Proposed changes to the RET to reserve part of the target for emerging technologies, which have been proposed by the Coalition, risks further delay to the legislation designed to deliver 20 per cent of Australia's electricity from renewable sources by 2020, said CEC Chief Executive Matthew Warren.

“The biggest challenge for most emerging technologies is accessing capital to develop their technology. You won’t be able to take a carve out to a bank to raise finance if your technology is still unproven,” said Mr Warren.

Mr Warren said that these technologies need a suite of targeted measures such as tax reform, grants, research and development schemes, and skills and training programs to find out what they can do as quickly as possible. He said that these messages should be additional to the RET, not as part of it or instead of it, given the uncertainty surrounding the development timeframes, cost and scale of emerging technologies.

Mr Warren said the carve-outs (a portion of the RET reserved for emerging clean energy technologies) proposed by the Coalition will slow the deployment of already proven renewable energy, make the scheme more expensive and will need to be constantly micro-managed by government bureaucrats for the next decade, without providing any help to the technologies it is trying to assist.

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Along with protection measures for trade exposed emissions intensive industry, Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull proposed amendments to the RET that he says will make sure that there is “room” in the RET for emerging clean energies such as geothermal, base load solar, tidal, and wave energy.

In favour of the carve-outs, the newly formed Australian Emerging Renewable Energy Technology Alliance (AERETA), whose members include the Australian Geothermal Energy Association (AGEA), WWF, the Australian and New Zealand Solar Energy Society and Oceanlinx, is urging for the Opposition’s proposed changes to be made.

The AERETA has said that the RET’s current design encourages an over build of technologies which cannot provide the kind of peak and base load energy needed to switch Australia to a low carbon economy.

“If the Australian Parliament fails to make amendments to the RET, technologies such as geothermal, wave and solar concentrator will be set back by years,” said AGEA Chief Executive Susan Jeanes.

The RET legislation has been passed in the house is now being debated in the Senate.