It was reported last week that the Australian Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency announced support for household solar installations will begin to be phased out a year earlier than previously planned, in recognition of "significant reductions" in the cost of solar panels.
However, while Energy Matters CEO Jeremy Rich acknowledges that the price of solar power equipment has come down, he says there is still some way to go to make it truly competitive with fossil fuel based generation. He adds that the solar industry is expecting to be heavily impacted by the change to Solar Credits.
"While at least this time around there's been notice of the change instead of the midnight tonight type rebate-change deadlines we've seen in the past; this doesn't bode well for the industry, green jobs, households wanting to reduce emissions and avoid looming electricity hikes; nor does it bode well for the environment," he comments.
"For example, everyone is still hurting from the slashing of the New South Wales feed in tariff just over a month ago; to the point some in the industry have already laid off staff. Add this extra gutting of solar rebates from next July and it's another nail in the coffin for a bright future for home solar power in that state. It certainly won't help improve uptake in other states either."
He goes on to say that reducing subsidies before a carbon price is introduced will dramatically set the industry back.
Meanwhile, according to Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage Greg Hunt: "This confirmation of solar chaos demonstrates again a pattern of environmental disaster under Labor."
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.