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ARENA to get $1.4 billion as Coalition channels funds to CCS, hydrogen and pubs (excerpt): RenewEconomyThe federal Coalition government has finally decided to extending the funding for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, but will – as predicted – push both ARENA and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation away from wind and solar into other “low emission” technologies, including carbon capture and storage.
ARENA and CEFC have played critical roles in advancing Australian renewable, storage and other critical enabling technologies since their creation in 2012, and despite repeated attempts by the Coalition government to dismantle them, and severe cuts to ARENA’s original budget.
ARENA – which is now nearly exhausted of
funds, and had its board recently stacked with Coalition favourites – is
to be given “guaranteed baseline funding” of $1.427 billion over the
next 10 years, and will be given extra allocations in the annual budget.
For 2020/21, that will amount to $191 million.
This is part of a $1.9 billion package to the two green funds that will include money for CCS, a regional hydrogen hub, along with many of the project identified by a group led by former Origin Energy CEO Grant King, and even some money for pubs to upgrade their refrigeration systems.
The government
will change the mandates of both ARENA and the CEFC so they can more or
less follow the government’s Technology Roadmap which is to be finalised
in the next couple of weeks, and which looks at technologies beyond
wind and solar, including gas, hydrogen and CCS.
The push to
broaden the mandate into “low emissions” technologies will require
parliamentary approval – rejected by the Senate when the Coalition first
tried to scrap the bodies – and comes just days after the unveiling of a
major gas package, and the government’s extraordinary ultimatum to build a 1GW gas plant in the Hunter Valley.
Go to Renew Economy's complete article by Giles Parkinson
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