Renewable Energy Targets essential in achieving a lower carbon Australia

"Renewable energy will be an essential part of Australia's energy future if we are to reduce our impact on climate change", said Pacific Hydro CEO, Rob Grant as he welcomed today's release of the COAG Working Group on Climate Change and Water's expanded National Renewable Energy (RET) options paper.

"The Stationary Energy sector makes up over 50 per cent of Australia's carbon emissions. A 20 per cent RET will drive significant and immediate investment in zero emission energy generation, make significant inroads into our carbon emissions and build industry capacity to ensure we can deliver even greater levels of greenhouse abatement into the future."

Investment in new renewable energy projects is expected to exceed $20 billion across the industry under the expanded National RET target. Pacific Hydro alone is expecting to invest in excess of $2 billion over the next few years in new clean energy capacity, with a number of projects waiting to be deployed immediately under a new target.

"Due to the lack of policy drivers in Australia much of Pacific Hydro's investment in recent years has been in overseas markets", added Mr Grant. "As an Australian company we are looking forward to increasing our investment into Australian renewable energy, an industry which creates thousands of jobs and significant opportunities for regional communities."

While the legislative amendments to the existing National RET policy are yet to be made, the release of the COAG Working Group's options paper is another positive sign that the Federal Government intends to follow through on one of its key election commitments.

"Business confidence in renewable energy policy is essential for us and the electricity industry before making significant investment decisions.

We welcome the RET options paper and encourage the Federal Government to make the necessary amendments to the National RET legislation so that we can commence and deploy new projects as quickly as possible."

Pacific Hydro is an Australian owned company with over 150MW of operating wind assets in Australia, a number of small hydros and interests in geothermal energy.