InterGen slams Australian Energy Council’s net-zero emissions target

The peak body representing power companies has drawn scathing internal criticism for backing a net zero emissions target.

 

Internal dissent has shaken the peak body representing the ­nation’s biggest power companies, with InterGen labelling its ­decision to endorse a 2050 net zero emissions target a “partisan” decision.

Brent Guthner, the managing director of InterGen — which supplies about 15 per cent of Queensland’s electricity — warned the decision by the Australian Energy Council would “most definitely antagonise the federal government, especially the Prime Minister and Energy Minister”.

In an email sent to council chief executive Sarah McNamara, Mr Guthner accused the body — of which InterGen is a member — of working at loggerheads with the government and warned it would “isolate” the sector from key decisions, including on the new Technology Investment Roadmap aimed at reducing emissions.

“It is surely the remit of the AEC to work with rather than against government to enable sensible, achievable and successful technology decisions to be made about 2030 never mind 2050?” Mr Guthner wrote.

“It is not good enough to give as a reason others want this net-zero 2050 (target); nor that officials and MPs support it. Some do but many don’t.

“Officials are far from united in supporting a net-zero 2050 policy and certainly neither is Cabinet nor the Coalition Party Room. It is not happening. Even the Labor Opposition is cautiously resisting policy positions so far out from 2020. “I believe it would be partisan to take such a path rather than (taking) a sensible dispassionate view.”

InterGen Australia operates the Callide C coal-fired power plant in Biloela in central Queensland and the Millmerran coal-fired station to the southwest of Toowoomba.

But the energy council on Thursday defended its decision, declaring that its support for net zero by 2050 was a “consensus position” reached after an ­extended period of consultation with its members.

Ms McNamara said support for the target was not limited to the energy sector, with the goal of ­attracting increasing support from Australian businesses and their advocates, such as the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group.

“The AEC’s view is that agreement on a long-term target is the starting point for development of a constructive plan to consensus,” she said. “Settling on an economy-wide target will let us decide the best pathways to achieve it, and which policies and mechanisms would most efficiently apply.”

Ms McNamara said the announcement on Thursday was consistent with the council’s very long-held view that there needs to be well-designed, market-based, and, ideally, bipartisan national policy settings around which their members can invest.

On Wednesday, Anthony ­Albanese ruled out including emission reduction targets in his proposal for a “bipartisan” energy policy as he revealed Labor would go to the next election arguing for more ambitious climate change action than the Coalition.

The Opposition Leader said his proposal to “move past partisan approaches” on energy policy and embrace the government’s technology road map — released in May — would not extend to Labor accepting the government’s 2030 Paris targets to lower emissions by 26-28 per cent of 2005 levels.

Instead he wants the government to work with Labor to create an energy policy “framework” that could be scalable to different targets — declaring the mechanism did not need to be a market-based solution involving a carbon price or emissions trading.

In his letter to Ms McNamara, Mr Gunther said that “a public embrace of net-zero 2050 is … not something I would support and I would be making this clear to the government and media”.

A spokesman for Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the Morrison government believed the pathway to meaningful impacts on global emissions was through the deployment of new technologies, not taxes. He flagged that the government’s technology roadmap would play an important role in reducing emissions and creating new jobs.