What could possibly go wrong? According to badly done, ambiguous surveys, everyone in Australia “loves” green energy, and believes in climate change. But according to actual payments, hardly anyone wants to cough up any cash for it, (unless the government is waving a big stick). Poor Greenpower appears to have gotten its business advice from the ABC, or the CSIRO.

How much of the Australian grid is voluntarily green? Would that be 28% (our target for 2030)? Nope. It’s not even five percent. Instead a mere one electron in every 200 is voluntarily “green”. It’s a pathetic half a percent.

All Australians are free to pay an extra 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt to get their energy “green” from GreenPower. But even at the height of the 2008 -Gore-Rudd era only 1% of all the electricity was bought up by green consumers willing to voluntarily pay more for “clean” energy. Since then, though the volunteers have left in droves.

But I’m sure the Greens are happy. They always wanted a free market solution.

Speaking of free markets, I say let’s have more. How about we allow people the choice to buy dirty energy too.  I want pure coal fired electrons delivered direct, and I’m willing to pay for it. 😉  (How does 10 cents per KWhr sound? )

Climate change fatigue, cost hits renewable GreenPower scheme

The Australian

A scheme under which people volunteer to pay more for renewable energy is losing customers and sales as the price of a green conscience rises dramatically.

GreenPower, a scheme run by state governments in which people and businesses pay more for their power to buy non-fossil-fuel electricity, has been hit by up to a 40 per cent increase in cost as retailers pass on the rising price of large-scale renewable energy certificates.

Retailers have increased their prices for GreenPower, ranging from 5.23c to 6.6c per kWh.

The scheme has gone from more than 900,000 customers in 2008 who bought about 1 per cent of total generation to just over 500,000 who bought just 0.6 per cent of all the electricity generated in 2013.  Since, sales have dropped a further 21 per cent.

 Some will say that the massive uptake of solar panels is voluntary green power, but without the government payments forced from taxpayers, how many solar panels would have been “voluntarily” bought?

In this case, a UTS researcher doesn’t even see any difference between paying more, or taking more:

A report by UTS’s Institute of Sustainable Futures for the NSW Department of Resources and Energy — which administers the scheme on behalf of all the states — said the rise in roof- top solar panels had contributed to the demise of GreenPower. “It seems that once customers have ‘done their bit’ by paying for solar PV, they no longer see the need to pay extra for GreenPower.”

People aren’t getting solar to “do their bit”. They choose solar because the government was paying them too. Or more accurately, they choose solar because it’s the only way out of paying exorbitant electricity prices in a market managed by bureucrats.

UPDATE:  42% of US adults don’t want to pay even $12 a year to stop climate change