Slush fund scheme now so useless that government no longer publishes results
SYDNEYSIDERS have been paying almost $3 billion into a green energy slush fund that funded a solar bonus scheme and a seawall study but has so far cut the country’s emissions by little more than 1 per cent.
NSW
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SYDNEY households have been paying at least $100 every year into a green tax that has so far cut the state’s emissions by less than 1 per cent over a decade.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal the $3 billion scheme, funded through a tax on household water and energy bills, has become so useless the government has even stopped publicly reporting how much impact it is having on total emissions.
It has also been broadened — dubbed by the department as making it more “holistic” — so that the money it generates can be used elsewhere.
Yet the Berejiklian government is still ripping hundreds of dollars from families through rising power bills every year for the ludicrous vow that eventually the NSW Climate Change Fund will make the state achieve “net-zero emissions” by 2050.
Environment Minister Gabrielle Upton will collect $289 million in contributions for the scheme from NSW’s 2.7 million households this year, bringing its total revenue to $2.9 billion since it was launched in 2007.
However, the last year it reported how much total emissions were cut was in 2013-14. It was 906,369 tonnes.
Every year NSW is responsible for about 130 million tonnes of carbon dioxide gases and nationally, Australia last year released 533.7Mt.
In its 11 years of operation the fund, which says its goal is to “increase public awareness and acceptance of the importance of climate change”, has publicly reported cutting 6.38 million tonnes of greenhouse gases.
The slush fund, which has another three decades to meet its target, has been used to train retail staff to educate the public about energy and water efficiency, do a Parramatta River seawall audit, fund a Dubbo council project to increase tree canopy in the town’s CBD, as well as stage talks on solar energy.
The same green tax was used to fund the solar bonus scheme to the tune of $1.24 billion between its start in 2010 and its closure at the end of 2016.
In fact in the 2016-17 financial year the Climate Change Fund was forced to set aside $94.7 million to reimburse homeowners who signed up to the plan to encourage the uptake of renewable energy.
It has also spent over $500,000 setting up a study hub at the University of Sydney to research “human health and social impacts of climate change in NSW”.
The research unit, run by public health nutritionist Dr Sinead Boylan, proclaims “climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century”.
Utility companies will deliver the $289 million this year to the NSW Climate Change Fund, including $135.6 million from Ausgrid, $86 million from Endeavour Energy, $59 million from Essential Energy and $3 million from Sydney Water.
Ms Upton defended the fund, saying “it’s making a real impact on the environment” and “delivering real benefits to the families of NSW, especially in Western Sydney and regional NSW”.
“There are programs that deliver savings of up to $500 a household,” Ms Upton said. “That sounds like a good deal to me.”
But when asked why the government stopped reporting on its emission reduction totals after 2014-15, a department spokesman said it was because “the purpose of the Climate Change Fund became more holistic”.
While an Office of Environment and Heritage spokesman said “no more than 25 per cent of the Climate Change Fund levy is paid by households” he could not explain how the government policed this rule on utilities, saying: “They are complying.”
“Office of Environment and Heritage estimates the average household will contribute about $23 towards the Climate Change Fund in 2018-19 and slightly less in coming years,” he said.
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Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party MP Robert Borsak, who has pushed the government to invest in a modern “HELE” coal-fired power station in NSW, said the climate fund should be scrapped.
“If green power is so efficient it should stand on its own economic feet,” he said.
Australia emits just 1.5 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases.