The Smart Energy Council on Tuesday opened its Queensland Smart Energy Summit with a pointed attack at the state’s LNP government, accusing it of having a deliberate strategy to kill large scale renewables, and protect the fossil fuel industry.
The Queensland state LNP has not sought to hide its distaste for green energy, despite insisting it has a “neutral stance”, and has trashed the state renewable energy targets, invested $1.8 billion to delay coal plant closures by up to nearly two decades, and more recently dumped the mandate for electric buses and put out a call for 630 diesel ones.
“The overall strategy of the LNP government is clear,” SEC chief executive David McElrea said in his opening speech at Tuesday’s summit in Brisbane.
“Remove targets, erase closure dates, protect coal, make renewable investment harder and let the project pipeline thin – then point to the shortage you created as proof renewables cannot do the job. That is a self-fulfilling strategy to make renewable energy uninvestable. It is ideology, not economics or engineering.”
The SEC sent out invitations to the government ministers – the premier, the energy minister and the environmental minister – to attend the summit and all three declined. Renew Economy understands that the Clean Energy Council, which holds its state energy summit on Wednesday, also saw its invitations to ministers rejected.
