Shorten announces new energy policies at energy summit

A QUARTER of Australian households could receive a cash surge under Labor’s plan to encourage people to sell power back to the grid.

Tanya Plibersek, Chris Bowen, Energy spokesman Mark Butler and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten in Question Time in the House of Representatives. Picture: Kym Smith

• Bill Shorten backs Dr Alan Finkel’s clean-energy target

A QUARTER of Australian households could receive a cash surge under Labor’s plan to encourage people to sell power back to the grid.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will also announce on Monday that Labor wants make the Eyre Peninsula one of a series of renewable energy zones which would “plant a flag for investors”.

At an energy summit in Sydney, Mr Shorten will lay out a series of principles which will be used to shape the party’s power policy.

But the specifics on how the ideas would work are yet to be nutted out.

“Twenty years ago, no-one spoke about households selling power back to the grid — today, nearly one-in-four households could be doing just that,” Mr Shorten said.

H said Labor would also reduce the rate of return a clean energy project needed to access a Government loan.

“Labor will free up the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to invest in more generation and more storage,” Mr Shorten said.

Solar panel owners could sell electricity back to the grid under Labor’s plan. Picture: Lucy Hughes Jones/AAP

“Under Labor, the return benchmark for the CEFC was set at the weighted average of the Australian Government bond rate.

“Setting the return benchmark too high defeats the driving purpose of the CEFC and it holds back the crucial investment Australia needs — right now — in new generation and storage.”

Mr Shorten also called for an end to “schoolyard insults” — clearly taking issue with Government MPs labelling him “blackout Bill”.

He said the political bickering that had led to record power prices, high levels of pollution and a looming shortfall in generation.

“That’s why, a bit over four months ago, before the Chief Scientist released his report, I wrote to the Prime Minister offering an olive branch,” he said.

“I said Labor was prepared to move from our preferred position of an Emissions Intensity Scheme and negotiate a fair-dinkum Clean Energy Target. I made that offer in good faith, and that offer still stands.”

The Australian Energy Market Commission has investigated how to create a market for households to sell surplus energy from rooftop solar panels or batteries to whoever would pay the most for it and was reviewing the steps that needed to be taken to encourage it.

Mr Shorten last week copped criticism for not directly answering questions about whether Labor had costed its commitment to 50 per cent renewables.

“We’ll provide our evidence well before the next election,” Mr Shorten said on 2GB.

The Liberal Opposition in Victoria will on Monday announce a plan for landowners to receive a share of the royalties associated with conventional gas drilling on their property.

The SA Government already provides landowners who allow gas exploration 10 per cent of the royalties from any government profits.