Renewable Energy - Energy plan hits turbulence - The Australian

THE Howard Government's policy shift on clean energy has been undermined, with a federal minister launching a blistering attack on wind farms despite the renewable energy industry declaring wind power is vital if the Coalition is to meet its 2020 climate change target. Just one day after John Howard committed the Government to new clean energy targets, Tourism Minister Fran Bailey insisted wind power was largely unsuitable for Australia, saying there was no evidence it was a feasible alternative energy source. The energy industry said wind power would dominate the Government's new clean energy target of 30,000 gigawatt hours by 2020, as most other technologies that meet the threshold of 200kg of greenhouse gas per megawatt hour, such as clean coal or solar, were either not ready or were too expensive to install at a large scale in the next decade. Ms Bailey vowed to campaign against a proposed wind farm near the Victorian town of Smeaton that is being developed by Wind Power - the company behind the contentious Bald Hills wind farm. The energy industry said yesterday that wind power would dominate the Government's new clean energy target of 30,000 gigawatt hours by 2020. read more

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