Talks between the government and Labor toward a compromise on the renewable energy target appear to have again broken down, with the Opposition rejecting a new offer on Monday.
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Government sources said a proposal to set the target at 31,000 gigawatt hours of baseline power by 2020 was put to Labor on Monday afternoon in a bid to break a deadlock that has existed for more than 12 months.
Labor is understood to have rejected the offer but could not be reached for comment.
The Opposition and the clean energy industry had been pushing for a figure in the mid- to high-thirties, but government sources said 31,000 was in line with demands from some quarters of the renewables sector.
Kane Thornton, chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, said on Monday that 31,000 gigawatt hours was too large a cut from the existing target of 41,000 gigawatt hours by 2020.
"We've been quite transparent about our position on this," Mr Thornton said.
"There's a strong consensus in the renewable energy sector on a desire to resolve this.
"But there's also a strong consensus on what reduction in the target the industry is willing to accept.
"We've made this quite clear and explicit – 31,000 is quite clearly a number we're not prepared to accept."
The failed offer continues the uncertainty that has plagued the renewables sector since the government launched a review of the target more than 12 months ago.
The government's plan to scale back the RET has not changed, despite comments by Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane last week that the current 41,000 figure would continue untouched if the two sides could not reach an agreement.
Industry figures say that means investment in the renewable energy in Australia, which has plummeted since the review, is likely to remain stalled if the major parties cannot find a middle ground and renew bipartisan support for the target.
The government's initial proposal was to water the RET down to a so called "true 20 per cent" of Australia's energy production, which would have seen the figure reduced to about 26,000 gigawatt hours by 2020.
"Leaving the RET legislation unchanged, because they can't get such radical changes through the Senate, will continue the paralysis that began over one year ago with the Warburton Review," Infigen Energy's government affairs manager Jonathan Upson said on Monday.
Oliver Yates, the chief executive of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, told a Senate estimates hearing last week that uncertainty over the target had set the industry back 12 years.
