It is shocking to think that the obvious solutions to our energy policy issues do not seem obvious to our political leaders.

The Australian Industry Group have recently released a report, Energy Shock: No Gas, No Power, No Future?  It makes a great read for anyone who has any influence over energy policy.

Innes Willox has also said that their survey, on which the report was based, added to the weight of evidence that rising energy prices are exposing businesses and may see Australia losing jobs and business activities offshore.

As a renewable energy recruitment business, we can see that renewable energy is part of the solution, and that renewable energy jobs are critical for our future; but they alone cannot compensate for large scale job losses caused by poor energy & climate policy that results in higher energy prices for businesses and the resulting job losses.

Their report has clear policy recommendations:

• More energy efficiency measures and well-designed policies (In fact the IEA identified that 49% of required CO2 reductions could come from energy efficiency measures).

• More renewable energy generation.

• More use of Demand Side Response mechanisms (this is well established in many other countries, we need to catch up).

• More energy storage (the recent announcements by the CEFC are a good start but more needs to be done. There are some great pilot and early commercial stage technologies out there that don’t even appear to be on the radar in Australia).

• Stronger interconnections (making up for past short term decisions is overdue).

• Removal of the blanket bans on CSG gas development but with better regulation (gas is needed for more than just power generation and the debate here is badly skewed).

• Build a gas import terminal (sounds counter-intuitive but the international market is awash with supply).

There are of course other market based issues to be fixed, but this is a good list to start with.

Freshwater Group is a renewable energy recruitment business that focuses on all renewable and low carbon emission, energy efficiency and disruptive clean technology businesses as well as energy infrastructure, storage and management.

Great People Better Outcomes www.freshwater-group.com.au
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