Australian Large-Scale Renewables Spending 1-6/13 - $1.3 Billion; 1-6/14 - $58 Million [View all]

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Concern that Australia will dismantle the target is unsettling an industry that has brought in A$20 billion ($19 billion) since the country first set goals for clean energy in 2001. Abbott’s administration is working to limit electricity bills and has tilted Australia away from wind and solar power and toward the fossil fuels blamed for global warming.

“The reported intentions of Mr. Abbott amount to economic vandalism, pandering to the climate skeptic minority and represents a total misread of community aspirations,” said Miles George, managing director of Sydney-based Infigen Energy, which has stakes in 24 wind farms in Australia and the U.S.

Abbott named Dick Warburton in February to lead a review of the renewable energy policy and answer whether the nation should maintain targets for the technology. The former board member of the Reserve Bank of Australia told the Australian newspaper when he was appointed that he is a “skeptic that man-made carbon dioxide is creating global warming.”

Australia’s spending on large-scale renewable energy projects fell to A$58 million in the six months through June from almost A$1.3 billion a year earlier, said Kobad Bhavnagri, head of research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Sydney.

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