Turnbull Drops Abbott Strategy On Renewable Energy, Preps $1 Billion Fund

It’s been known for a while that Malcolm Turnbull personally was never on the same page as Tony Abbott when it comes to issues of climate change, renewable energy and conservation. Abbott was always more of a slash-and-burn-and-we’ll-sort-it-out-later type, whereas Turnbull backed Labor’s emissions trading scheme plans while he was Opposition Leader.
And yet Turnbull has constantly given in to the conservatives in the party, who have no interest in doing anything about renewable energy. To secure his position, he’s done basically nothing on the issue since he ousted Abbott.
But he’s made his first major contrary move now, with the revelation that he and Environment Minister Greg Hunt will announce a $1 billion clean energy investment fund today. It’ll be a fund with an easier mandate, which will make it more flexible for riskier investments.
The focus will be on solar technology and energy storage – such as batteries – as being the focus of Australian investment and innovation in the clean energy space. 
“The pace of improvement in the efficiency of solar panels has been quite remarkable and, of course, what we’re starting to see now is affordable storage, which has always been the problem with intermittent renewables,” Turnbull said last year.
This runs in tandem with Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which Abbott wanted to bin, but will be retained, and is currently running at a profit – how bout that!

Image: Getty Images / Atsushi Tomura.

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