Sydney - Australia has set a target of 15 per cent of power generation from clean sources by 2020. Prime Minister John Howard said Sunday that a minimum of 30,000 gigawatt hours each year should come from low-emission sources.
"What this initiative will do is gather up all of the different state schemes, many of which are contradictory or at the very least dissimilar," Howard told reporters in Sydney.
"What in essence we want is to consolidate all of the states' schemes into a single national scheme."
The target immediately drew flak from green-lobby groups because it includes not just the use of renewable energy sources like solar, wind and wave generation but also that from coal-powered stations that have installed carbon-capture equipment.
"Based on what we have seen, the target proposed will not deliver additional clean energy investment in Australia above what the states would have done anyway," Climate Institute director of policy and research Erwin Jackson said. "You would actually get to 30,000 gigawatt hours by 2020 anyway."
"This is not going to drive additional investment," Jackson added. "We need about double what the prime minister is proposing to ensure all new electricity comes from clean energy."
Howard, who is behind in the opinion polls in the run up to a general election he is likely to call for November, said he hoped the six states could agree that the national target would come into effect by January 2010.
Howard, seeking a fifth term for his conservative coalition government, has been sorely criticized for being a laggard on addressing climate change during his 11-year administration. He has refused to sign the UN-sponsored Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and has yet to set a target for Australia reducing its own emissions.
Opposition Labor leader Kevin Rudd, who is riding high in the polls, has promised to sign Kyoto and match the European Union by setting a target of a 60-per cent reduction in emissions by 2050 if he wins government.
Rudd met climate change campaigner Al Gore on Sunday, after which he said that under the Howard government Australia had had "a decade of denial on climate change."
His meeting with the former US vice president pointed up the gap between the major parties on climate-change issues.
"We would have been 11 years or a decade at least down the track towards substantive diplomatic engagement on bringing the Chinese on board, on bringing the Indians on board, on working with our friends in Washington to bring America on board, and to work out the practical strategies necessary," Rudd said.
For his part, Gore urged Australians to vote out Howard because of his refusal to sign Kyoto. Australia and the United States are the only two developed nations not to have ratified Kyoto, which imposes binding emissions-reduction targets on 35 industrialized countries.
Gore, whose documentary An Inconvenient Truth helped to change attitudes about climate change, stopped short of endorsing Rudd but made it plain what was at stake at the ballot box.
"If I were a citizen of Australia and cared deeply about the climate crisis, I would pay very careful attention to the fact that there is a clear and stark difference in the positions of the two candidates," Gore, who is on a speaking tour of Australia, told reporters in Melbourne.
"One supports ratification of the world treaty to solve the climate crisis and the other opposes it - that would weigh very heavily on my vote," Gore said.
