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ID: 150062

Financing alternative energy projects: an examination of challenges and opportunities for local government / Cheung, Grace; Davies, Peter J ; Stefan Trück

Cheung, Grace	Journal Article
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Local government in Australia has a strong collective capacity to reduce GHG emissions through policies, funding allocation to renewable energy projects and the delivery of programs and services. This study examines the institutional capacity of councils in Sydney and how this impacts on decisions to invest in alternative energy projects. We find greenhouse gas emission targets of councils are strongly aligned to national targets but do not reflect the local council's institutional capacity, political leadership or strategic priorities. Energy reduction projects are often identified and undertaken by environmental staff without support from financial staff or financial-evaluation tools. An absence of national guidelines to provide consistency in tracking and reporting limits cross-sector benchmarking. Street lighting contributes to a significant proportion of council's total electricity expenditure and GHG emission profile. Being highly regulated, existing contracts and the current practice of street lighting services limits the councils’ ability to reduce emissions. Based on our analysis we recommend a number of measures to overcome these constraints including the use of financial evaluation tools for small-scale renewable energy projects, a standardised national tracking and reporting platform to facilitate progress-reporting and meaningful comparative analysis between councils and policy reform to the regulation of street lighting.

Key Words

Local Government ; Renewable Energy ; Climate Mitigation Policy ; Investment Decision

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ID: 166972

In the transition of energy systems: what lessons can be learnt from the German achievement? / Cheung, Grace

Cheung, Grace	Journal Article
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This paper assesses the energy transition in Germany from 1990 to 2017 with a focus on the politics and energy policies of the three German Chancellors. Its aim is to investigate the factors underlying the outcomes from a socio-political perspective and through this offer insight as to energy policy reforms that may be transferrable to other governments. We reveal the incremental and politically pivotal role of grassroots movements against nuclear power forming the catalyst and ongoing driver for Germany's energy transition - the Energiewende. Energiewende harbors a compelling socio-technical experiment based on government-led policy-driven structural changes to the energy system that has concurrently supported a heavily industrialized economy. Despite higher energy costs, borne disproportionally by residents, the energy vision and social experiment shared decadal and multi government cross-partisan political and community support. This socio-political policy stability provides a notable point of difference when comparing the energy transitions of lagging nations such as Australia that reveals the criticality of policy certainty to support investment towards new models of clean energy generation and distribution.

Key Words

Renewable Energy ; Energy Transition ; Climate and Energy Policy ; Politics of Climate Change ; Energiewende

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