Australia got a reason to celebrate this month when the Greenough River Solar project switched on and started generating enough power to keep three thousand homes running smoothly on sun-generated electricity. Co-owned by the state of Western Australia and General Electric, the Greenough facility is Australia's first mammoth solar farm.
Australia has made a modest and realistic commitment to generating twenty percent or more of its power from renewable energy sources like sun and wind by the year 2020. Big coal doesn't like that. Big coal wants to keep pulling in big, easy profits at the expense of clean air. So big coal interests, led in part by the Australian Coal Association, are lobbying to reduce Australia's commitment to renewables.
Caving to big coal would destroy the business model for renewable energy in Australia, effectively driving the industry "off a cliff," according to Kane Thornton, Director of Strategy, Clean Energy Council. Tell Australia's Climate Change Authority to keep the twenty percent goal in place for Australia!
We the undersigned think you should not cave to pressure from big coal.
Big coal can be consistently counted on to protect its profits at the expense of clean air and the health of Australian residents and the planet as a whole. Australia's current goal to obtain twenty percent of its energy from renewables by 2020 is not only modest, it's entirely realistic. To undercut the solar and wind industries by cutting renewable energy targets would not be fair to clean energy investors or anybody who needs to breathe.
You should stand firm and keep the renewable energy targets where they are or even raise them!
