Clean Energy Council rises to the challenge

The Clean Energy Council’s (CEC) inaugural Clean Energy Week event and recent changes to state solar incentives have sent the caffeine levels of many staff members well into the red zone over the last few months.

CEC Executive Matthew Warren said the diverse membership of the organisation meant that staff were busily working on a wide range of projects.

“With more than 500 members from across the industry, the Clean Energy Council has a lot of ground to cover every week,” he said.

Recently solar power has occupied a lot of resources at the CEC. Solar has been spectacularly successful over the last 18 months in Australia, with more systems installed over this period than for the rest of the decade combined. Recent statistics show that Australians from all walks of life are embracing the technology.

“The Federal Government announced it was dropping the Solar Credits multiplier to three rather than four as of July, and many of the state feed-in tariff schemes have been scaled back recently,” Mr Warren said.

“The CEC has been regularly meeting with state governments and solar companies across the country to advocate for solutions that will keep everyone in work and protect jobs.

“It’s a challenging period for everyone and CEC staff are committed to getting the best result for the industry.”

Add to this the Senate inquiry into rural wind farms, the debate over carbon pricing, work on support for emerging renewable energy technologies, Global Wind Day and more, and it’s not surprising there aren’t too many spare moments in the average day.

AuSES campaign for solar

The Australian Solar Energy Society (AuSES) has launched a National Campaign to save the solar industry.

While NSW is the first state to feel the effects of a complete wind-back of solar support, AuSES believes that this is fast becoming a national trend.

Building on the success of the NSW campaign, the next phase is a National Campaign, which will have an immediate impact on the entire Australian solar community.

The launch to the National Campaign was the National Solar Industry Summit, convened by AuSES and Solar Energy Industry Association, held in Sydney on Tuesday, 21 June.

AuSES’ achievements to date:

  • Restored community and industry confidence in the solar sector by removing the sovereign risk that retrospective legislation represented
  • Restored investor confidence in every major solar project in Australia
  • Restored the public’s confidence in government legislated feed-in tariffs in every jurisdiction in Australia
  • Secured an extra 40,000 installations in NSW (representing gross margin to our industry of over $40 million).

The Sustainable Energy Association of Australia

Since its incorporation in July, 2002 the Sustainable Energy Association of Australia (SEA) – formerly the Western Australian Sustainable Energy Association Inc. (WA SEA) – has worked to support and promote the growth of the sustainable energy industry across Australia.

With over 400 members, SEA is one of Australia’s largest energy chambers. One of SEA’s core responsibilities is to promote the development of sustainable energy across all sectors of Australia’s economy, in all regions of Australia.

As a business chamber, membership is open to all enterprises wanting to support action on climate change through the deployment of sustainable energy solutions either as suppliers or as customers.

An update on several SEA projects:

  • Green Vehicle Fleet day 16 September 2011 – to be run in partnership with all SEA members, open to all manufacturers of both passenger and commercial vehicles, and fleet managers
  • ENERGISING SEA EXPO 2012 – a sustainable energy extravaganza, which will run from 28–31 March 2012 in Perth
  • Facilitating a bid for 2012 to create a Sustainable Electric Transport Co-operative Research Centre, encompassing transport infrastructure in both urban and regional settings and inclusive of both private and public transport, as well as commercial, industrial and mining applications
  • Energising Kids – to support the Australian Model Solar Boat and Car Challenge in October this year, Energising Kids is a hands-on science competition engaging primary and secondary schools in a project involving renewable energy and energy efficiency developing their science and engineering skills to explore how to create, use and conserve energy
  • The Association also continues its value chain research and mapping of barriers and opportunities in clean tech manufacturing and production throughout 2011, conducted through partnership with the Clean Energy Innovation Centre, a part of the Federal Government’s program.