Banding will create suboptimal policy and not deliver

Australia's leading renewable energy company, Pacific Hydro holds one of Australia's largest geothermal exploration licences, sitting on the most extensive hot water reserves in Australia (the Great Artesian Basin in South Australia) has today rejected the need to set aside part of the Renewable Energy Target (RET), commonly known as banding, for technologies such as geothermal.

"We believe the current design of the RET legislation, its size and length, is enough to see this technology deployed over the longer term", said Pacific Hydro Chief Executive Officer, Rob Grant. "Banding is not required and only further delays this essential policy."

South Australia's potential for conventional geothermal power is well regarded with estimates suggesting that the resource could provide around 25% of the east coast of Australia's energy demand.

While the stop start nature of climate policy in Australia over the past ten years has not provided the incentive to bring conventional geothermal power to market, the RET will require a trebling of renewable energy in Australia and will necessitate significant investment in all renewable technologies.

"The most critical factor in deploying new renewable projects, including geothermal, is to establish a long-term market and investment certainty", said Mr Grant.

"There are issues of far greater importance that impact the commercial viability of developing these projects that will not be addressed by setting aside a portion of the RET. This proposed amendment will create a suboptimal policy that will not pull geothermal through any faster."

Adding, "There is no reason to further delay the RET legislation for a new amendment which is simply not required and will not deliver what its proponents are seeking."

Pacific Hydro's proposed 400MW geothermal project will provide significant new base load power generation into the National Electricity Market at the later stages of the RET's life independent of any banding.