditation processes.
As a contributor to the review, I would like to thank all those industry and government businesses and individuals who also contributed to the review process, enabling it to be a well informed report. Consequently the process has lead to recommendations that should improve the operation of the Act for all participants. We are looking forward to implementing the changes when the empowering Act and Regulations are amended.
Over ten million RECs were validly created by participants in MRET to the end of 2004, against a cumulative surrender target to the end of 2004 of 5.8 million. While this might at first sight imply a surplus of RECs the measure is still early in its sequence of targets and by 2020 about fourteen times that number of RECs will be needed to stay on track. Or to put it another way, we are only about 7% of the way to the 2020 cumulative target and about 93% of the required RECs have yet to be created.
In terms of performance against the liability requirements of the Act, 99.95% of compliance was by REC surrender in 2003. For 2003 a total shortfall of about 790 RECs was recorded from 4 liable parties. This high level of REC surrender rather than payment of penalty charges is of course beneficial to the renewable energy industry market as it provides maximised demand for RECs and hence the greatest incentives to develop renewable energy projects.
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