Climate Minister Chris Bowen stops short of setting targets for renewables, EVs
The Government won’t set targets for the amount of renewable energy or electric vehicles Australia needs to meet its planned emissions cuts by 2035, despite its independent adviser setting out the levels needed.
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said the advice he released last week from the Climate Change Authority that outlined a pathway to cutting emissions 62-70 per cent only represented the types of things that could be done, not what must happen.
The CCA said in order to achieve the cuts by 2035, half of all cars sold needed to be electric vehicles, wind power needed to quadruple and large-scale solar triple, and renewables should make up more than 90 per cent of the nation’s electricity production.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.But the minister insisted that the only CCA recommendation the Cabinet considered and agreed to was the size of the new emissions reduction target.
“What they then did is in their report to me, quite rightly, is ran through some of the possibilities as to what achieving that might look like,” he told the ABC’s Insiders show on Sunday.
“Those things … they are just simply CCA commentary on the sorts of things that might happen should we meet that target.”
The Government has a target to have 82 per cent renewable power by 2030, but Mr Bowen said the settings beyond that date were subject to a review of the east coast energy market.
He wouldn’t commit to a 2035 target of 90 per cent renewables, as assumed in the CCA modelling, saying, “It could be less, could be more.”
Nor would he commit to setting a target for EVs in the national fleet, preferring instead to rely on the market to switch organically.
“We’ve never had an EV sales target, and we don’t have an EV sales target because we believe in choice,” he said.
“I do note that many manufacturers are withdrawing internal combustion engines in the 2030s. They won’t be available for sale.
“The market will drive a lot of behaviour, but so will our new vehicle efficiency standard.”
